AKHoosier

Man, I usually defend Crean but some of those decisions tonight.... We spent 80% of each possession just passing the ball around the perimeter. Thomas Bryant's taller than anyone on the floor but he can't do anything in the paint. And why in the world is McRoberts getting all this playing time? God bless the kid but there's a reason he was at Vermont.

Supposedly that's Trice's mom. Unreal an adult would do that.

Thanks for reminding me!

I saw that stat during the game. That's pretty impressive. Minnesota actually looks like a pretty decent team this year.

If we're considered a bubble team at any point after January then that just is not acceptable. Most knowledgeable fans had reasonable expectations of at least a Sweet 16 and top-3 finish in the B1G this year. Those are still my expectations as of today.

So pretty much Purdue goes as Swanigan goes, except even when he puts up a 20-20 game, they still lose.

Incorrect. Glass just fired Kevin Wilson after he took us to back-to-back bowl games and consecutive 6-win seasons for the first time in forever. Reasons are different, but it proves he's not afraid to pull the trigger when he feels it's necessary. Anyone saying Glass is tied to Crean is just being pessimistic. Winning B1G championships is nice, but everyone (including prospective college coaches) knows success at Indiana is determined by what you do in the tournament. If Crean is here 8 years and never can get us past the Sweet 16, people know that isn't acceptable.

I'd like to see our starters (and those who get the majority of our minutes) be: Robert Johnson James Blackmon OG De'Ron Davis Thomas Bryant With the first 2 subs off the bench being Morgan and Curtis Jones, I think this lineup could really build something towards later in the season.

I'm not sure where to put this so I'll just drop this little tidbit in here. I'm currently hanging out with a girl who went to Kentucky for her undergrad, so needless to say she's a pretty big UK fan. It's funny though because she openly admitted that UK basketball players get all kinds of gifts and benefits just because they play basketball. Among them, she said their new players-only dorm always has 2 Escalades available exclusively for the players' private use, and hardly any of them do their own homework. A guy friend of hers was a player's "tutor" which pretty much meant he had to do the homework and essay papers for 2 players he was assigned to, and that he was incredibly honored to get to do that. Nothing too earth-shattering nor anything we didn't already suspect, but I just had to laugh when she told me that. Someday I hope we get to watch them burn.

I didn't think it at the time, but man Tremont Waters was a must-get recruit. This team desperately needs a PG. I thought between Newkirk, Green, and Johnson we'd be fine, but boy are we struggling to replace Yogi. Which is frustrating because Newkirk was able to watch and practice with Yogi for an extended period of time last year.

Well, 2 years in a row now Crean and the team will have to recover from a heck of a lot of adversity early in the season. This team has the talent to win at least 25 games and make a deep tournament run.

A lot of is the Cards defense. They're the most efficient defense in the country.

This looks just like the Syracuse Sweet 16 game. Look awful in the first half committing a ton of turnovers, confused by their defense, make a bit of a run in the 2nd half until they pull away.

We won't struggle to make the tournament, but we can kiss winning the B1G goodbye. I really am worried what a 3 game losing streak will do to the psyche of our team, especially when all of those losses would happen in the state of Indiana.

Just not hitting any open shots, and Bryant can't finish around the rim. It seems like forever ago when he led the country in FG% last year.

fùùùùùck this.

A lot like the Butler game, we just can't hit open 3's.

Interesting. I like it.

Well if we can win this and beat Wisconsin, we won't fall out of the top 25 and should repair some of the damage done by the NEB loss. Going to have to take care of the ball today, I'd feel a lot better about handling their press if we still had Yogi haha.

Good Lord, pretty humbling to see that compared to the strength of schedules for teams we're trying to resemble. This is why you don't schedule the 300+ Houston Baptist schools of the NCAA. Plenty of good matchups to be had among teams in the 100-220 range to be feasted upon.

How come a hard pass on Hoiberg? He was always on my short list when he was at Iowa State, as he seems to be a good recruiter and solid coach. It seems like he may be better suited for college than the NBA.

Objection. Speculation.

I'm not trying to be confrontational either because I think we're generally on the same page. However, you're contradicting yourself a ton here. You're saying our coach has proven he can't win a national championship (which is absurd). Then theoretically, we should only consider Coach K., Roy Williams, Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Kevin Ollie, Billy Donovan, or Jay Wright, correct? Because those are the only guys who have proven they can win one. If you want to make the argument that we need to get rid of him because he's proven he isn't capable of delivering a national title, then you have to eliminate guys like Archie Miller, Chris Holtmann, Andy Enfield, Brad Stevens, and Gregg Marshall because they've all "proven" they can't deliver one either. If nothing in Crean's career makes you think that reaching a Final 4 will happen, then why do you choose to ignore direct evidence that he can reach a Final 4? I don't care if it was with Wade or not, he did get there and you can spin it any way you want to. Look, I've already said I don't think we'll be consistently elite under Crean, but to get rid of him because "he's proven he can't win a national championship" is ridiculous. You don't know the future and neither do I. It's entirely possible we get good matchups and have a deep run into the tournament this year.

Did you really find it necessary to ask that question? I think it's fairly obvious that I pretty much don't, given the last paragraph in my post. The thing is though, I don't think Crean is a bad coach. Most people, some even on this board, want to point to guys like Tony Bennett and Bo Ryan as great coaches who teach solid fundamentals, but they all seem to forget that before Bo's final 2 years, he was always known as a coach who could never perform in the tournament either. His teams were always getting bounced early by double-digit seeds, and then all of a sudden he's a great coach after he goes to 2 consecutive Final Fours. Same with Tony Bennett, who seems to under-perform in the tournament pretty regularly. You and me both can think he's not capable of getting to a Final 4 at IU or winning a national championship, but we don't know that. The only thing for certain is that we still have 18 games left to be played, and it's possible we could go 14-4 the rest of the way, get a good seed in the NCAA tournament, and end up getting favorable match-ups and getting hot at the right time sending us to a Final 4.

I'd say you can have plenty of gripes with Crean, but this post is pretty far off base. We are not average right now. We are above average. If an "average" program can win their conference outright twice in 4 years and go to 3 Sweet 16s, then how many programs out there are average? You say "we'll win games and lose some that we shouldn't have." Well, I'd say that's the case with every team and program in the entire country. The fact is Tom Crean has beaten more top 25 teams in the past 6 years than anyone outside of Bill Self. That's nothing to hang a banner for, yet it's nothing to sneeze at either. Just off the top of my head without doing research, Kansas lost to TCU recently. Kentucky has lost to Auburn, LSU, and Tennessee. North Carolina lost to Northern Iowa. This stuff happens all the time in a 31-game regular season. And oh yeah, 3 of our recent wins have been against Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina. But I agree with some of your premise though. IU will probably never be elite under Tom Crean. We'll be above average, like we are now, but we won't be joining Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas at the top under him. If you look at his record before he even came to IU, his teams averaged 21-11 in the regular season. I'd say we're pretty much headed there this year. Still too early to throw in the towel on this year though, although a home loss to a 6-6 Nebraska team is certainly not a good sign.