Aaron

I don't totally disagree with much of this, but fans will have to show they can sell out with a constant 8-9 win team as other programs do. Until this happens, it is hard to sustain success. A good early test will be whether the team can sell out their non-conference games next yr like everyone else does who wins at this level regardless of opponent. Again, this is not a diehard fan issue, but one with the casuals who are far less supportive across board than other schools fans of similar stature. I was with a casual IU fans this weekend who attended several women's games during the three best years and went to none last year and had no idea what happened. I have a friend in Iowa who is friends with Iowa fans and they still followed the women's team after last year to same level as Caitlin Clark era as well as all Iowa sports. This guy I was with made it imminently clear he is all in on football and expects to be Ohio State more or less going forward. I am skeptical he would follow a 7-9 win team. While this guy was not representative of everyone, the attendance over different scenarios of success over the years across the board tells me far to many think like him compared to other fan bases. Not a criticism necessarily of him or others like him, but evidence points to a far bigger number of these type of people than you would like and its why stadium expansion remains a controversial topic and money continues to lag behind peers. Supposedly IU has largest living alumni base in world. While this is likely, true, sometimes the quality not the quantity is what matters and when it comes to quality, IU fans do not have the loyalty of others at times. I don't blame them given the mess Indiana has been across board everywhere but this is what IU is up against.

Last 2 yrs in part stunk because winning teams in 1991, 1993, and 1994 drew 35k. IU was not invited to a bowl game in 94 precisely because of the fair weatherness of the last few seasons. The drop off the last two years was a direct result of the administration pulling support after seeing fans not supporting winning teams as any other schools would in 1991-1994. Fans will have to prove that a 91-94 run can sell out now like any other school would. If it doesn't, expect a massive drop off that was seen in 95 and 96. The 91-94 attendance was unacceptable for any school who wants to sustain a good football program and would happen in few other places. If fans show a 91-94 like run under Cignetti produces sellouts now rather than 35k at most, things will have changed. Until then, administration will worry about making the football stadium the size needed to compete with other schools revenue wise.

That is totally fair, but Indiana has by far the largest IU fan base with 200k alone around Indianapolis. That is more than enough to fill a 75k football stadium weekly. OSU, Michigan, and Wisconsin compete with similar sports menu and still filled the stadium for years with less than perfect results. The main reason the Mallory era fell apart while Alvarez started two decades of solid winning, is Wisconsin supported their winning teams throughout his tenure while IU did not with Mallory at end. Proof will be in pudding whether an Iowa like type program created by Cignetti can sustain the support of other pier schools. Until we see it, the administration will be leery to make football stadium bigger and IU will be behind money wise. Again not talking to those on board and diehards, but until casual IU fans change their front running behavior to match other big ten schools, anything less then Cignetti and DeVries building an Ohio State and Michigan State respectively is a risky proposition to sustain at Indiana. This is where the problem with IU in general and money as a whole becomes relevant relative to other conference piers.

There is no "Chicken and Egg" here with fans. The casual fans at IU have been their own worst enemy far more so than at most other equivalent programs. IU was a bowl team consistently every year for a decade and stopped showing up later in era. That is a big part of what tanked the Mallory era. If the 50k that showed up in the late 80's continued in the early 90's Mallory would have retired rather than being fired. No other program had fan attendance drop off the way IU did despite winning seasons throughout early 90's. IU Fans will have to prove this Mallory era has taught us something. Whether football is the next 'emerging super power' as Cignetti claims or the next Iowa under Ferentz, fans will have to show they can fill Memorial Stadium in either scenario. While Hawkeye fans may grumble about Ferentz at times, they still show up across the board and sellout every week. Whether Cignetti makes us the next Ohio State or Iowa, fans will have to show up similarly in big numbers and so far I am not sold our supporters will support anything but an Ohio State level program. Fan bases' casuals will need to prove to the administration they are better then in the past and early returns from women's basketball after nearly a decade of success show little has changed. Hopefully football being football will be different, but until our fan base becomes less front runner and matches others, this will always be a concerned in the back of many peoples mind in the administration.

