TheWatShot

We love those long 2's. We don't hit them, but we sure do love them. Woodson must love them too if he continues to allow guys to shoot them.

The last few weeks have me thinking he's not as engaged as he once was. The whole program just kind of has this vibe that it's being run by someone who's in retirement mode and isn't doing as much as he should be.

Must have put too much weight on it while watching Edey dive on the floor for that loose ball the other night.

Last time we played up there, we had a 22 point lead in the first half. We gave up 5 straight points to end the half to only lead by 17 and people started losing their minds. I remember feeling oddly calm, that this was the breakout game of the Mike Woodson era and there was no way we'd lose. Then 21st century IU basketball showed up and reminded me that if there's a game to be lost and a crazy way to do it, a way will be found to make it happen. I went from thinking we'd win with about 10 minutes left to correctly predicting the final score with 5 minutes left.

We once went 30 years between home losses to Wisconsin (1972-2002). I'm convinced the sports gods will not allow us to win there until they've gone 30 years without a home loss to us. We aren't going to lose 34 in a row to them like they did to us, but whatever they've done to us in the last ~15 years is probably the closest thing in today's game. It's the only rational reason I can come up with for why they've owned us for so long.

Nice little stress-free bounce back win.

Moren's teams have never been deep. It's just how she operates.

Nice way to fumigate Assembly Hall after last night's game.

I thought his failed physical was in 2021. He got hired at Butler in 2022.

I don't know Woodson personally, so it's probably not fair to label him like this, but his generation had it drilled into their heads at a young age that quitting is a sign of weakness. There's a reason you see coaches hanging around into their 70's and other Boomers continuing to work well beyond that age. Their job is their passion and they'll keep doing it until they either literally can't (they die, or become incapacitated), or someone removes them from their position (fired, laid off, etc.). They're just wired differently. I can't imagine being 65 and having to deal with this team, this fanbase and the media on a daily basis...but he does. And he'll likely continue to do it because he believes it's his duty to perform his job until fate no longer allows him to.

We go out and get one of the many coaches who exist that could come here and actually coach good basketball. I have no idea who that is, but that guy HAS to be out there somewhere. It's just mind-blowing how many coaches we've gone through to get the same terrible product over so many years. Dusty May isn't, and shouldn't be, our only option. But whoever we get is going to have to be pretty special to fix this mess.

True fan right here. Respect for going to all those games, most of which were horrible.

Imagine being Mike Woodson right now. Might be better for everyone, including himself, if he just hung it up after this season.

This is pathetic. Had a feeling this is what we'd get instead of what we saw the last 2 years against these guys. What an incredibly disappointing and uninspiring team.

This is why I couldn't get excited for this game. The gap between us and them is a lot bigger than it was the last 2 years.

We needed a better start. 31% shooting isn't nearly good enough to beat this team.

Before last year's game, I was nervous but confident. This year, I'm just kind of...meh. Not really expecting a win, and now that we're halfway through January I'm slowly kind of starting to accept this team for what it is.

The respect they're getting from pollsters and oddsmakers these days is astounding. About 1/3 of the AP voters and coaches still had them #1 this week. Imagine losing by 16 to an unranked team, and that many people keep you in the same spot the next week. For a team that has a well-established track record of doing its best work early in the season, it's pretty crazy.

I actually don't mind being the underdog this time. It felt like we had the weight of the world on our shoulders going into last year's matchup. Being stuck at a birthday party having only score updates on my phone as Purdue cut our big lead all the way down to one was probably my most anxious moment of the season.

A win would actually put us ahead of them and into the conversation...which is why it probably won't happen.

Dakich was apparently tired of hearing people complain that the broadcast for last night's game would be the Caitlin Clark show, so he took a potshot at IU women's basketball and said of course it would be the Caitlin Clark show, no one cares about IU women's basketball, be grateful that FOX is even showing this game. Grace said "No one?" and showed four pictures of Assembly Hall either filled or close to full from four games last season. Dakich probably isn't entirely comfortable with the IU women's program being so good and getting all the good publicity it's gotten lately while the men's program is a mess, because it's so starkly different from the era he played in.

If we'd been playing anybody else tonight, it probably comes up. They weren't going to say anything that could possibly undermine Clark's performance.

I predict the voters take a dump on us and we come in at #22 next week.

They've hit 12 of their last 19 from deep. This is silly.

You can't get down double digits to this team because they won't have too many scoring droughts with Clark. We royally screwed ourselves in the first half when we let them get hot with Clark on the bench.