Aaron

Very bad news for IU. Jaelynn Penn has opted out of the rest of the season. Presumably injuries throughout her career and threat of COVID has taken its toll on her. IU is already thin on depth and losing your fourth best player is never good. Cardano-Hillary can move into the starting lineup and produce at close to a similar level, but this leaves you with almost no bench outside of mostly freshman. IU played earlier this year without Penn but that was against lesser Big Ten teams and losing her for rest of season is a blow. It's not completely crippling but probably lowers IU's ceiling by a win or two and a huge depth problem.

Its time for Rutgers to be shut down for the season by the Big Ten. After 5 weeks if you still are having positive tests it means you are not taking protocol seriously with mitigating the spread. Its not fair to the other 13 Big Ten teams that are taking it seriously to have to deal with the Scarlet Knights and possibly catching the virus from them. Rutgers is not that great or a factor in the Big Ten race so at this point they are only a hinderance. I tend not to blame teams for COVID and that is part of the deal this season but after five weeks, enough is enough and at that point its on the team for improper protocol and at this point they are a danger to other teams. I know IU was planning to play and had media availability yesterday. Its time for the Big Ten to tell Rutgers their season is over.

IU is unbelievable. Hunter's official reason for not playing is 'Coach's Decision' rather than 'suspension' on Hunter. I am like 90% confident it is a drug related three games but of course IU and their creative language will keep us guessing.

This was a reverse mirror of last game against OSU and an exact mirror of last yrs home MSU game where we were down and played a bad first half than turned it on in second half. Both games ended with the exact same score also. It also mirrored the NW game with a huge comeback in second half. I was not mad about OSU and Maryland as those teams are probably better than IU by a hair. By the same token IU is just a hair better or even with Mich, NW, MSU and Iowa. IU is now 2-0 against that bunch with 4 more left to play (Iowa twice, Mich once and MSU on road assuming game is rescheduled and I have every reason to believe it will as conference is prioritizing make up games for the teams in top half of league). You are not going to beat OSU in Columbus either because they are a truly special team. You also will beat Rutgers, PU, Illinois, Wisconsin and PSU as those teams are garbage. How you do in the 4 games against the teams I mentioned in the tossups is the difference between a decent 13-7 and a potentially a special 17-3 or 16-4 depending on how well those coin flip games go. That's why beating the MSU's of the world is so big and who you need to be judged against. Great response today just like NW game.

Absolutely killer start to 4th quarter! Now you have space with a 9 pt lead. Now put it away just like against NW.

Much better third quarter. Now finish unlike what happened against Tennessee and Ohio St. Game incredibly close.

Quote No doubt program is miles ahead of where it has ever been. No argument. With that said their ability to perform at home and seize games they should win is an increasing issue last couple yrs.

No its not dramatic. Why is a team that is the same as last year taken a step back? Thats a big red flag. Why have they constantly played better on the road than at home last two yrs? Yes the program is light years ahead of what is has ever been, but they are also having stinkers that don't match a team of their talent level with four 5* recruits in starting lineup.

Absolutely disgusting and inexcusable first half from a veteran squad. This team is built on defense and taking care of the ball and they allowed about 70% shooting with a ton of turnovers for second straight game. This MSU team is pretty good but not that good and a game the Hoosier should absolutely win without to much trouble. We easily took care of a similar MSU team last yr. This is not a 20 pt win but should be relatively comfortable 5-10. Team better come out with a big second half or else some serious questions need to be asked why this team has taken a step backwards with basically same team? I could of asked the same thing after playing NW last week, but team responded with huge second half. Time to do it again or else we might need to reexamine where program is at and what is happening.

Lets do this like a presidential race with game status for IU in remaining games: Safe wins: PU PSU @Wis @Ill Probable wins: MSU Iowa Tossups: @Iowa Mich Probable Loss: @OSU Need to win all the games in the first two columns and split the tossups. That would put us at 14-4 which to me is the number the team and fans should be shooting for as it would lock up at least third place and also once again set a new record for Big Ten wins. Also if we make up Rutgers home game and MSU road game, Rutgers goes in the safe win category and @MSU in Probable win category. Should win both of those.

Yup those two are by far the biggest and most athletic and cause IU to struggle. No one else is anywhere near that level in conference and as result IU has taken care of them.

OSU and Maryland seem to be IU's kryptonite. I have now seen every team play and can confidently say OSU and Maryland are just better. They are also a terrible matchup for the Hoosiers with their physicality and ability to score. Problem is we play OSU again and will probably end the same and we probably lose one more. Still in a tough stretch but I have seen Iowa and MSU play who are next and both look no where on the same level as OSU and below NW but still good. (comparison Maryland just lost to OSU in a close game like IU did and beat MSU by over 30 tonight). OSU is banned from postseason play this yr but its them and Maryland for 1-2 and OSU could easily take conference crown and then have season done with ban. The question is whether we can get to 14-4 and a solid third which would be best record in conference ever. Don't start dropping games to teams you should not, but Maryland and OSU are that good. IU played far from their best game tonight but part of that is OSU is that good and just took out Maryland as well.

