pumpfake

By my way of thinking (which is likely totally different from any 18 year old), one very important factor for RL at IU would have to be Robert P.. Nationally he (RP) doesn't get any attention, but it's become very obvious that this kid is going to be a fantastic PG - just the thing an elite scoring SG like Romeo needs. It appears that Garland is the type of player that is going to look to get his points, presumably Shittu the same. Maybe I'm wrong and Phinesee will look to shoot more than facilitate, but I want to believe that's not the case.

Heck, RP may be our best FT shooter the minute he puts on the C&C next year. Thanks for the updates '66.

I did have to say that I noticed that in the game against MSU it was interesting to see the difference between our players and theirs regarding "amount of ink". I know we have and have had players with huge tattoos, but there was a distinct contrast between the two teams Friday night. BTW, one of the MSU players had a full back tattoo that was visible around the shoulders - from what you could see, it looked like some 2 year old's attempt at coloring a coloring book, LOL.

Purdue and Butler both prove that you can build a strong team with 4-year players, a solid system, players that follow it, and a complete team. The truth is we didn't have any of those things with any kind of consistency for the past many years. The key is to keep replenishing players and maintaining consistent recruiting. This is one reason why I'm not hell bent on getting 5-stars. Unless you bring in multiple 5-stars on a yearly basis you can be in perpetual rebuild mode without recruiting solid players to play with them. I think Archie will do this, Tom Crean never did this. As to Purdue, they sure seem to be clicking on all cylinders but they may be peaking too soon.

I've heard some suggest that Archie might need to modify his system to suit the current roster. At first I thought that made sense, but then I realized that the underclassmen need to learn Archie's style of play. Keeping them on the bench in favor of upper classmen or delaying their experience playing how he wants them to would do little good. Duty now for the Future!

I'm not mad at the players, nor am I mad at the coaches, but when I see the talent and size disparity against really good teams like MSU I sure am glad Tom Crean is long gone. I'm not pleased with our FT shooting. I will never accept mediocre FT shooting.

IMO, absolutely not.

Yea, with us being a team that struggles to score against a team like MSU that plays outstanding defense, everything has to go right. They are just bigger and better than us at every position. I do look forward to a time when we can play 5 on 5 when we have the ball. It seems we always play with one player on the floor who presents zero threat to score.

I often felt the same way. He was our most reliable shooter from beyond the arc and rebounded very well as you stated. He seemed to be the whipping boy a number of times while RJ was playing/shooting poorly in the same games. With JBJ gone, Johnson is the same player he always was but now gets a lot more criticism for it. Like many, I'd really like to see how Blackmon would have fit into Archie's system in the 3 years he was here. (This isn't meant to be critical of Robert Johnson, but more of a defense of JBJ)

Thanks for the link. My reaction is I'll believe it when I see it. No confidence in the NCAA or Emmert at all (besides, he looks like that goofy Garrison Keillor). I have 3 letters that express my profound doubt, Mr. Emmert: U-N-C

This is something that I really am not concerned about at all. Someone mentioned Roy W. leaving Kansas for UNC, neglecting to include that he played his college ball at UNC and that had to be a significant factor. One good thing for us is that according to rumors Archie wasn't interested in the opening at NC State, so that threat doesn't appear to exist. I will say that when we hired Archie I did look around at a lot of message boards. The UK lot were generally amused that we thought we were going to get Donovan or Stevens and had to "settle" for Archie (ignoring that Donovan turned them down before the NBA came calling). It got me thinking: there will be a number of big openings in the not too distant future. Williams, Krysthsjkdi, Izzo, (and Cal could bolt at the slightest evidence of impropriety.) Where are all the "grand slam" coaches going to come from? The two biggest names would still be Stevens and Donovan, but there's no reason to believe they will leave the NBA. No, I think we may have gotten very fortunate in possibly getting one of the top 3 -available- coaches when we did. You can bet that at least one of the above mentioned top-5 schools will end up with a coach that doesn't pan out (it happens almost every time a legendary coach retires).

Anytime we can be considered by 5* / one and done players it's encouraging and I hope we can land them. That said, I tend to believe that those will not be the players that ultimately define the Archie Miller tenure (and in a way I hope that's true).