If DeVries is the coach we think he is, he will work around these constraints just fine with players who fit his system such as Sisley who are not blue chippers and win big with that. The best coaches such as Painter have done this just fine. IU has decent money, just not an infinite amount that schools with 80-100k football stadiums do. Teri Moren has had to deal with similar up and down through her career and with some adjustments appears to be on her way. The best way for our basketball programs to thrive is for fans to show up and cause the football stadium to need 75k seats or more seats. This goes for 8 win teams also. I have said many times us Hoosier fans are our own worst enemy and have a terrible habit of not showing up unless a team is the elite of the elite. The situation with women's basketball is a problem every Hoosier fan needs to note. IU won 20 games last year and went to tournament, but because they were not ranked, they lost several thousand season ticket holders and now season ticket base stretches to entryway instead of nearly all main level. Iowa on other hand had similar season last year to IU and has once again sold out the whole arena. If us as fans want to see every sport continue to thrive and money to be there across board, it means showing up in big numbers when you have a solid postseason team and not just an elite team. While all fan bases have this fairweatherness, my experience is we as Hoosier fans are particularly front running compared to pier schools for whatever reason and have the knowledge to say this with relative certainty. Loyalty will need to run deeper for this to work and it means not going down to 35-40k fans a game in football if IU wins 8 games a yr as happened towards end of Mallory era. Until Hoosier fans change their behavior to support good and not great teams as other schools do, the administration is rightfully going to be leery to add many more seats to the football stadium. Its time for all IU sports fans to look in the mirror and ask themselves if they can support a yearly postseason squad that is not highly ranked? Until the answer is an unequivocal yes from more casual followers, the school will lag behind many in the Big Ten money wise with peaks and valleys in performance as we see now across many programs at IU. I am not talking to diehards on this board, but this is the bottom line. Until casual IU fans change their behavior to match similar schools when it comes to support and attendance, the money is going to be behind others in conference.

I think we can safely say IU has robbed Peter (the basketball program) to pay Paul (the football program) at the moment. This is probably a very good decision for the university overall and no one should complain given which sport drives revenue. However, it means DeVries will have to learn make do with less resources than any past coach. I will not be surprised if he achieves this, but it probably means NIL for top tier recruits is out of reach right now as many in media have hinted at. DeVries will have to make do with secondary recruits and portal that fit his system which is fine. IU simply doesn't have the money or resources to support both programs at top notch right now it appears and almost all the NIL and Rev Share money is going to football. This puts Thompson and other top recruits price out of reach right now for most part. Its the reality in new world of college sports. Until IU has 80-100K football seat stadiums filled each week, only OSU and Michigan have the deep NIL money to outbid for both. Indiana simply does not with so much support behind football and winning more than one or two of these recruiting battles for blue chippers is not viable until football delivers even more money to athletic budget.

She is easily the best for sports in decades and the reason IU is thriving there across the board. Let's make sure, though, we separate this from her performance on the academic side, which has been full of controversy. Whether you agree with her or not, her tenure in Bloomington has been far from smooth. If sports are your main thing of importance, then she absolutely deserves an A. If you care about the academic side as well, her legacy is much more complicated.

IU won 3-1, but this match put up some big red flags. OSU is awful, and every time IU built a huge lead, they let the Buckeyes back into the match before prevailing. Need a killer instinct. In the end, a win is a win, but this was more concerning than the losses to Purdue, which is elite, or MSU, which is solid. Hopefully, this is a one-off, as this performance going forward will lead to many losses down the stretch and put a seemingly sure NCAA bid in jeopardy.

Charlie Creme has IU ending its 15 yr NCAA Tourney drought with a bang, hosting as a three seed (1-4 seeds host first two rounds just like women's basketball): https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/46605009/ncaa-womens-college-volleyball-bracketology-top-teams-predictions-2025

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/46615055/us-soccer-stretch-men-ncaa-season-full-academic-year Yeagley been pushing for this for a long time and now it's backed by US soccer who wants major and much needed reforms to college game.

Agreed on all of that. Offense is championship ready. Defense could prevent you from advancing out of first NCAA Tourney game. Just as IU did in 2013 and 2019, its time to replace the veteran goalie in Brown who is not getting job done with a developing freshman. In those years Michael Souderland and Sean Caulfield were not getting job done and young but raw hot shots Colin Webb and some guy named Roman Celentano took over to turn season around. It might not change a huge amount this yr, but for next 2-3 years you will have an elite goalie as he develops on field which i’d rather. This guy is Judwelin Michelle who started against Clemson and while raw has all the tools. Browns instincts just are not there. He’s bigger than Harms (who started last few yrs) which helps, but lack of reading ball well cancels that out. Either way though, Hoosiers have to get this backline fixed regardless of who is between the pipes. Way to many easy shots and runs without resistance by opponent getting behind defense far to easily.

I think the biggest issue is that IU can usually play defense effectively with four men and allow the midfielders to attack with the offense. The back line is so weak right now that midfielders are having to sit back to help defend, and it's still not enough. It's also making the attack far less dynamic. Don't confuse poor back-line play with a lack of answers to not playing hard. Opposing sides can just sit back and defend Oduro and Ault with multiple men, while the middle has to help the backline. I think Yeagley is really struggling to come up with answers to stop the other team, but given history, he will have some answers soon. This is quickly shaping up to be the 2014 season all over again, with multiple signature wins out of conference and one or two in conference, but also bad losses in the league. Means a higher NCAA seed but also a mid-pack Big Ten finish.

