RaceToTheTop

Devonte has a 'me first' on court attitude, but RP seems to have developed a 'not me' personality. He passes up soooooo many open shots, especially when he's missed a couple of shots.

We do know that it wasn't Davis. Dude was in for like two plays and committed fouls before he had a chance not to run the right play.

Al Durham has been a punching bag lately on this board and I personally hope that the elbow he threw against Arkansas does not effect his playing time going forward. While he hasn't been playing as well, I don't think you can doubt his effort and drive. Bottom line is the elbow he threw was out of character and I have no doubt he regretted it. In terms of Sterling's column -- I haven't read it, but if he knows that is something that happened then he should be naming names.

And yet when the Big Ten/ACC challenge rolls around, ESPN puts IU in almost yearly match ups against Duke or Carolina. The media attention nationally does not jibe with what fans of the team show. Right or wrong, IU is still a team that draws good TV numbers. Give a network executive a choice of airing IU/Michigan State or Purdue/Michigan, they are going to choose IU/Michigan State. Obviously that can change, but we've been to one fluke final four in the last 28 years and it hasn't.

I would not rank him that high. And even if you consider him an elite defender, I think that designation is limited to when he defends smaller guards.

It's why I don't understand people's criticism of rotation patterns on Miller. It's not like he can rotate in shooters that we don't have. The criticism should be on the inability to bring in shooters. We have two open spots on the roster.....needed better backup plans when first tier options weren't there.

I think it's a false narrative that Rob has been good. A year and half into his career, he's a three assist per game point guard who is shooting under 40% overall and 32% from three who averages 7 points per game.

At this point, who do you have for your starters/rotation? If possible, give your rationale. Mine would be: Starters Phinissee Green Durham Smith TJD In my opinion, we need to maximum both our scoring and shooting from the get go. Also in my opinion, despite Durham's idiotic move last game, he is one of our five best scorers. The last four are guys averaging in double figures...only RP isn't, but despite his recent shooting woes, he still is in our top five scorers/minute and is a decent facilitator. I for one don't want to hold back a guy for 'offense off the bench' -- we don't need to hold a guy back at the beginning of the game. Bench rotation: Brunk -- I'm still okay with him getting his approximately 20 minutes per game, just think that he needs fewer minutes with both he and TJD on the court at the same time. If he plays 20 minutes, half that should be spelling TJD and the other half with them both on the court when matchup dictates it. Thompson subbing in for Smith Franklin and Anderson spelling Rob, Al, and Devonte. Hunter, unfortunately, isn't part of the normal rotation....his shot just isn't there and I don't think we can afford waiting around to get him shots in conference games that are likely to be tight. Davis....can not play. Right now he's getting his 2 to 5 minutes which always show he isn't worth playing. I'd put that at zero.

Yes. But NET has San Diego State ranked as the #1 team in the nation with 13 data points for them (13 games). I don't think that any system that the NCAA has implemented -- RPI, NET -- can match what Pom or Sagarin do.

Which is why his penchant for going over the line is so frustrating.

Personally, I hate the whole 'signature win' idea. Let's say there are two 20-10 teams played the same record and the only difference at the end of the year was one beat Michigan State at Michigan State and lost to Northwestern at home while the other did the opposite. I don't see how one is more deserving than the other if they played the same schedule and had the same record. I'm not into the 'well, they can beat anybody' idea; they also showed they could lay an egg to anybody.

I understand that, but IMO the definition of being a bubble team changes throughout the season even if it isn't defined so. The bubble starts much larger than it ends on both sides.

No, I get that. Personally, I don't think many IU fans thought we weren't a bubble team before the Arkansas game. I imagine we are going to be a bubble team for the rest of the year and we'll be on one side or the other most of the rest of the season.

Typically there is a regression to the mean on projections for the reason I posted just above in the response on Pom. I think if Sagarin went on projection percentages, they would say we are favored to win 7 of the 18 with an average number of victories being 8. We're a bubble team with a bubble projections. I think that is why we had such a reaction about the loss to Arkansas yesterday.