Maybe off topic, but possibly of interest to other members. Mods feel free to move it to another section as seen fit. I really like listening to the IU radio broadcasts and really dislike ESPN with Dakich or BTN with Bardo. With the inevitable delay between radio and TV broadcasts I had to go on a journey to find a way to get the broadcast audio and telecast video in sync. Believe me, it is not easy. A couple of years ago I bought a radio that had a built-in, variable delay for this purpose. This works occasionally, but there are times when the delay is beyond what the radio is capable of (and the radio itself is not very good). I found two ways to make it work: 1) There's a free program for PC that allows you to set up your input source and output source and set a delay period. This method allows for an almost infinite amount of delay. 2) An android app that does effectively the same thing with the plus of allowing adjustment of the delay on the fly, but with a constraint that you have to select from a provided list of radio stations (many of which don't work). This app hasn't been updated for a while and works better with older versions of android (Kit Kat seems to be perfect, a little weird with Oreo). I have been using the second method on a Samsung GS3 and then sending the audio to my Home Theater receiver via bluetooth. Luckily one of the working radio channels is one in Bloomington which carries the IU games. There is one really weird "fly in the ointment" to either method and that is some strange "shenanigans" the streaming channels use (I've seen it on BTN via Fox Sports app, and ESPN app) whereby the video delay increases by a few seconds during certain timeouts (presumably to stick in a short ad). I get my TV via PS Vue and use the streaming apps on Roku, so this widening delay may not apply to the cable TV or satellite broadcasts. The delay is consistent with the CBS broadcasts. If anyone needs the names of apps I will add it, but didn't want this post to look like a promotion for them. BTW, for others that get their TV via streaming I'm curious if you've seen the picture quality for BTN games on the Fox Sports Go app being much better than on the BTN app?

You may well be correct, no player has shown shooting consistency half way through this season (perhaps save Morgan). I'd still love to see us have one of those unconscious shooting nights when we play purdue.

A bit OT, but I've been really rooting for Zach M. to start hitting some shots. He had one (3-pt ?) yesterday that looked good but rimmed out. Out of curiosity I did a quick search to see what kind of shooter he was in H.S.. It appears he was at least a decent shooter his senior year (48% FG, 50% 3pt, 71% FT). Archie has said that he's surprised at the shooting accuracy - that the players impressed him in practice as being better than what they've shown. Maybe it's just coach speak, but at some point I have to think we'll at least have a game where we DO shoot well. If we can show some improvement in accuracy along with the improving defense, we will exceed pre-season predictions considerably.

Dang! And they did it without flash cards - truly amazing. Seriously, I always loved sitting in the bleachers behind the basket at the IU end. Glad to get a personal account of how the coaching staff works during games. On a side note, many years ago I had a couple of extra tickets in that area so I gave them to a friend who brought his wife - she spent most of the game watching RMK and it happened to be the game when he stomped on a player's foot (Patrick Knight ?).

We miss good shots. We miss bad shots. We miss easy shots. We are a bad shooting team and that's not due to coaching.

Gotta give an attaboy to Freddie for his work on the defensive glass - a couple of nice tip-outs to team mates.

Well, we're leading and should have McRoberts and Morgan fresh for the second half....

I do have to laugh a bit about this whole investigation. Remember when this story broke last summer and we thought it was going to sent massive shockwaves throughout the CBB landscape? That it would weed out all of the crooked programs and finally clean up the system since the NCAA is incapable of doing so? Well, it looks like the only "victims" will be those who were involved in cheating the Treasury out of money - those who simply cheat on recruiting rules will go unscathed. We should have known.

There may be a big takeaway from this story: Archie spotted his talent and successfully recruited him while at Dayton.

In our last 3 coaching changes I don't recall one instance when our new coach "poached" a player or recruit from his previous program. It's an honorable thing to do, I suppose, but other coaches do it. I'll chalk this up to the old saying "no good deed goes unpunished."

As devil's advocate, Perea didn't know his guardian's wife bought bumper stickers years before he was born and HE still got punished for it.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to look over the season statistics. Boy, we really are a poor shooting team (especially 3-pt). Our two best 3-pt percentage shooters are Justin Smith and McRoberts (albeit with only 4 and 13 attempts). Among the players with significant attempts Newkirk leads at .345. It's interesting that Hartman and McRoberts have pretty comparable stat lines for the season. (FYI, source stats at espn )

I strongly doubt there's 103 players in the '18 class better than Robert P.. Based on rankings, he may be the biggest steal of the class.