Signature win at ranked USC tonight to move to 3-0 in Big Ten! After losing the first set, IU dominated its opponent for the rest of the match for 3-1 victory. It's early, but this team absolutely looks like a tournament contender right now and is on pace to break its 16-year postseason drought.

I actually was much more upset about the Michigan and Michigan State match against inferior teams, where IU gave away valuable points. While the Hoosiers could have played better. Washington is actually that good, and the Huskies have the best offense in the league for a reason. Washington is on a roll right now, and don't be surprised if they make a College Cup run with that attack. Indiana's defense just isn't there to be elite right now. Time for a couple of get-right games against the conference's worst teams at home next, though. IU has a lot to figure out with its backline right now, but tonight was as much about what the Huskies did as what the Hoosiers didn't do. Those Michigan and Michigan State games are what we will look back on as the ones you wanted back against squads IU is far better than. Tonight, you just had a really good team, at least on your level, hit you with a sledgehammer, and little could be done about it.

Big win over Washington tonight in a close sweep. While this is a game the team really needed, it was also against a relatively equal squad that was far from certain.

Offense is championship level. Defense needs some work. Still was hoping for more from Holden Brown, given his larger frame and more athleticism, but not seeing it yet. On the plus side, Palmer Ault is the dynamic scorer the team has been looking for the last several years.

NW will almost certainly finish near the bottom of the league. Winning games against this level of opponent in the league is a must if they are even going to match the last few seasons of decent but not great. More interested if they can take down some of the better teams, especially at home and compete for NCAA Tournament.

Not quite. With 11 teams now and 10 games in Big Ten play, it is still too early to say that. If they catch fire and win out, they have an excellent chance. Doesn't look likely right now. However, said the same thing the last couple of seasons in the same position, and a perfect October won them the league. The difference is that this time, the non-conference was so good, another near-perfect October means a much better NCAA seed with multiple home games, if not all three in Bloomington, before the College Cup potentially. With all that said, I didn't see these struggles coming, and it's really disheartening to say the least. Need the calendar to hit October, where squad is always perfect.

Took our great start and threw it straight in the garbage to begin conference play. It's as if the team thinks they can give a half-hearted effort because they are in the top five. Right now, they are the hunted and appear to be a squad that thinks they can win simply by showing up and giving minimal effort, which is obviously not the case. That might be the worst offensive performance I have seen in my 30 years of watching, and I am being dead serious. MSU's goal was a bit unlucky, but they certainly had enough chances and deserved to put one home. With that said, I thought the backline was mostly fine, and this result rests solely on an attack that looked completely dead. Once October hits, they will probably catch fire as they always do. However, I thought this slow start issue was fixed after the non-conference, but it has just hit to begin Big Ten play instead. Computers still seem to love IU, and a mediocre conference season with a great RPI can still get you a really solid NCAA seed, as happened in 2014 and 2016. With all that said, the team better do some soul searching and give 100% effort every night, which has been lacking recently outside of the second half of PSU. Maryland still awaits later on, as does a solid Ohio State and UCLA squad, not to mention a trip to Washington. Those are all winnable if the Hoosiers we saw pre-league play start showing up again. Otherwise, it could be a rough conference slate if this performance from the first three Big Ten matches continues. We can definitely drop the 2017 and 2018 comparisons for good. This goes even if Indiana catches fire again going forward.

All the goodwill the team had built up to this point early in the season was set on fire tonight, getting swept by Western Kentucky. Every time a coach goes on the Hysterics Podcast, their team immediately suffers. The Hilltoppers are likely to win Conference USA and are not bad. However, the Big Ten is much better, and if you can't beat them, it raises questions about whether the team can compete with the better squads in the conference. This program has come a long way and will likely win 8-12 games again in the league and dominate the bottom. However, this defeat almost certainly puts the NCAA Tournament as a bit of a long shot and cancels out the good win against Miami (FL). This program appears to have ceilinged out at the moment as a mid to lower pack squad in an elite league, which is not good enough to make the postseason (and with no conference tourney in volleyball, getting in is that much harder). We might as Hoosier fans have to be OK with where the program is now at this plateau. It will not take the next step until it wins matches like tonight and doesn't suffer a competitive sweep to elite mid-majors.

