DChoosier

Former laughingstock known as Rutgers - 71 Beloved former powerhouse 10th place Hoosiers - 62

I’m glad he realized the importance of recruiting well in Indiana but he also realized he needed out of state talent. The issue is that he spent a lot of time and effort on out of state guys but landed very few of them. In 2019, as an example, he offered 23 kids and 18 of the 23 were from out of state (none of the 18 out of staters committed to IU). He has gone after a slew of out of staters, albeit with varying degrees of effort, such as Garland, DJ Carton, Bouknight, Watford, Ramsey, Cross, Garcia, Morton, Mohammed, Miller, etc etc.

I’m not sure that Archie will be able to duplicate that pay at his next stop. In spite of all of Creans “issues” his agent and the Georgia AD were able to sell the fan base that a football school was hiring a guy that won the Big Ten two of the previous five years. What does Archie’s agent say “hey, he came in 6th his first year and then was a very consistent 9th, 10th, 10th” ? I think Archie will have to take a step down the food chain, and prove himself, before landing another 3mm type job but who knows?

Don’t despair. With our current trajectory, unless things change, I think we will have a good shot at the 11th seed next year.

Does the Ville still have possible NCAA sanctions hanging over their head (as if that means much these days :( ). If so, maybe that is why he would be open to taking off. OtherwiseI agree with other posters that it might be his agents way of getting more money from the Ville.

What’s your definition of “win immediately”. It’s year 4 and we are in 10th place, have not had better than a .500 conference record and this, the 4th year, is his worst conference record yet (albeit.....the BT is brutal this year). We have the same, same, same issues we had 4 years ago and rather than the fan base having “NO patience”, as you wrote, I think there has been a fair amount of patience considering the lack of progress,

Yes and pre-season Sports Illustrated, CBS sports, 247, and many others had IU finishing above PU and Michigan...LOL

Hopefully it’s just because Dolson wants to meet Enfield’s wife.

Not sure about you but when I dreamed about catching up to Penn State I had football (not basketball) in mind :)

I get your point but there are typically gallows humor jokes about an AD’s “vote of confidence”. Everyone realizes those votes of confidence usually mean “we know he sucks but haven’t nailed down a plan B yet”.

This is a balanced article. My concern is that there are enough “what if’s” in the article, in regards to improving next season, that provide cover to board members that do not want to pay Archie’s huge buyout. I could see them saying “let’s see how Archie can do with these young guys, Brunk coming back etc etc next season and then make a move, that will cost a lot less, if things don’t turn around. I hope that does not happen, as I don’t have faith in Archie turning it around and can visualize a ton of empty balcony seats next year, but if he is retained I hope he shocks us and gets things rolling.

Since there were virtually no pre-season games, other than the ACC-BT challenge which are not cupcake games, , I would bet that this year was the toughest schedule ever for nearly every (if not all) of the Big Ten teams.

Yes, it is true that Stevens is coming. I have inside info that the timeline is as follows: -Archie will be fired after we roll over in the first game of the BTT -Dolson successfully lures Alford to IU with a 20 year 1.5 billion dollar contract -In year three the “Fire Alford” posts on Btownbanners are up to 890 pages -Alford overachieves in year four by finishing 8th in the Big Ten, our best finish in 6 years, and is given another year. -Alford is gone after year 5 and finally, finally, Brad Stevens is announced as the next coach at IU. Hard to believe but in 5 short years Stevens will be here and still only be 49.

Hated team/smelly town/school that has won 4 in a row : 76 Beloved IU team that has lost 4 in a row: 63 Please prove me wrong guys....

And Davis had the 4th, 11th, 17th and 18th hardest schedules (but managed to finish .500 or better in the conference all 4 of those years). He had a couple of brutally hard pre-conference schedules. This year is partially ranked first because of how deep the Big Ten is but also because of Covid....ie no pre-conference cupcakes to bring down the overall degree of difficulty.

I didn’t mention Bartow but now that you mention him.....:) And Smith was one of my examples. In his last 5 years UNC was in the second round twice and final four 3 times (ie they were at a higher level of eliteness than Michigan under Beilien) but UNC went down the tubes. It’s not a given that the culture will be maintained under a new coach. In any case, my main point was more that Howard filled a need, right away, while Archie kept open roster spots. I prefer Howard’s approach.

I’ve also read he was a good X’s and O’s guy and never quite knew why there were assumptions that he didn’t know what he was doing. All I know is they were picked to be 9th or so in the Big Ten, have looked very good in a number of games (the Illinois loss surprised me) and he has 2 five star and 3 four star guys coming in next year. It’s early in his tenure, and too soon to wave a victory flag, but I’d be very happy so far if I was a UM fan.

Agree to disagree. It’s far from a given that a culture will be maintained when a head coach leaves. What happened when Dean Smith left, John Thompson left, Bear Bryant left, etc etc., etc. A lot of times the “culture” is not maintained by the subsequent coach and many predicted that Howard would drop the ball. My main point, however, was that I thought he did a good job seeing that he needed guards and brought in 2 grad transfers that are heavy contributors while we have been complaining about guard play for four years but not filling a couple of roster spots.

No, Howard wasn’t brought in to turn things around but 4 of his top 6 scorers have only been in the program 1 or 2 years (3 of them have only been in the program this year and one of them is in his second year). IU had a higher percentage of scoring returning this year than Michigan. I think it’s pretty impressive that Howard has successfully reloaded so quickly.

Yes but that was nearly four years ago. Archie has had 11 man rosters, that could have been filled with shooters and PG’s rather than having two empty spots. Howard brought in 2 senior transfer guards this year, and a stud freshman center that is their leading scorer, and now has one of the top teams in the country. He did something THIS YEAR while we think of “woe is me” scenarios from several years ago.

You had me until the Archie forever part.....

We still haven’t found out that Archie is the guy...LOL

That’s good info. In the back of my mind I always questioned wether Smith (and Green) caused internal problems simply because Archie continued to give each of them big minutes. I thought “tough guy/no nonsense Archie”...lol in restrospect, would reduce minutes,take away starting roles and/or recruit over them with transfers (we pretty much always had open slots) if they were that big of a problem. I was done with him quite a while ago but this really seals the deal. You just can’t reward that type of behavior and “letting it slide” kills the ability to create the type of culture we thought/hoped he would develop.

Our administration has not been ideal but I just don’t get how the administration drags down Archie’s offense, year after year, or how the administration causes scoring droughts and four years of perimeter issues. Did the administration make Archie start the year with 2 open scholarships? Michigan needed guards and decided transfer were better than unused scholarships. 2 of their 6 top scorers are transfer guards. I read posts about how “old” UM is compared to us but IU had a higher percentage of scoring returning this year, than UM, but UM picked up 2 senior transfers. UM’s leading scorer is a freshman and Wagner is a sophomore. So three of their top 6 scorers are in their first year in the program and a 4th, Wagner, is in his second year. It shows that positive change can be made relatively quickly and that we don’t need to suck for 4 more years. Kudos to Howard because, before looking more closely, I thought he was living off Beilien recruits.

He is already there with 4 straight years without being over .500 in the conference. 9-9 (6th) best finish with 100% Crean players. 8-12 (9th) 9-11 (10th) 7-11 (10th) at this point. Nebraska is the only BT team that has lost more home games this season than IU.