I assume by projected at 2-7 you mean that they have us favored in 2 and as the underdog in the other 7. But what I remember from Pom when I had a subscription, that give percentage projections for each game and the overall record projection is based on those projections. I.e.: let's say that being a 2 point underdog gives you a 40% chance to win. If you were an 2 point underdog in 10 straight games, each would be projected as a loss, but your projected record would be 4-6.

brass -- I think by projected he meant most basketball services -- i.e., Lunardi, Sporting News Athlon etc -- did not consider them to be a tournament team. Putting the following numbers in this thread from a question you were posed in the IU/Arkansas thread in which you felt that IU would not be a tournament team based on upcoming schedule and how IU had played the last five games. In full disclosure, I don't know how the numbers are going to bear out and am running them through as I post. I will be using Sagarin's numbers (which are similar to Pom's in terms of overall rating for IU -- Pom has IU at 40 and Sagarin has IU with a predictor ranking of 39 -- because Sagarin is pretty straightforward in terms of pointspreads. In terms of the last five games, Pom currently has IU with a predictor rating of 84.4. I think it was at about 85 before the last string of games, but here is what Sagarin would have predicted for the last five games based on current power ratings: IU at Wisky: Wisky by 3 Nebraska at IU: IU by 13 IU v UConn (N): IU by 3 IU v Notre Dame (N): IU by 3 Arkansas v IU: IU by 3 I'd say with that group of games, you expect that you're not going to lose the Nebraska game (we almost did) and in the other four games, 1-3 would be a disaster; 2-2 below average; 3-1 a decent result; ecstatic with 4-0. We went 2-2....the biggest disappointment being we were 2-1 going into the last of the four games. I believe you stated you thought that we would need to win 8 more games to make the tournament -- I think it might take 9 (either nine in the Big Ten or 8 + at least 1 in the BTT). Anyway, here is the Sagarin predictions for the rest of IU's games based on team's current ratings: at Maryland Maryland by 8 Northwestern IU by 13 Ohio State Ohio State by 3 at Rutgers Rutgers by 1 at Nebraska IU by 6 Michigan State Michigan State by 4 Maryland Maryland by 1 at Penn State Penn St by 4 at Ohio State Ohio State by 9 Purdue IU by 1 Iowa IU by 2 at Michigan Michigan by 7 at MInnesota Minnesota by 4 Penn State IU by 2 at Purdue Purdue by 6 at Illinois Illinois by 2 Minnesota IU by 3 Wisconsin IU by 4

Do you know if this was an issue for Christian Keeling?

Why is that? Purdue hasn’t seemed to have that issue.

On this, I agree. And I’m not happy after we whiffed on some 2019s that we didn’t bring in any grad transfers to shore that up.

As I remember it, Archie said that if he wanted to come to IU he could but that he had indicated to Wright that he keep his commitment to Dayton. Anyway, at the time I think Wright’s preference was not to come in in the same year that Phinisee did because of the likelihood of a split in playing time. Now it obviously looks like he didn’t need to worry about that.

I believe that 4 of the 8 were in the last 90 seconds when we were trying to catch up. The point was that it seems like you are taking a ton of threes when you aren’t making any.

Considering that he had tremendous blood clot issues in his legs last year, I think they are going to be pretty precautionary with any bruising.

We are currently under the scholarship limit by two this year. We do currently have one scholarship available for next year.....if there a transfer, there would be two. That said, I don't know that there are 2020 impact guys in which we are high on their board. Grad transfer shooter is essential.

I think you are missing my point. OF COURSE the ones that succeed adapt to power five play.....thus, they are successful. My point is there isn't much movement from power five head coach to power five head coach UNLESS it's what once would consider a step down in caliber....i.e., Tubby Smith from UK to Minnesota and Tom Crean from Indiana to Georgia.

It was disappointed that he whiffed on grad transfer guards at the minimum when we had an open scholly.