RaceToTheTop

Never liked Cardinal. The blocks where he flopped are plays where guys get hurt.

They are putting an absolute clown stomping on Iowa......up 38 points with 4 minutes left. There is not a more inconsistent team in college basketball than Purdue is this year. They were flat out lucky to beat Northwestern on the weekend (thanks to horrible coaching strategy by Collins at the end of the game) and then they come back with a very impressive win tonight. That said, their only true road win was the Northwestern game.

When IU was bad, we still had that Tom Pritchard pick that put Hummel out for the rest of the game.

What is funny is that the 2015-6 team was considered at the time to be an incredibly overachieving team. Four years later, five players from that team have played in the NBA.

If you are going between who is playing better in any particular game -- Brunk or Davis -- 95% of the time it's going to be Brunk. For that reason, IMO, Davis is unplayable. If we need a bulky big, Brunk is the guy. If we don't, then TJD is the post getting spelled by Race. I simply am not seeing what Davis adds other than fouls and missed layups.

I think bringing in Green off the bench when we have started out slowly is worse than starting him and yanking him if he shows what he has been showing. Unless you want to play Damezi, Green is going to get some minutes because you aren't going to get by with only playing three guards during the 40 minute course of the game.

Of note is that even when we've shot it well, we aren't making many....18 in three games is just 6 per game. 42 shots in three games is 14 per game....only three out of three hundred and fifty teams in D1 are averaging taking less than 14 threes per game.

Let me ask you this: if IU misses the tournament, do you think CAM is back? When a coach's job has uncertainty, you can usually see playing freshman to development them kind of go out the window.

I don’t disagree. But I keep looking at Al who doesn’t seem to want the ball, Damezi who can’t score, and Armaan who should become a nice player but right now he’s just a freshman who’s not ready and I don’t see the other options as very good ones either.

In terms of Smith, he’s s as actually slightly under 50% (18 of 38). That said, I don’t see starting as a reward and coming off the bench as a punishment; what I do see is that we have been struggling offensively from the get to and then seem to spend a significant portion of the game trying to catch up. Durham and Smith offensively have not been playing well lately — in the last four games Smith has really struggled and Al isn’t even getting shots up — and think maybe that coming in fresh off the bench might get them kick started.

Regardless of who starts at guard you are going to be rewarding traits you don’t want at the guard position. IMO RP has played well enough to keep starting. But Al and Armaan bring nothing offensively lately and Damezi is a shooter who can’t shoot. DeVonte frustrates the hell out of me. But I guess I don’t get the amount of finger pointing his way when the whole 25 good / 75 bad you are referring to stands for other guards....and their 25 good has less upside.

Too much hero game from DeVonte but getting a lot of zero game from others.

I’m not one for managing money for a league. In the leagues I’v run in the past each owner takes a NCAA team and sends me their game plans to ‘coach’ them. I’ve run it as a strictly Big Ten league and ran one season where owners could pick any NCAA team. I run the games and post the box scores and stats in a shared google account. I started running it the year Yogi was a freshman; last year was the first year I didn’t run it. Yogi was the all time leading scorer fir the league (partially because some really good players went pro in real life) but if I had run it last year, Carson Edwards would have passed him in just three years. when the regular season was over, teams that qualified for the tournament played in a simulated tourney. In the six years I ran it, I think that Big Ten teams won the title twice.

Cool. Keep ‘em coming, the more coaches the better.

For five years I ran a computer simulation league on another IU message forum using the PC Stellar basketball program. It’s a project I would be interested in starting again in the off-season after teams have their stats complete. Basically owners pick a real life NCAA team to run and strategies to employ (player rotations, pace of play, focus of shot selection, defensive style (man to man or zone, tightness of defense). if I were to create the teams and run it again, would you personally be interested in coaching a team? I can tell you that the coach’s part takes minimal time — the work is on my end in creating the team and running the games.

Ugh....looked it up and he is at 56% from the line this year.

Baylor fans are probably just practicing for their vacated wins that Drew is going to bring them.

I want to win. But if winning means bringing in a Sampson or Pearl, I guess winning isn’t that important to me.

I don’t disagree. Just not sure how your takeaway from that pair of games was that those set of teams had perimeter shooting.

Spencer gets a wide open three and shoots an air ball.

Coaches letting the other team run down the clock in a time game to get the last shot deserve to lose. Pressure the damn ball or foul their worst free throw shooter. Otherwise you are playing to tie or lose. Give yourself a chance.

Northwestern going to lose. Chris Collins sucks.

If I'm Northwestern, I'm just fouling Trevion Williams. 44% free throw shooter and at least puts it in your hands with a shot to win. If it goes OT, NW will lose.

Dude had a layup. Didn't need to dribble.

Northwestern player just dribbled the ball off his own hand out of bounds. That will be Purdue ball.