Hoosierfan2017

It’d be incredibly silly for Woody to stop playing Lander because of a couple bad decisions at the end of a game he was thrown into ice cold after sitting on the bench for the first 39:55. His play at the end of regulation helped get us into overtime, and he hit a 3 in the second overtime to cut the lead to 1 with 25 seconds left. Were those plays “made by a gamer”? Woody has shown he has no problem playing guys who makes mistakes. Xavier made a couple dozen of them tonight but kept playing. Rob shots 20% from 3 and kills our offense but he keeps playing.

It really doesn’t make sense to give up on a talent 19 year old point guard the way Woody seemingly has, especially when the alternative backup pg is a total dud. We’ve seen who Rob is for 90+ games at IU. He’s not the answer. The fact that going to Lander “wasn’t even a thought process” is incredibly bizarre on a night where neither senior point guard was getting it done. It seems like he wants Lander to leave.

Is it not the coach’s job to change his players’ mentality if that’s the case? His team is much more talented than the team Archie had in his first season. Trayce is one of the best players in college basketball. There isn’t an excuse to blowing a 20 point lead and only scoring 17 points in the second half.

He’s been low key disrespectful to Lander in his media comments. Before the season he referred to him as ‘Little Khristian.’ Strange.

I honestly wouldn’t blame Lander if he did. I have no idea why Woody completely took him out of the rotation. Seems like some players are allowed to make mistake after mistake but others can’t even breathe the wrong way.

This is the exact same thing people said when Archie was hired, though. ‘These are Crean’s guys, wait till Archie gets his players.’

I want to like Woody but I’m just not sold on him. Sure, he had decades of NBA coaching experience, but most of it was as an assistant. He was a mediocre head coach. Expecting him to walk into college and dominate was always a highly optimistic hope. 17 points in the second half. I don’t understand his rotations. This loss is on him.

Not really sure how you want people to react. We just hired a guy who was fired after going 2-23 at UMass and had mediocre stints at Maryland and Florida State before then. It’s not exactly the splashy hire people hoped for after a 2-10 season full of disgusting offense.

Never heard of the guy before today. Maybe he had bad talent at his previous schools. That doesn’t really reassure me though because he’s going to be at a talent disadvantage at IU too against most of our opponents. However good he is, he needs to be looking for a QB in the portal. I’m not confident in anyone left on our roster there.

I wonder how much they’re paying him because this move screams ‘no money for a big time OC.’ We can’t possibly have given him a million per with his resume.

“As one of the few remaining FBS independents, UMass ranks among the most difficult jobs in major college football. Still, the program fell to new lows under Bell's watch, with the offense and defense both ranking in the bottom 10 nationally this season.“ Welp.

I don’t know what happens at practice. I just know what happens during the games. Forget that Khristian Lander even exists for a moment. Phinisee just flat out hasn’t been getting the job done. He’s been bad. If he’s playing 24 mpg this year then we’re in trouble, just like we were last year. Xavier Johnson has to be able to keep himself on the floor because the drop off from him to the next guy is massive.

I’m so tired of Notre Dame getting into the playoff. They get destroyed basically every time they play a great team. “This year is different!”their fans say every year, but it never is. Their best win this year is who, 8-4 Wisconsin? They dont have to play a conference championship game. All the other teams in the hunt have to go out and play a 13th game while they get to sit at home and chill. Doesn’t sit right with me.

Villanova gets its fair share of 5 star players. Their championship team in 2018 had multiple 5 stars on it. Five of the players on that team have been drafted. They also have a top 5 coach in the country. We all want Woodson to succeed, but I’m not going to blindly trust every single decision that he makes as the coach. He’s a coach, not a god. He’s not infallible. It’s okay to not agree with 100% of what a coach does.i disagree with about 90% of the lineups Frank Vogel runs. This one isn’t a decision I agree with.

I’ll try to make this my last post here. I just don’t see the upside of giving Phinisee every backup pg minute and not playing Lander at all. It isn’t a decision that makes sense to me. They’re pretty comparable as players right now. Phinisee is who he is as a player. He’s been the same guy since his freshman year. Lander has serious offensive potential. Playing Lander some now in Phinisee’s place doesn't really hurt us in the present, and it will benefit us in the future. But, it is what it is. Nothing we can do as fans but watch.

