Hoosierfan2017

On the flip side, fans aren’t going to be patient for another few years when we haven’t seen IU in the tournament since 2016. It’s been over half a decade of bad basketball, and really a bad 10-15 years with a few good seasons. So, whether it’s fair or not, fans are out of patience. Plus, Woody has his own clock. He turns 64 next month. If we’re lucky we’ll get a decade out of him. That makes every season all the more important.

It bothers me that the game is in LA and it’s daylight out. I love night games so much more. Atmosphere is better. The game feels more important. This feels like it could be a random week 5 game or whatever

I don’t disagree with you at all that we’re lacking in the talent department. I just think that’s a product of our recruiting classes not working out more than it is the caliber of our recruiting classes. We’ve recruited in the top half of the conference each of the past four years but have then finished in the bottom half of the conference (this year isn’t over yet of course, but we’re currently in the bottom half at 8th place). At least in theory a team with our recruiting classes should be better than it has been, but recruiting rankings are far from perfect. Our starters, in part, consist of three guys ranked outside the top 100 because the guys we have inside the top 100 aren’t where we thought they’d be. We’re in stark contrast to Wisconsin. Their classes over that span are: 2018: 13th 2019: 14th 2020: 5th 2021: 5th Their two 5th place classes consisted of one 4 star and four 3 stars (2020) and four 3 stars (2021). I don’t think they have a single top 30 recruit on their team, while we have several. Going back even further, Wisconsin was 10th in 2015, 12th in 2016, and 5th in 2017. We outrecruit them most years and then their teams outperform us on the court. Culture, coaching, player improvements, roster fit. All those things go into it.

We have two guards on our bench who were top 30 recruits, and we have a big on the bench who was a top 75 recruit. Race was top 75 in his class before he reclassified. Geronimo was 105th in his class and Kopp was 115th in his class. Here are the conference rankings for our last four classes: 2018 - 2nd 2019 - 6th 2020 - 2nd 2021 - 7th Averages out to just over 4th in the conference during that span. Our conference finishes during that span: 2018/2019 - 8th 2019/2020 - 10th 2020/2021 - 10th 2021/2022 - 8th We don’t recruit at a high enough level right now to be competing for national championships but there’s no reason we can’t be a top 5 team in the conference. We underperform our recruiting. Our problem is that we recruit players who end up underperforming their rankings. In 2018 we chose Hunter and Anderson over Aaron Henry, and Henry happened to be by far the best player of the 3. Lander hasn’t lived up to his 5 star ranking. Duncomb can’t get off the bench. Bates had a good game yesterday but before that he was really struggling. I don’t know if it’s a development issue, an over ranking issue, or a combination of both, but in the conference we finish at a worse level than we recruit at.

Galloway got the opportunity to start that you’ve been clamoring for and he played really poorly. Missed all six of his shots. They really weren’t even close. Wasn’t paying enough attention to see if his form looked pretty, though. He’s a player, especially at this point, that you want playing 15-20 minutes of energy a game off the bench. If he’s playing 30+ mpg you’re in trouble. He’s not that guy.

He played 32 minutes, shot 0-6 from the field, and scored 1 point today. Championship contenders aren’t playing him 30 mpg.

Every good team needs quality role players. But you’re not getting anywhere with just role players. Will Sheehey was a great role player on the two sweet 16 teams. Then in 2014 we saw what he was when he wasn’t surrounded with talent. Oladipo and Zeller were the engines that drove those teams. The 2016 team had great role players like Zeisloft and Biedfelt (I probably butchered those names), but Yogi/Bryant/Troy drove that team. Right now we have some guys who could be quality role players but we don’t have the horses.

What’s the “massive improvement”? The defense has been better but we’re just as bad offensively.

Saying that Race and Trayce are the only starter-level players on the team isn’t disparaging anyone. It’s just reality, At least on a decent to good team. That’s the state of our team. No one on the roster has even played in an NCAA tournament game. And five of our players were just suspended, so not only are they not taking care of business on the court, they’re screwing up off of it too.

His stubbornness is a huge issue. When things are clearly not working he’s so hesitant to change them up.

He says all the right things - culture, discipline, accountability, etc., and he’s a former player, so fans really like him. I don’t even disagree with them. He seems like a very likable guy. But I agree with you completely. His in-game coaching this year has left so much to be desired. He’s not a good enough coach to win without elite talent, and he’s not recruiting at a high enough level.

I mean honestly Trayce and Race are the only starter-level players on the team. The rest are bench guys.

Geronimo is from Newark, I don’t think Hall wants the smoke.

Gonna be hard to get things going in the paint today. MSU has four guys with a foot in the paint whenever Race or Trayce get a touch.

