Hoosierfan2017

Well, you see, he got his confidence back in the Minnesota game but then Evil Archie sent him a bunch of mean texts after the game. What’s crazy is that he’s shooting 23% from 3 in conference play despite going 4-9 against Minnesota. In the other 6 conference games he’s 2-17. His game has aged like Benjamin Button. He was at his best the first month of his freshman year and he’s at his worst as a senior. It’s truly bizarre. You might see that from a guy who has several devastating injuries, but Rob hasn’t suffered any of those. He’s had a few minor injuries, but he’s played in 90% of IU’s games during his career.

Archie yelled at Rob every game to play faster but Rob continued to walk the ball up the court. Blaming the previous coach for all the team’s problems is the easy thing to do because it offers hope that things will be different under a new coach. Some of our problems weren’t Archie but rather the players themselves. A player regaining his confidence is what you say when a shooter is in a slump. Phinisee has never been a shooter at IU. Through 100 college games, he’s shooting 35.2% from the field, 29% from 3, and 65.7% from the free throw line. This year he’s shooting career lows from the field, from 2, and from the free throw line. His 27% from 3 is the second lowest of his career. His assist to turnover ratio is the lowest of his career. There’s nothing to suggest that he’s suffering from any kind of ‘confidence’ issue caused by the previous coaching staff. Archie is gone and has been gone since March 2021, but Rob is having the worst season of his career.

So strange. But, I guess what else would you tell a player

Even Woody is buying into the “confidence” narrative. You’d think Archie put Phinisee through 3 years of medieval torture. Archie hasn’t been the coach for 9 months yet Phinisee is shooting worse than he ever has. At some point folks have to admit that he just isn’t very good.

It’s fairly common but agree that it sucks

It’s a good thing that Nebraska is horrendous because we’re doing everything we can to lose.

I appreciate your confidence here but you’re still wrong. Yet you’re tripling down lol. This isn’t something where two people can have differing opinions. Why don’t you just admit that you made a mathematical error so we can move on instead of whatever this is? Nebraska: 8-22 Wisconsin: 5-13 Penn State: 4-17 Ohio State: 2-15 Minnesota: 9-24 Iowa: 7-22 Total: 35-113 = 30.97%, rounded up to 31%. It’s on the official Big 10 website. It’s on sports reference. It’s on ESPN. Hell, those are the numbers on the IU athletics website. Why are you digging in here? It’s especially bizarre because in your very first post on this topic you cited sports reference for your stats. So, you saw the stats on the website and used them for your argument that the offense is “clearly better.” Yet now you’re claiming the website is wrong…

Then your might want to add them again because your calculations are wrong. If you dont believe that source, here it is from a different one. Like you said yesterday, stats don’t lie. https://bigten.org/documents/2021/12/9/2122_MBB_Conf_Stats.pdf I suppose when you’re looking at incorrect numbers our offense doesn’t look so bad, but they’re shooting 31% from 3 in the conference. So, if we use the first six games from the past two seasons like you wanted to, we’re shooting worse from the field, worse from 3, and scoring 6 fewer points per game this year. The improvement this season isn’t because of the offense. The offense isn’t any different from last year. We struggle to score, we struggle to shoot, and we rely heavily on Trayce. The difference between this team and last year’s team is the defense. This whole conversation started because you posted about how our offensive stats “at this point are clearly better.” Scoring a bunch of points against Northern Illinois or Marshall doesn’t mean the offense is better. We scored 89 points against Tennessee Tech and 87 points against North Alabama last year. Were we an offensive juggernaut? Of course not. We just had more games against teams like that this year than we did last year.

I really have no idea where you’re getting that they’re shooting 36% from 3 during conference play this year. They aren’t. They’re shooting 31% from 3 during conference play this year. As you can see above, I never said that they’re worse than last year. I said the opposite. We can talk about how we “should’ve won this game” or how we were “right in that game,” but we’re 3-3 in the conference right now. Same place we were last year. Talking about how the losses this year aren’t “as bad” as last year because we lost by 5 points instead of 7 points isn’t what serious programs do. Blowing a 20 point lead against Wisconsin and scoring 17 points in the entire second half was as bad as anything I saw last season. They have 14 more conference games to prove that they’re different from the IU teams of the past 5 years.

A very reasonable and not at all emotional response. You tried passing off statistics that were heavily influenced by our horrible non conference schedule as proof of how much the offense has improved and then got mad when people pointed out that it was a disingenuous comparison. Our non conference schedule was a joke. Scoring 90 points against a Marshall team that’s 7-10 or 85 points against a 5-8 Northern Illinois team is absolutely meaningless. It’d be like IUFB going crazy about scoring 56 points against Idaho. Here’s some apples to apples. This year’s conference numbers compared to last year’s conference numbers. Virtually identical. If you want to beat your chest over that then go for it. It’s not a “la la land of negativity.” It’s reality. Points: 66.5 / 69.4 FG%: 42.9% / 42.6% 2PT%: 48.7% / 47.4% 3PT%: 31% / 32.9% FT%: 68.8% / 67.6% Assists: 14.2 / 13.3 TOV: 11.3 / 11.6

And honestly our schedule is why I don’t the team at this point in the season. We’ve just barely played anyone thus far. 7 of our 16 games have been against cupcakes. We’re 5-4 against non cupcakes. Last year, 25 of our 27 games were against Big 10, ACC, Big 12, PAC-12, or Big East teams. This team is probably better than last year’s team because of the defensive improvements, but how much better? Idk.