Second one I suppose. I forgot that fans were allowed at the Florida State game last year, though I forget how many were allowed in. Playing on the road in front of a few dozen family members just isn’t the same thing. I think that he’s going to be a great player as an upperclassman, but more importantly, we need our highly ranked recruits to work out. If we recruit a 5 star point guard and he’s a dud it sets us back. Duke has 3 kids in the top 7 coming in next year. If one of them doesn’t work out it doesn’t really matter, they’ll just replace them. We can’t reload like that. JHS should be great, but he’s the only guy in the top 75 we have coming in. We need Lander to play like a 5 star next season with Bates and JHS, but I don’t think he’ll be here if he racks up the DNPs.

One of the turnovers Lander was credited with came from an errant pass from Race. Yeah, Lander makes mistakes. Syracuse was the first real road game of his career and he had to come in cold 39+ minutes into the game because Phinisee fouled out in 14 minutes. Lander also helped get us to overtime in the first place. If he misses the first free throw we never even get to overtime. He also hit a 3 to turn a 4 point game into a 1 point game with 25 seconds left in double overtime. This is what I’m talking about. Phinisee makes a lot of mistakes too. He makes mistakes that a senior who has played as much as he has shouldn’t make. He’s shooting 28% from the field this season. But he gets a pass from people that Lander doesn’t. ‘Next man up’ is the kind of mentality you can have when you’re a Kentucky or a Duke. IU doesn’t recruit well enough to think that way.

That’s literally exactly what happened in the St. John’s game and he wasn’t a liability at all. The same game where Phinisee was god awful. Hell, he came into the Syracuse game when we were down 3 points, and we lost by 2. He was fine in that game too. You’re pretending that there’s this huge drop off between Phinisee and Lander. There isn’t. There’s arguably not even a drop off.

Do those attributes make Phinisee 24 mpg better than Lander? Because that’s how many he played today. Frankly, if Rob was then this wouldn’t even be a question. Xavier is clearly better than both and there’s no question that he should be the #1 point guard. Lander and Phinisee both have their weaknesses. Lander is weak on defense, Phinisee is weak on offense. Lander has improved on his weakness from last year, which suggests he may get even better on that end. Phinisee hasn’t improved his offense. It’s worse than it was in previous years, and as a senior with 90+ games under his belt there’s little reason to expect it to improve. Even if some people think Phinisee > Lander, I can’t see anyone really thinking Lander not playing at all will be good for the program. But that’s how it looks like it’s going to be barring injuries or guys fouling out.

Coaches aren’t immune from making bad lineup decisions. Phinisee today shot 2-7 from the field, committed multiple turnovers, and got beat by the guy he was guarding several times. If Lander had that game, it’d be exhibit A for why he isn’t playing. Phinisee has it and it gets excused. I’m not there at practice, but I’ve watched every game. Rob hasn’t done anything to show that he should get all the minutes and Lander should get 0 of them. But that’s how it’s been. That’s how it was against EMU, that’s how it was against Syracuse for the first 39:55 of the game, and that’s how it was today. If the staff thinks Lander is an important piece in the future then you have to find him minutes. He’s going to transfer if he racks up the DNPs. Woody doesn’t get rookies on multi-year contracts like you do in the NBA.

He probably won’t, and IU will be worse off in the long run because of it. 5 star recruits usually don’t stick around long when they don’t play. We’re not in a position where we can afford to lose talented players. There’s no reason for him to get literally zero minutes. If Phinisee hadn’t fouled out against Syracuse this would’ve been his second straight DNP. He’s played well enough to deserve minutes and he’s never going to improve on his weaknesses (defense) if you just never play him.

I know I harp about Phinisee a lot but good god he’s so bad on offense.

He does have two years of eligibility left but before the season he said some stuff along the lines of ‘my final go around.’ Would just be surprised if he’s still in college next year.

Xavier probably won’t even be here next year but I like JHS a lot.

He’s definitely going to transfer after the season, which sucks, but oh well I guess. Some guys can make as many mistakes as they want but others have to be perfect. Nothing we can do as fans.