BGleas

In 19 years of coaching Marshall has finished below 2nd in his conference 3 times. Two of those were his first two years at WSU as he was building that program, Three times in 19 years. That's insane at any level.

Marshall is infinitely more proven than White or Holtman and it's not even close, and he's just as proven as Bennett if not more. How has Marshall not won with X's and O's?

I don't get it either. I guess some think he's on the older side, or the Canada thing? If can't imagine anyone not supporting his coaching. Like you, I don't think he's on the Donovan/Stephens level, but he's as good as anyone else we're discussing after that.

30+ wins four out of the last five years, and at least one win in the NCAA Tournament four years in a row. Add all of that to his conference titles (regular season and conference), the guy is a great coach. I don't know how he'd recruit at IU, but he is a great coach.

Bennett was an assistant for Ryan for a couple seasons before joining his father at Washington St. Bennett was also brought to Wisconsin by his father, so it's not like he's Ryan's "guy". Gard was Ryan's longest tenured assistant, having coached with him for 23 years. Seems Gard's appointment has nothing to do with any referendum on Bennett.

Yeah, that was a pretty weak denial.

Heard a stat during their game today that Bennett's UVA teams are something like 96-6 when they score 70+ points in a game. Imagine winning games with defense. His offenses are often ranked really high in efficiency, so it's more of a pace issue, not how good they actually are on offense.

Any guesses on where Cuonzo bolts for 2 years from now? Has he ever been through a full recruiting cycle?

I can't fathom Crean coming back, but if he does, if I'm the AD part of a return is a complete sweep of his staff. You absolutely can not come back with the status quo. I hate to scapegoat the assistants, but you just can't bring this full staff back in tact, you have to at least give the optics that change has been attempted. Again, maybe not entirely fair, but some change has to occur.

How is Marshall just a little better than Crean? The guy has won 30 games 4 of the last 5 seasons and has, I believe, 20 conference championships (when you combine regular season and tournament). I think Crean has 3. The guys is a winner. If people don't like his age or his temper, I completely get that and have questions myself (Marshall isn't my #1 or even #2 choice), but from a purely coaching standpoint the guy is one of the top coaches in the country.

Yeah, on my list I have Marshall right there in tier 2 with Bennett and S. Miller. Obviously Stevens and Donovan are tier 1, but Marshall is right there with those other guys. I might have him 3rd in terms of Bennett, S. Miller and Marshall, but he's right there with them IMO.

Why is everyone on this board so down on Marshall? Is it the incident in Canada? IMO, that's completely justified. But outside of that, his coaching record is impeccable. It's right up there, if not better, than most of the candidates we're discussing. All the guy does is win. Sure, there are questions about how his recruiting would translate to a higher level, but the same thing can be said about Archie Miller.

Good point. You're making me start to rethink going to the game Thursday. It's not like it's a Monday night, we can all power through Friday a little groggy :).

I'm about 15 minutes from DC and was going to pull the kids from school and take a little field trip to the game if we were playing Wednesday afternoon, but 6:30 Thursday on a school/work day is a weird time.

Right, that's what I meant. I just think we all need to step back on these pieces of info coming out. I do believe that these insiders have connections, but what is the probability that these connections have access to the real information? I think it's slim. You might know a guy in the athletic department that thinks he knows stuff, but unless that person is behind closed doors with Glass and the real players, then they're just picking up bits and pieces. And if you are behind the closed doors, you're not spreading around that info. Just as likely that IU met with Billy's agent, is that the insiders connection had it wrong the agent meeting today was with Crean's agent, not Donovan's.

Yeah, I'm not convinced there was any meeting with Donovan today.

Like I said, I'm not expecting it. I'm not predicting it. I don't even think I want it to happen, I want this all over and a new coach named. But, if our guards all play well at the same time, a run in the BTT is possible. It would be the most Crean thing for it to happen.

I'm by no means expecting it, but it's not out of the realm that IU could make a run to the semis or even title game of the BTT. It's been a weird season with our guards. Newkirk was awful early in the season. Just when Newkirk started coming on JBJ got hurt. Then once JBJ came back RoJo went into a major month long funk. If RoJo has his game back after the OSU performance, then even though the year has been awful, IU is still one of the top 2-3 most talented teams in the conference. Again in not expecting it, and we'd still have to overcome the coach, but if our guards are all finally clicking it wouldn't be crazy.

That, and if we're in a bracket with anyone except UK I think that team goes to the Elite 8 at minimum and probably the Final Four.

Interesting that whoever is putting this on is using an image of Knight at TT, not IU, to promote the event.

Not to speak for him, but I think Old Friends point is that IU doesn't need a Billy Donovan type hire to be successful and get where we all want the program to be. We need someone that understands the landscape/culture of IU, the greater mid-west recruiting landscape and can just flat out coach the game. We need a basketball X's/O's coach that understands recruiting and kids in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, etc. I personally think Donovan could be great at IU, but there are other guys who could as well.

I don't have a problem with positionless basketball, but that's not really what IU is doing. What has plagued IU for the better part of three seasons (excluding the 2nd half of last year) is that we're a 3-guard lineup team masquerading as positionless basketball. Positionless basketball is typically a rim/protecting, rebounding big and a pg-ish type player surrounded by a bunch of long, athletic, multi-dimensional guys that can shoot, pass, defend, etc.. We trot out a line-up of three 6'2" guards and call that positionless. A positionless lineup would be something like RoJo-Troy Williams-Hartman-OG-Bryant.

It's pretty amazing that IU has gone 5 full recruiting cycles ('13-'17) without recruiting a point guard.

I would tier it something like... Tier 1A: Stevens Teir 1B: Donovan Tier 2: Bennett, Marshall Tier 3: Miller Tier 4: Mack, Holtman, White, etc.

They also showed that graphic highlighting our offense/defense with OG vs. without, never once mentioning that two-thirds of the games OG played in were completely meaningless against sub-300 teams. Im im not saying OG isn't really good and a significant loss, but those stats they showed were stupid and completely lacked context.