BGleas

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.

Haha, don't give me too much credit, the kid still got off a great look. The other crazy thing about that play is that our coach spent the entire timeout before the play telling #4 not go go for the steal on the inbounds pass and to just keep the ball in front (there was only 4 seconds left and we were up 1), and what did he do? He went for the steal which allowed the other team to get all the way down court and get a great shot off.

We had one player get suspended a game for throwing a punch, nothing happened to our coach. As you can probably tell he was kind of old (was his 29th or 30th season and he retired at the end of the season) so he was sort of the "Dean" of coaches in the conference, so we all assumed he negotiated his way out of a suspension by having one of our bench guys take a game for the punch.

The funny part (other than the quick hands comment) was the next day at practice we were all waiting in the film room on pins and needles for how he was going to address the situation. We didn't know if he'd be suspended, if some of us were going to be suspended (despite what the TV guys said, there were punches thrown). He walks in and paces back and forth for about 20 seconds, then just looks up and says "fellas, the only thing I have to say about last night is, I should have taken the charge". Everyone just died laughing.

I'm #22 in white. Thread over, drops mic...

Agree. Not saying we shouldn't have gone further than we did, but people have come to romanticize how good that team actually was. As you said, IU was a handful of really good teams that year, but we weren't head and shoulders better than everyone else. Remember, we barely beat Georgetown early in the year, and struggled to beat Georgia, along with losing to Butler in the non conference. Yes, we were certainly capable of winning a national title that year, and certainly fell apart down the stretch and should have gone further. But, IU was also a talented team with almost no depth, and and no size in the backcourt. A really good team capable of winning it all, but also a team with flaws that could be taken advantage of.

Take a step back for a second guys. Did you expect him not be excited over winning a 3-OT thriller of a game? I'm not saying I want him as the coach or anything, but it was a 3-OT, exciting game, of course it's memorable when you're involved in it.

I kind of agree and disagree. While I think Hartman would have been a valuable piece to this team, that's an injury I don't want to hear about. We lost him early enough to adjust, and we have/had enough talent to overcome, and no reason that should be brought up in Jan/Feb. But, when you lose Hartman, OG and. JBJ that's significant and I wouldn't expect too many coaches to overcome that. That's three of your top 7, tough to overcome that. But Crean lost this team long before OG and JBJ were out. As mentioned, I also don't want to hear in January about some guy pulling a hammy last June, or a guy rolled an ankle in September. It's February, that's an excuse.

Another thing that bothers me along these lines is Crean still talking about the guys that were nursing injuries last summer. He still talks about that. I mean, if it's February and you've been a full, 100% practice and game participant since September, can we stop blaming poor play on nagging injuries from 8-9 months ago?

Which is shocking for anyone that watched the 13-14 and 14-15 IU teams.

I really think Bennett might be that guy. As Brass Cannon said, throw a dump truck of money at him and he may forget whatever the issue was with his sister.

Not just because of today, but I'm starting to think we shouldn't just dismiss Bennett because of whatever might have happened with his sister. It was a different admin then, and he may be the most qualified, realistic guy in college right now. I'll always say Stevens is the first call, but Bennett might be next. The right amount of money can change people's minds.