If you take our conference offensive stats this year compared to last year, it’s marginal improvement at best. First is this year, second is last year. Of course, we’re comparing a full conference schedule to only 6 games, but it’s a better comparison than the previous comparison. At least this one is limited to our stats against Big 10 opponents. It kind of lines up with the eye test - our offense doesn’t look that different from last year. FWIW, we were 3-3 through the first 6 conference games last year too. Points: 66.5 / 69.4 FG%: 42.9% / 42.6% 2PT%: 48.7% / 47.4% 3PT%: 31% / 32.9% FT%: 68.8% / 67.6% Assists: 14.2 / 13.3 TOV: 11.3 / 11.6

Is this comparing IU last year at this point in the season to IU this year to date? Or last year as a whole compared to where we’re at now this season? Because if it’s the latter, that’s a pretty disingenuous comparison. Our non conference this year was a joke and we’ve only played 6 games in the Big Ten. Last year we played 7 non conference games. 20 of 27 games were conference games. We played 2 cupcakes all year. The rest of the non conference was Texas, Stanford, Providence, Florida State, and Butler. You absolutely cannot say “we’re better in basically every offensive category” when we’ve just begun playing legitimate basketball teams this year.

He’s shooting 40% from 3 in those three games, and he’s taken a whopping 5 shots.

Sad to see how far we’ve fallen. As many national titles as the rest of the Big 10 combined but we haven’t sniffed the tournament for almost six years and have only sniffed a few over the past decade.

I pretty much only watch the Lakers, but Frank Vogel doesn’t usually do this. AD is hurt right now but when he’s healthy, Vogel will keep at least one of LeBron and Anthony Davis on the floor at basically all times. Ideally, Woody would keep one of Thompson/TJD on the court. If they’re in foul trouble that’s another story, but last night we went to the 5 bench lineup out of choice.

Oof, the ORtg for our bench guys last night is just brutal (besides Trey). Why Woody still goes to the all bench lineups is beyond me. No reason we can’t keep 2 starters on the court at all times.

Let’s see if that last guy wants to hit the portal this offseason

I definitely don’t think he’d be an upgrade over Xavier. I’m higher on Xavier than most, it seems. He can be erratic and inconsistent but I think he has a lot of talent. Im not giving up on him because I think we need him if we want to make the tournament and make any noise. I do think Lander would have done a better job handling the pressure last night than Rob did. I thought Lander did well handling pressure against St. John’s. Rob looked like he had never seen a press before. Whether that would’ve resulted in a net improvement over what Rob gave us, idk.

I mean, look. I beat the drum for Lander a ton earlier this season but I stopped because (1) I know it annoyed the crap out of everyone and (2) it’s obvious that he’s not in the staff’s plans for this year. I think it’s a big mistake, but nothing I can do. (One) of my issues with Phinisee is that we don’t have the personnel to play a guard with his limited offensive skill set. Ideally you want him playing next to shooters and a primary ball handler. He’s a good defender so you want to find him minutes, especially in certain matchups. But you don’t want him as your only playmaker out there because he’s not much of a playmaker. He plays best next to Xavier, but that’s not great because then he can’t give Xavier a breather. We don’t have a bunch of shooters to play next to him. Kopp and Stewart are our only guys shooting 36% from 3 or higher, and they’re cycling in and out when Rob plays.

What?? Rob shoots 3% worse from three, 14% worse from two, and 23% worse from the free throw line than Xavier. We’ve seen what starting Phinisee does for three years now, and he’s worse on offense than ever before.

Honestly I’ve given up on Lander getting any playing time this season. Through six conference games he’s played as many minutes as I have. If he can’t get in the game when Phinisee’s playing as horrible as he did tonight, I doubt he ever will.

I don’t even know how the ‘confidence’ narrative with Phinisee started. I’ve heard it so much across the internet that it’s a meme at this point. He hit a few wideee open shots against Minnesota and people acted like some three year hex cast upon him by the evil Archie Miller was finally lifted. It’s not a lack of “confidence.” He just isn’t very good. Lack of confidence explains a cold stretch over a month or two. Not 3+ seasons.

Maybe not. But if the common narrative is to be believed, it was Brad Stevens #1, Mike Woodson #2. Who knows if that’s actually true. Woody seems like a guy who players like, a good camaraderie guy. But he was mediocre as a head coach in the NBA, he was fired by two different teams in a four year span, and he didn’t get another head coaching job for almost a decade before we hired him. Just wasn’t a “we’re putting college basketball on notice” type hire. He’s not looking like the kind of coach who can win with mediocre talent, and he isn’t recruiting well enough to win with mediocre coaching. I shutter when i think about the TJD-sized hole we’ll have next year. This team only looks marginally different from what we saw the previous four years, and on a night like tonight it didn’t look different at all.

Instead of making a serious hire this past offseason, the administration let nostalgia guide the process. We hired a guy no other Big 10 school would’ve hired because he went to IU in the late 70s. We’re an undisciplined, sloppy, inconsistent team. The coaching staff consistently makes mistakes. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be a tournament lock with the roster that we have.