Vauxhall and IU

I'm not "in the Archie camp" so much as I'm just trying not to get my hopes up. These kind of threads gain legs and before long we've convinced ourselves that there's flights being booked. In reality, because of the buyout and the asterisk of this Covid season, I'd say there's a 99% chance Archie's back next year, and in the meantime, I'd rather us do well than not well. I would say I'm in the "if they did fire him, I wouldn't be sad" camp. I've been a big Archie defender in the past, so it's probably pretty telling that that's where I am now.

Truly a new low for this site. This post is an absolute disgrace.

I was thinking about this tonight. I normally go to about 2-4 games a year. These last few years, even with similar on-the-court product, I've felt WAY more connected to the team and the program, just by dint of being in the Hall a few times each year. This year, frankly, I'm checked out. I'm still watching every game, but I'm not getting excited about wins or angry about losses like I used to. When the time comes that we can finally get back to seeing games in person, I'm sure I'll get my mojo back really quick, but will that be true of the whole fanbase? I dunno. I have to imagine the TV ratings for the rest of this season are going to be in the toilet after this game.

So, most of the best coaches in college and pro basketball? Yeah, I'd be looking at them too. I've been an Archie defender for a long time. I'm not defending him anymore, but I'm not advocating for him to be fired either. I'm way beyond solution-oriented thinking and am fully giving into nihilism. I don't think anything can save this program. All through the Crean years I thought "all the parts are in place, if we could just get a good coach, someone who could coach defense, we'd be unstoppable." We hired exactly the kind of coach I wanted and these are the results. I don't care if we fire Archie, but I don't think anyone we hire will be any better, either. The idea that we'll have our pick of the top tier coaches at all levels of the sport is laughable. In reality, our talent pool will be either a bunch of mid-major guys, or Alford. And if we hire Alford, I'm out. So at this point, it's status quo, or nothing. Hence the nihilism.

So I guess the "no political talk" rule is out the window now? Good to know, I'll keep that in mind in the future. Ugh.

I know, I know, "it's the B1G" and whatnot, but let me just echo how unwatchable this game is thanks to the officiating. If I wanted to watch MMA, I'd watch MMA. This is just stupid.

Pitino had his own set of criteria. Once he discovered the tabletops at Grazie weren't strong enough to support him and his mistresses, we were out of the running.

The last few days I've been nursing an insane conspiracy theory that makes more and more sense the more I think about it. You know how news outlets will publish irrelevant, "controversial" junk stories on social media purely because it drives engagement (and subsequently, ad revenue), with all the negative reactions and arguing that goes on in the comments? Well, would it surprise anyone if it came out that IU somehow benefits financially from all the negative social media engagement? Every loss guarantees hundreds (if not thousands) of angry comments calling for Archie's job, and then hundreds of responses calling for cooler heads to prevail, and back and forth...could it be that there's some new media/social media "genius" in the administration pushing for this? We all know the administration doesn't prioritize basketball, and once I got to thinking about this, I just couldn't shake it. This is obviously a preposterous idea, and this post is mostly a facetious flight of fancy, but would ANYTHING truly be surprising at this point?

The question isn't "would you accept this kind of record every year for the rest of your life." The question is would you accept it THIS year. Since our #1 objective this year is making the tournament, yes, I would definitely accept it. I wouldn't want that to still be the standard 5-10 years from now, but that's the whole point - ideally, making the tournament begets tournament success, which begets recruiting success, and so on. If we're making progress every year, not only on the court but also in terms of the overall health of the program, then I'm happy.

"It's Michigan State...it's Michigan State."

And the best part is, Pitino literally had a cameo IN Blue Chips! How does he not know better?

Ugh, I remember that era like it was yesterday. All this crap happening over the year 2014, culminating in the DD incident and Troy/Stan's suspensions at the same time, was what REALLY had people calling for Crean's head by November of that year. That's what amazed me this year when people were saying "give him one more year, he's earned another chance." The fact that Crean wasn't fired for cause in 2014 WAS his second chance.

We should've known better than to think the refs would get within a mile of winning this one. At least our guys can comfort themselves knowing an IU degree actually means something unlike the glorified toilet paper from UNC

I see all these people in this thread talking about how this arrest is of a pattern with our current issues, and I have the exact opposite reaction. To me, this puts our more recent off-court issues into perspective. Underage drinking, smoking pot etc are dumb college kid stuff. What Bassett did is something else entirely, and to try and conflate them in any way is completely myopic. I certainly agree that we need to do a better job of recruiting high-character kids, but I'd take Emmitt Holt's character any day of the week over Sherron Wilkerson (who played for and was recruited by Knight.) And while we're on the subject, I'd love to see a Venn diagram of the fans who say we need to recruit kids who "get it," and the fans who would be happy with Steve Alford as HC because he played for Knight and thus "gets it." There's probably a ton of overlap, which is hilariously ironic.