BottomLine

Not much difference now, but when we get to the part of the season where picking the correct winner is important, look out. The difference between picking the winner and not picking the winner is 50 points. Wow! May be getting a couple of dropped scores back pretty quickly. No Hoosiers!

Let's hold off on the evaluation of De'Ron and Joey. When you play teams that are undersized and out classed they have little choice as to how they are going to play us. They are going to try to press, run and shoot the 3, or some combination of those three. De'Ron and Joey are a bit slower afoot and don't fit that kind of game. When we play opponents that are bigger and stronger and want to play a half court game those big bodies will be more important. If they are going to rise, that will be the time to evaluate.

Hoosiers 95 Princeton 61

Doubt anyone will pick against the Hoosiers in the first seven games. :-)

Second game in a row where Coonhounds nailed one of the final scores. Sure is making it hard for the rest of us. Nice picking!

Hoosiers 93 Troy 63

Hoosiers 91 North Alabama 61

Just a clarification. When we drop the two lowest, does that include a missed game as a 0, or is it the two lowest actual competitive numbers?

Problem is that we need the Big 10 to do well so the games we play against Big 10 teams will be considered quality wins. It is definitely to our advantage to have the Big 10 considered the best league. That said I can't for any reason root for Purdue.

According to Fish on the pregame show Anderson has a nagging injury and was dressed but probably wouldn't play. Didn't sound too serious.

Hoosiers 93-68

Indiana 93-57

With a five game winning streak and a top 25 ranking, we can all dream about winning that sixth championship. What will it take? Just some statistics to provide some food for thought. The KenPom ratings rank every team in a lot of categories, including AdjO and AdjD. You can also go back and see ranking for every year since 2002. Just put a chart together for the AdjO and AdjD ratings and the total of the two for every champion since 2002 and here it is: 2018 Villanova 1 + 11 + 12 2017 North Carolina 9 + 11 + 20 2016 Villanova 3 + 5 + 8 2015 Duke 3 + 11 + 14 2014 Connecticut 39 + 10 + 49 2013 Louisville 9 + 1 = 10 2012 Kentucky 2 + 7 = 9 2011 Connecticut 19 + 15 = 34 2010 Duke 1 + 5 = 6 2009 North Carolina 1 + 18 = 19 2008 Kansas 2 + 1 = 3 2007 Florida 1 + 13 = 14 2006 Florida 3 + 7 = 10 2005 North Carolina 2 + 5 + 7 2004 Connecticut 9 + 6 = 15 2003 Syracuse 17 = 14 = 31 2002 Maryland 4 + 7 + 11 Note that 14 of the last 17 national champions had a combined offensive and defensive rating of 20 or less. You must admire Archie's drive to bring IU's defensive number down, while doing the same for IU's offensive numbers. The "magic" 20 point threshold doesn't guarantee a national championship, there are teams below that number that didn't win a championship. However, it is hard to argue with the statistics that say that teams that have both a good offense and defense have a chance that is much better than teams that can not match those numbers. IU's current numbers are 37 + 18 = 55, not encouraging for #6. The only three teams that are currently under the 20 threshold are Duke (2 +5 =7), Virginia (10 + 4 =14) and Kansas (7 + 6 + 13). Michigan is the best from the Big Ten (21 + 3 + 24). Of course the numbers change almost every time a team plays. Some will improve and others will regress and who knows what the numbers will be at the end of the year. Just thought throw out some numbers for people to think about. Numbers that are certainly more meaningful that where we are in the national polls.

Hope we can add Hunter to that group.

Listened to the same interview and was impressed by what he had to say. I go back to way before the Knight era and IU's swagger didn't start with him, it was there before. That is what made IU so great. Somehow we have lost that and I don't see us getting it back. Being great is more than recruiting 5* and 4* athletes. It is about an attitude that says, "We are Indiana and you aren't going to beat us on our home floor, and if you beat us anywhere else, you are going to know that you have been in a fight." It was obvious that Greg knows all about that.

The exception might be the player from a small school without a graduate program that has already graduated.

Grad transfers transfer for a reason, usually it is because they were not that successful where they came from and they are looking for the greener grass on the other side of the fence. If they were great, they probably wouldn't be leaving their old school. Sometimes they are right. More often than not they are not.

Lots of yada yada yada on here but the reality is that 2018-19 is over and we are looking at 2019-20 now. At this moment our starting lineup is 1) Phinisee, 2) Green, 3) Durham, 4) Smith, and 5) Davis. I don't care where they come from, whether it is an improved player from off the bench, an incoming Freshman, or from someone off the grad transfer list, from this moment on we are looking for players that can BEAT SOMEONE OUT! I don't want to know how good they will be in 3 or 4 years. I want to know how good they will be next year, because if we are locked in to that starting five, I don't see significant improvement, though some improvement is to be expected from individual players from one year to the next. I'm looking for players that make those five look over their shoulders every day and make them bust their butts to stay on top. Any player that comes to IU and doesn't have a chip on their shoulder and looking for a spot to play, is probably a waste. Nothing given and everything earned has to be the way to the future.

