MartintheMopMan

1. Yes. 2. Unlikely.

How about his bitter story about how Coach Knight was going to give him the team? Classic Dakich right there.

Sometimes it's better not to be consistent.

What's funniest about that? That's what Notre Dame means too. (Well it got its name from the phrase in French)

Jackson is their best offensive player. He's going to have good numbers anyway. One of the Matt's would be my guess. For no particular reason.

Not if he's watching Notre Dame film.

You aren't wrong, but Notre Dame is different enough to make me wonder. We have had tons of trouble against slow defensive teams, ones who extend our shot clock use. The offense we run is all about getting the first look because no one is going to be in position for the second. So, when Wisconsin makes us play at their speed on offense we struggle. Notre Dame has a worse defense than we do. They limit possessions by waiting for the absolute best shot which is frequently when the shot clock is almost running out. They do nothing to affect an opponent's speed, so it shouldn't get to us. I think our defense will struggle with their offense but theirs will with ours too. And our style of offense is such a mismatch it may even speed us up. They guard the perimeter so poorly that open threes will be setup in the first few seconds of the clock. That's why they're vulnerable to our rhythm more than other slow teams. They'll be running up and down the court more than they are used to. We need to play physical this game too because they won't. They have a pathological fear of fouling and are so shallow that they can't sub in just because there was a lot of contact on a drive and they wanted to breathe for a few. This matchup just has so many ways to exploit them, honestly even to the point where we could embarrass them. But, since I've never seen a comprehensive game plan to utilize these kinds of things, I know I'll just be yelling advice through the tv all game.

Even last year took an amazing fall in the schedule. We lost to Wichita State so Wichita State got to play Kansas. Wichita State hates Kansas and they have a deep but strange rivalry. So, they played the most brutal game of basketball ever. Two Kansas players fouled out and Frank Mason's hand's became allergic to the basketball. I mean, Troy Williams would have been like "man, you need to be more careful with the ball".   So, Notre Dame got to face Wichita State in the Sweet Sixteen instead of Kansas and advanced. That's why the tourney is so exciting! But, it was a wicked lucky draw.   And seriously, go back and watch the Kansas-Wichita State game. It will show you what the lovechild of basketball and hockey would be like. Awesome.

Yeah, I doubt most of their alumni even know they have a basketball team. They wouldn't accept Brian Kelly jumping around between the Quick Lane, Zaxby's, and Foster Farms bowl.   Like I said, it's just one of my pet peeves. 

I tried for this one, but Notre Dame is boring. They were founded by boring people for boring reasons and boringly became a boring university.   I've spent more time than anyone should on wikipedia reading about the founding of various towns, cities, and schools, and Notre Dame's might be the most boring.   Boring - 86 Inconsistently interesting Indiana - 94

That can't be a nickname **** would be happy with.   Oh boy, if you forget that hyphen you get bleeped.

Argh! I read it again and it still makes me so mad. People who are arrogant about something they aren't good at are my biggest pet peeve. Mike Brey is not a good basketball coach. He's an above average basketball coach at best. His program is the definition of settling. He's the worst kind of coach because he wins just enough that you can't fire him unless you are totally confident about who is coming next. He gets mild success and thinks he is a great coach. I'd rather suffer through crappy seasons and ups and downs that result in changing coaches and end up with a truly spectacular coach who can bring back the banners than have the consistent lukewarm "success" of Mike Brey.   Anyone who can be happy with the kind of consistency Mike Brey shows is a settler. I cannot abide by settlers. He can fox right on back to Catan.

I can't decide if you should go back and watch a few of the old games so that you truly understand how sad we all are or if you should consider yourself lucky and save the heartbreak. Depends on the kind of person you are I guess.   Though, you should definitely watch the Purdue and Maryland football games. They're amazing. Maybe even the Michigan game if you do it in the middle or turn it off a minute or two early.

Depends what he hears from the Board. He doesn't get ranked in unofficial drafts, but I've read he could be late second round early third. I'd say stay if you might not go earlier than third. The career difference between a third rounder and a second or first is massive. Offensive linemen don't peak until 33ish so he doesn't have to weigh tread like Howard does. If he can get into the second or first rounds, he'll play forever.

It's crazy really. I mean, yeah, you love tickling balls, but Tom Crean is married. To Joani. Not to the line-up.