That's more like it, and it shows why IU's offense has not been this dangerous since the 2017-2018 season. Palmer Ault and Collins Oduro give you a dynamic scorer and speedster combo for 2025 that fully unlocks Yeagley's offense at its best. Have not had that since the Rennicks and Dorsey combo in those aforementioned years. I still have some small concerns about the backline, and Holden Brown is unfortunately showing he is a solid but not elite goalie, similar to Harms recently, but bigger. I was hoping he was closer to Muse or Celentano, but that does not seem to be the case. Also, not IU related other than tonight, but what in the world has happened to PSU's program? For years, IU, Maryland, and Penn State were head and shoulders above the league. While the Hoosiers and Terps have gone nowhere, the Nittany Lions have looked like one of the very worst squads in the league the last couple of seasons. Good job taking care of business, and they need to continue that in every game besides the Terps. Outside of IU, Maryland, and Michigan, the league appears really bad, and Penn State might be the worst of everyone.

Maryland is amongst the worst in the Big Ten. Going to be another rough year. As I discussed this program is here solely to satisfy Title IX. Not win as coaching hire made clear. I totally get it from administration standpoint given the lack of interest and influx of money needed for college sports now for rev sharing. Someone has to get short end of stick and for IU its women's soccer. Just take all this into account when analyzing results and following this program.

Total failure to perform. I'm not sure if IU got fat and happy at number one, but that was the worst performance I have seen from the Hoosiers in a VERY long time. IU scored first against the run of play, but were dominated for 90 minutes from start to finish in a way that should NEVER happen to this program. Very lucky Wolverines didn't end up running away with this, and it's a minor miracle Indiana had a chance at the end. IU's missed PK at the end to tie was total sweet justice from the soccer gods, as they had no business taking anything but a terrible loss. The team went from looking like the best in the country to one that doesn't even deserve to be ranked. Hope the Hoosiers enjoyed being number one because they won't be there anymore if they play like that again this season. This team, which I thought had regained the 2017 and 2018 form, can't be said to be that again in 2025. Those teams' off nights turned into ties or a loss to the very top of the country, which Michigan is not close to. IU can still have a relatively special fall if they make sure this is a one-off, but the best Hoosier soccer teams don't give efforts like that and get dominated on their home field. Now I am not sure if this is a top-five squad or another borderline-seeded team, as they have been since COVID. We will find out quickly after some soul searching from Yeagley and players if this is one of the special Indiana teams or another pretty good one. I really thought we were headed towards special, but after tonight, that is very much in the air. One note that shows metrics can be questionable: IU is somehow still number one in RPI, and Michigan vaulted to six. Guess the computers like the Hoosiers so much that they only reward the squads that beat them and don't penalize them for the loss. Lucky, the computers essentially gave them a mulligan, but won't again, as everyone else in the league outside Maryland and now Michigan has horrific metrics. This is a quad one loss, but everyone else in the league outside of Maryland is a quad three, so I would recommend taking care of business if you want a high NCAA seed. The committee showed two years ago that when the league was terrible, they would penalize accordingly, giving Hoosiers who were Big Ten Champs no seed and not inviting a single other squad from the conference.

Welcome back to 2017/2018 IU Soccer as a legit national contender as one of the top 5 squads in the country. It's been too long. This Notre Dame game is a bellwether for how serious the Hoosiers are about getting back to the College Cup and maybe winning a title without divine intervention like in 2022. Test past! Getting back to Cary, N.C., for another College Cup will very likely be attempted the easy way, with at least two home games, if not three, and likely only one heavyweight battle coming in the Elite Eight. Doesn't mean you get that far, as happened in 2019. However, they will almost certainly get two home games in the Round of 32 and the Sweet 16, where they are the clear favorites. Similar to 2017, where 2016 saw longtime veterans gone, and the season was basically a birthday present waiting to be unwrapped. 2025, after 2024, is similar, with the talent of new players coming in vs. ones departed taking the squad to a whole new level from solid to elite. In 2017, it was Trey Muse, Mason Toye, Griffin Dorsey, and Justin Rennicks replacing Colin Webb, Grant Lillard, Richard Ballard, and Tanner Thompson, to go with veterans coming into their own in Andrew Gutman and Francesco Moore, among others. It's not that the losses are not big. It's just the replacements are even better and move the team to a whole new tier. Similarly, now in 2025, you lost JT Harms, Tommy Mihalic, Samuel Sarver, and Patrick McDonald. However, the veterans are coming into their own in Collins Oduro, Josh Maher, and Alex Barger, with newcomers in Palmer Ault, Jacopo Fedrizzi, and Colton Swan being even better than their predecessors, unlocking a whole new level not seen in several seasons.

Looked like a serious championship contender for the first time tonight, which was good to see. Hopefully, it continues, and the team can play well all year in what is shaping up to be an extremely weak Big Ten.