I stand corrected. He did injure the knee in the summer before his freshman year. Here is a quote from an article about Grunwald Of all of the outstanding high school basketball players I observed as a student and fan and covered as a sportswriter for four daily newspapers over a period of 50 years, two who stand out are Grunwald and Russell Cross. I'll always wonder how good they could have been, if they could have achieved the Hall of Fame stature of George Mikan or Harry Gallatin or Andy Phillip or Isiah Thomas or Dan Issel or Cazzie Russell or Jerry Sloan or Don Nelson or, upon his retirement, Kevin Garnett. They never had a chance. Grunwald, the only four-time All-State selection in Illinois history, was recruited out of East Leyden by Indiana coach Bob Knight. He chose Indiana over North Carolina and Kentucky. But he suffered a severe knee injury during the summer prior to his freshman year and never was able to fulfill his enormous potential. "Sure, I'll always wonder how good I could have been," he once told me. "It was tough not to succeed in basketball after high school. But I was part of a good college program and happy to be part of its success, however small. When you are injured, you feel you can get better. But the gradual realization is that it won't be the same." He was co-captain of Indiana's 1981 NCAA championship team that was led by Isiah Thomas. He was drafted by the Boston Celtics in the fifth round of the NBA draft but never played in the NBA. Instead, he focused on his education, earning a law degree, an MBA and an Honours business degree in marketing. He was a successful corporate attorney for major law firms, including Winston & Strawn in Chicago, before joining the Denver Nuggets.

I don't remember that being the case. He was tall and thin and I think they just wore out from all the rapid growth. Back in the 70s and 80s they couldn't do with knees what they can do now. Just remember him playing in high school at East Leyden and he was just unstoppable and him being the potential "star" of the class that ended up winning it all in 1981. He played at IU but he was never healthy enough to stay on the court for long periods of time.

Biggest hard luck player at IU had to be Glen Grunwald. Was first team all state in Illinois for all FOUR years of high school and was Mr. Basketball his senior year. Doubt Illinois ever had any better, but by the time he got to IU his freshman year he could hardly walk his knees were so bad. Stuck it out for all four years and played but he was just a shadow of what he had been. Still went on to have a very successful career as a NBA executive with the Nuggets and then was later GM of both the Raptors and the Knicks. Despite being a team captain he only saw limited playing time for IU's 1981 championship team. After basically sitting the bench because of his knees for four years at IU he was still drafted by the Celtics. OH, what might have been.

Hate to break the trend in the conversation but wanted to point out that with the Virginia win it is now 15 of the last 18 winners have a combined Pom offensive and defensive number that is 20 or below. To win #6 IU needs to trend toward those numbers.

The point is not necessarily how to pick the winner. The point is that this is a useful measuring stick to determine where your program is at any given point. Sometimes we, as Hoosier fans, have a tendency to over evaluate out team and our players. We were all high on the team back in December when we were ranked n the top 25 and we were all dreaming of a return to the NCAA Tournament and a long run. The fact is that December was fools gold and our numbers were not good enough to sustain those hopes and in fact it was apparent that rougher times were ahead. There isn't a magical formula that will guarantee success. There were teams that met the criteria that I suggested that obviously didn't make it to the Final Four. You still need to play the games and anything can and often does happen during the 40 minutes of a single game. However, those teams with good offensive and defensive ratings seems to have a definite advantage in postseason play, which shouldn't be a big duh. My contention is that a mathematical rating such as Pomeroy offense and defense give us a much truer picture than subjective ratings systems such as the coaches or writers polls, and are certainly more valuable then the overall win/loss record. As for the team's ratings changing during the course of the tournament, those changes are minor. Nobody is making huge jumps or drops based upon a few games because we are looking at a population of about 35 games. I'm trying not to split hairs here. If Indiana wants to be considered one of the top programs and a post season threat, I think we know what our numbers need to look like.

14 of the last 17 NCAA champions have had a combined Pomeroy offense and defense ranking of 20 or less. This year there were four qualifiers: Virginia (3 +5 = 8), MSU (1 +12 = 13), Gonzaga (1 +12 =13), and Duke (7+6 =13). All four reached the final 8 and Virginia and MSU reached the Final Four. For reference Texas Tech (28 +1 = 29) and Auburn (6+36=42), while non-qualifiers still had pretty good numbers. Indiana finished 81+30=111. Still think this is one of the best ways to evaluate where we are and where we need to go.

I don't believe the cause of the suspension was ever announced publicly. There is a student privacy issue. Any connection to drugs was just speculation that took on a life if its own.