Guy coaches a team with a worse defense than Indiana and wants to brag about his consistency. I mean, he's not wrong. He consistently builds teams without a defense. It sounds so familiar... Except in the last 14 years he has only had 1 team with a top-50 defense. At least Tom Crean has 5 seasons of top-50.    I mean, I guess during his Final Four... oh, nope. Never been. Well, when they won the ACC regular season title? Oh. Shoot.   So, congrats on building a team that can make it to the tourney or NIT every year but has only ever seen the second weekend twice. Consistency!   If he coached at Indiana we would have a Fire Mike Brey thread and it would have been there since 2005.

Sucks. That's a terrible way to end your college career. At least he has played in two previous bowl games (and had one during his transfer year).    Speaking of that... anyone heard any news about Howard?

And now my reply from the other thread, with the snarkiness appropriate for this thread.   Yeah, Bo had 1 AA and 0 banners and Coach K had 30 and 2 banners (or 3 depending on how they counted the AAs). So, maybe rankings matter sometimes.

What a bizarre comparison to make. What is it supposed to mean? I suppose it shows Bo did a lot with less (and did he ever) but like, Duke also won 2 national championships in those 14 years and won one the year previous (whose burger boys may have been counted). So, in the end it says "Well, even if you have a coach who can create great players out of lower-ranked recruits, you gotta have them burger boys if you want to hang a banner".

Drat. I was hoping the welcome was to BTB because they'd made usernames and were ready to start posting in the Fire Tom Crean thread.   I guess I'll accept welcoming them to the team and most importantly to pre-bowl practices! This is it boys! You've got it!

Do you think turnovers will be less of a problem with Notre Dame's own complete inability to force turnovers?   How do you feel about Notre Dame's truly terrible 3-point defense? They tend to leave perimeter shooters open and we're one of the best perimeter shooting teams in the country.   Notre Dame's leading player is, by far, their forward Auguste. We have had trouble with dominant bigs in the past, how do you think TB will respond to this challenge? What changes would you like to see the team make going into the game to prepare for a dominant forward?   Notre Dame is slow. Offensively, they rely on careful ball-handling to avoid wasted possessions and good shot selection. Defensively, they are slow on transition but play loose on the perimeter (they give very few fouls) and focus on protecting the paint, though they don't do this particularly well either. We play fast everywhere and defensively play man too tightly. We have the ability to send anyone up the floor as the ball handler (which admittedly, causes a fair number of Troy TOs) which is something their defense appears almost entirely incapable of handling. How do you feel this pace difference will change the game?   Notre Dame is also a shallow team. Part of their pacing is for maintaining stamina. Can Indiana's pace upset this? How should we exploit this? How do you predict we will (or won't) exploit this?   With that, Notre Dame does not have role players in the same sense as we do. There is no one on Notre Dame who can come off the bench and start drilling threes or doing Colin Hartman things. Do you foresee causing any match-up problems with this?   You cited lack of leadership, which is especially concerning on a neutral court. Notre Dame also has issues on a neutral court, only beating Iowa due to the crazy foul calling and Iowa being ridiculously shallow at the time. They have leadership, but it is somewhat haphazard and ineffective. Do you think this helps us? What aspects of leadership do you think we'll have to display to win?   Just to help discussion along. It's all well and good to post simple declaratory statements, but as this is a discussion board I thought it might be helpful to have some discussion instead. In my work we'd say you aren't particularizing the general information to the current case. We have issues with defense, turnovers, and leadership. There's no denying that. But, how will those issues affect this particular match-up?

Great contribution.   Can you discuss why you think we'll lose?

Bummer. He had so much promise too. I don't want any kids like that on my team though. They play dirty.

And to expand a little, the problem with Crean citing deflections is not that they aren't important. It's that he is using them to say "hey, we're playing good defense" instead of using good defense to say "hey, we have good stats".   Like if you have Vonleh scooping up every loose ball with his long arms so you have decent rebounding numbers and use them to say we are boxing out well.   The causation is just in the wrong direction and there actually is no correlation.

The McNeese State game helped there too. I really wish I had the numbers all calculated for me prior to the game and post. I'm pretty curious how much that single game boosted him. 4 assists to 0 TOs can't hurt. And hurt Troy, 3 assists to 4 turnovers that game.   Though, don't get me wrong. He's had a better assist to turnover ratio all year. Even when he had a worse turnover percentage than Troy.