RaceToTheTop

But that's my point....there was no reason to believe that he would have done that. There was literally nothing that would have lead you to believe the one thing he was very good at that he would stop doing.

I think we all were fine at the time when he was brought in. He was supposed to help fill a need.....you don't shoot 40% from three for three straight seasons by accident. And while his shooting percentage could have been expected to fall a little bit, the drop he had surely wasn't. By the end of the year, teams were giving him that And he had played in two NCAA games and five NIT games coming in....that kind of experience should have been helpful. I guess I don't get the criticism in hindsight. I don't recall much criticism when he committed. It was a free scholarship for one year going to a guy who was supposed to fit a role. It didn't work out, but I don't think we were predicting what we got.

Great band name. Maybe even better than Dusty Banners.

I understand the point you are making.....but when those 2 more scholarships are going to players like Bawa Muniru, Peter Jurkin, Jeremiah April, Tim Priller, Gelon Grant.....I'm not sure you can't really spot talent. I think the two guys whose talent exceeded expectations were Oladipo and Anunoby. And Anunoby really didn't get a chance to showcase anything because of how short he was here and injury.

If you want to get technical, they played no games with everyone healthy since Hunter didn't play all year. On to next year.

If anybody has all their guys hitting, they win.

I think people are being revisionist on Moore. Moore was definitely more heavily recruited nationally than Al was.

They haven't been told they don't fit the system. No coach is in place. And no coach coming in would tell Kira Lewis that.

FWIW, Archie did let one of Crean's players know that he was better off going elsewhere (Gelon Grant). I'm not a big fan of a coach coming and just cleaning the roster out. If guys leave, fine. But telling three guys to 'hit the highway' isn't sending a good message. In case anyone is interested, Gelon Grant played a semester of junior college ball, signed at SW Misdouri State...they fired their coach, he decommitted and got Ouf of basketball altogether for a year. Believe he is playing NAIA ball next year at Bellarmine.

Matt Painter is 0-4 in sweet sixteen games. If he loses tonight, we have another reason to hold up five fingers to Purdue fans.

Brunk to IU ir Ohio State both make sense.

I, for one, do not think the problem was the team was down. I think that the problem may have been that there was a Stonehenge monument on thd court in danger of being squashed by a dwarf.

I live in Valpo now after living about 20 minutes away fir 20+ years. The truth is Valpo (outside of Bryce himself who wanted to play for hus dad) wasn't keeping quality NWI players here....including Bryce. They were getting players from elsewhere including a lot if foreign players. Right now there are three NWI players on the team but really only who who makes any kind if difference.

I live in NWI. Think the only player of note that he would have helped get here was Newman, and he's already signed. Anyway, when Bryce Drew hit his shot at Valpo in the tournament none of the high school recruits in NWI were alive.

C'mon man, they faked that thing more than a Lori Loughlin kid getting into college. But for reals, y'all know that the astronauts were actually shooting for Mars. Since they were from Purdue, they only reached the moon.

My guess is it won't matter how many 'we're backs' it is if as soon as they lose a Syracuse sweet sixteen type of game we're ready to run him off. Impatience has bred more impatience.

Yes, there were chemistry issues. I just think (and thought before the year started) that the estimation of the 'talent we have' was way overstated. Al Durham -- God love him -- was a starter (deservedly so) on this team. Our starting point guard was a freshman who wasn't a top 100 recruit. Juwan Morgan -- love him to death --might never play a minute in the NBA. I think this team had four guys on it that were top 100 recruits out of high school: Hunter, Smith, Langford, Davis. One didn't play a minute and another had limited minutes coming back from an ACL.

I would say Green qualifies as one. 41% last year and 40% for his career. Have to remember he started the year 1 of his first 12 and shot 45% from three from that point on.

If you had done a U-turn, you would have turned around more than Dakich ever could.

Hey Dan, UCLA says hi.

Neutral look at if we improved this year from last: KenPom ratings: 2017-8: overall end of the season rating: offense: #92 defense: #65 overall: #71 2018-9: offense: #78 defense: #30 overall: #50 Now obviously we have big losses in Juwan and most certainly Romeo to contend with. However, the defensive improvement since Miller has taken over has been very noteworthy and I would say that is something that Romeo was not a big part of...and I would say that was the weaker part of Juwan's game as well as he was a better offensive than defensive player. Personally, my thought is that being healthy and bringing in TJD cancels out the loss of Morgan and Langford. When Archie took over, the team was ranked 104th defensively. That improved 39 spots his first year and 35 this year. Obviously you can't see that kind of improvement forever (he's not going to ranked -5th next year, LOL) but as the system gets in place, you can expect the improvement to be maintained. Teams that nearly match our current 30/78 ratings are Ohio State (25/79) and Penn State (26/74). Basically, the difference in Ohio State/Indiana/Penn State is how well they finished in close games. Indiana was 8-7 in games decided by 5 or less or went OT; Ohio State was 5-2; Penn State was 2-9. In the other games -- games decided by 5 or more points -- they were all basically the same team (IU was 11-9, Ohio State was 15-13, Penn State was 12-9). Yes, two of those losses IU had were to OSU and Holtmann. But I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater based on those two. If we assume the rate of improvement in offense and defense continues into year 3 that we had from years 1 and 2, I would expect an offense somewhere in the 60s and defense around 20s. If we look at teams with rankings near those spots this year, the four teams that match up the best with those rankings are: Oregon (15/72) Oklahoma (23/59) Syracuse (25/60) Florida (14/63) All four of those teams were tournament teams (seeds of 12, 9, 8, and 10). Oregon is interesting because they earned the bid by winning the PAC 12 championship but considering they've now won four straight games (Arizona St, Washington, Wisconsin, and Cal-Irvine) by 67 points against teams that were in the NCAA tournament, I think they showed they belong. So my expectation next year is that we look to come into the season on the right side of the bubble.

Yogi was a 30% three point shooter as a freshman.

Yogi was a 30% three point shooter as a freshman.

OSU doesn't belong in that group. For the record, they've missed the tourney 12 times since 1993.

If you have to be 'felt back in', don't think you'll stay long. If you want to leave, go. It's likely someone blowing off steam, but honestly I'm at an age where I don't have the desire to convince someone that they need to root for someone.