Maybe he does. Galloway isn’t an ugly kid. He’s fine in a supporting role, and he plays with energy which isn’t a given for the rest of the team, but the idea that our hodgepodge of role players will improve enough to make us better without Trayce is completely ridiculous to me. He’s an excellent college player. We have no one at present coming in to replace the 18/9 on excellent efficiency + great defense he gives us. If we’re lucky we won’t have to find out.

You think that Galloway is attractive so you think he’s going to be a superstar, we know. Right now he’s averaging 7 ppg and shooting 29% from 3. He’s a role player. Geronimo averages 4 points and 4 rebounds per game. If Trayce “is what he is at this point,” what he is, is a dang good college basketball player. You’re doing everything you can to downplay his importance to the team while gassing up a bunch of middling role players.

I’m not nearly as upset at Trayce for not developing a jumper as I am our guards and wings for not developing jumpers. Your center being able to shoot is a plus but it’s not a necessity in college basketball. We’re 12th in the conference in 3 point percentage. We’re shooting 32.2% from 3 in conference play. That’s worse than last year. You don’t get points for having a pretty form. Galloway’s ‘improved form’ has him shooting 29% from 3. That’s fine if you ‘value them more than mediocre,’ but that’s what they’ve been. Galloway, Geronimo, and Bates put together don’t equal Trayce’s production. Bates is averaging 2.7 ppg on 24% from the field during conference play. On the whole season he’s averaging 4 ppg on 35% from the field. He was a top 30 recruit. “Mediocre” is putting it nicely with him. Instead of hoping that a bunch of mediocre role players take big leaps, why not hope that our star comes back? Talent is in short supply on this team. It’s much easier to figure out the rest of your problems when you have a player of Trayce’s caliber than not. Star power is what wins.

Fans say this every year. “XYZ will take a huge leap during the off-season and we’ll be way better.” On one hand you’re talking about how TJD hasn’t improved and then on the other hand you say “we have a staff now that will help develop players.” You’re counting on a bunch of mediocre players making big improvements. You’re discounting our all-Big 10 center averaging 18/9 with 3 blocks a game as a guy who just “runs and dunks.” It’s preposterous.

There are only a few teams on our schedule that he struggles with. When we play those teams it’s on the staff to adjust the game plan. Of course a guy Trayce’z size is going to struggle against a 7’0, 285 pound behemoth like Kofi Cockburn or a 7’1 guy like Dickerson on Michigan. He’s giving up 4-5 inches (depending on how tall you think Trayce is) and 20+ pounds. We recruited Michael Durr for matchups like those. Trayce is still a guy that can dominate against most teams. We beat Ohio State in large part because of the 27/12 and 5 blocks he gave us. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need him to dominate every single team we play for us to win. Other guys would step up. On occasion that does happen. Phinisee did that against Purdue and we won. But when that doesn’t happen, well, we get games like Illinois. I just can’t get on board at all with the ideal that we’ll be better without him or that our losses are his fault. He’s the reason we’re still a tournament hopeful.

We have no big men coming in as freshmen who could replace him. Kaleb Banks is a 6’8 tweener, and the other two recruits are guards. That means we’ll be relying on the portal for a big and we’ve seen this season how the portal can go. We need all the talent we can get, and Trayce is the most talented guy we have. He’s asked to do everything for us because our roster has so many holes. In an ideal world he’d be able to do less and would be able to play his more natural position, but that’s not this team. So, he’s left banging with 7 footers, leading our team on offense, and anchoring the defense. It’s not his fault that we have poor guard play and poor shooting. Sure, we beat Purdue when he barely played, but that was because Phinisee played out of his mind and had the game of his life. If we got the guard play we’ve had for most of this season we would’ve been blown out. Trayce is not a perfect player, but if he leaves he will leave an enormous hole on both sides of the ball. As it stands right now, we have no one who will be able to fill that hole.

Thinking we’ll be better without TJD is one of the most ridiculous takes I’ve ever seen on here. He’s our best player and it really isn’t close. Without him we’d be dwelling at the bottom of the conference with Nebraska and Minnesota. But hey, maybe we’ll be better next year trotting out Michael Durr as our starting center.

He posted on Instagram a few months that’s he going to be having a kid in March. The post is no longer on his page, for whatever reason.

The teams you named are the teams that win. I want IU to be a team that wins. The top 10 is a who’s who of skirting the rules. Auburn, Arizona, UK, Houston, Duke, Kansas, Baylor. Of the top 10 right now, you’ve got Gonzaga, Purdue, and Texas Tech as the arguably ‘clean’ programs, and Gonzaga gave their coach a slap on the wrist for a DUI. I want the team I root for to be a winner. I’m tired of hanging our hats on being a program that “does things the right way” while we miss the tournament year after year. Fans are left to talk about our program being virtuous because it’s all we have. And not even that is really true when you look at some of our recruiting under Archie and Crean.

Maybe. We’ll certainly need him to. This season he’s looked more like a guy ranked outside the top 100 than a guy ranked in the top 30, and he’s been making poor decisions off the court as well.