First place on line and like Maryland, OSU has been our kryptonite but we nearly beat them last two games despite a long losing streak. As I said I have come to the conclusion winning conference is unlikely but finishing ahead of Mich and OSU is a must. IU has 4 easy games down stretch (PU, Ill, PSU and Wisconsin), two should win tougher home games (MSU, Iowa) and four pure tossups (@iowa, OSU home and away, Mich). To me you need to win the 6 I said in first two groups and at worse split the tossups for a 15-3 record. Anything less is a disappointment. As an aside Rutgers has been out over a month with COVID. At this point with them being a pretty bad team, Big Ten needs to tell them they have one more week to get it under control or they cannot play again this year and expose other teams. No excuse to have a COVID stoppage of 5 weeks unless you have not been following proper COVID protocol with quarantine and contact tracing in which case they cannot subject other teams to it.

Not surprised. They make mistakes in the notes a lot there but they are definitely 9-3 and 7-1 not what's in the notes:). It probably got copied from two games ago by mistake.

IU is 9-3 and 7-1 not 7-3 and 5-1. IU Wins Thursday they take the Big Ten lead. Both games are at home and this is a chance to dispose of two teams toward the top of the conference this week and open up a lead on everyone not named Maryland which they already started to do. OSU, Michigan and MSU are the other teams closest to them and they have two of the three this week and the third in Michigan is shut down for COVID. Reality is if IU wants a chance to beat Maryland for title they need to lose at most once or maybe win out. In terrific position for second if they take care of business as they play every team around them still besides Maryland so with wins can keep those other teams behind in standings as they are now.

That's about right. I would love to be higher but based on watching this team they look like the 15-20 best team in the country.

Absolutely. We have more good coaches then ever in other programs and have turned around many bad ones thanks to that. The right coach will do same for Men's Basketball. Other programs like Women's basketball are proof of that and they had no history that was good to speak of.

Posted in Women's Thread as well: Exhibit A: IU Women erase a double digit deficit against a really good NW team in second half for double digit win. They have now pulled away from rest of Big Ten besides Maryland and will compete with them for Big Ten Title. This also shows tremendous growth as IU was in same position earlier in yr vs. Tennessee and lost. Exhibit B: IU Men are down double digits second half against bad Rutgers team and never get over hump and take a bad loss and have shown no growth throughout season. One has a coach who needs an extension to avoid being poached and the other has a coach who needs to be fired. Amazing the difference where programs are at.

Posted in IU Rutgers game thread as well: Exhibit A: IU Women erase a double digit deficit against a really good NW team in second half for double digit win. They have now pulled away from rest of Big Ten besides Maryland and will compete with them for Big Ten Title. This also shows tremendous growth as IU was in same position earlier in yr vs. Tennessee and lost. Exhibit B: IU Men are down double digits second half against bad Rutgers team and never get over hump and take a bad loss and have shown no growth throughout season. One has a coach who needs an extension to avoid being poached and the other has a coach who needs to be fired. Amazing the difference where programs are at.

That makes no sense. Why would the Packers have any incentive to screw the Colts, a team in the other conference they have no connection to? I am not doubting Patrick said it, but I am just not sure that is true as Packers would have zero reason to screw Colts.

Scott is a bit overly optimistic in thinking he's NFL ready. This will hurt Scott way more than it will hurt IU. I actually, think Baldwin, Ellis and James have more upside and break away speed. There is literally no trait that stands out that will get Scott drafted. He has been a nice steady back for IU and I like him a lot but he can certainly be replaced.

My how we have turned the tables. It used to be PU was the ranked team who dominated the series, but last few years it is IU. We can get mad about our coaching situation with the IU men, but the fact that the Boilers have held on to Sharon Versyp this long and let her drive the program into the ground is mind blowing. Women's Basketball used to be to PU what Soccer is to IU. The difference is when Mike Freitag started driving the program into the ground, IU went out and replaced him to get back to the top while PU just lets Versyp continue to kill the program. No complaints and I am glad we have found our leader who is good at what she does in Coach Moren (and there is a clause in her contract that PU has to pay us Millions to take her from us so we are good there) and PU can continue to employ their incompetent coach who screwed us way back. Schedule is about to get a lot tougher with the Rutgers game cancelled, but we certainly handled the bottom of the Big Ten with no problem winning all six of our Big Ten victories by at least 20 points. MSU and NW on road next who are actually good and I will be thrilled if we get one of them. Time for men to follow suite and win tonight. Boiler down.

Easy win as expected and same should occur against Wisconsin. Until we get to the MSU and NW games on road we have no business losing and should be at least 7-1 in conference heading into those. Cool to see Berger have a triple double.

We will eventually. Even if we get a COVID cancellation it will likely get re-scheduled for later. Big Ten set up several byes for this situation and it might not be bad to play this game later in yr when we are in middle of a tough stretch to get an easier game in between.

I'm worried about two things tonight and neither is us losing. One is the eye injury to Cardano-Hillary and the other is the possibly more serious injury to Penn's ankle, especially after seeing her on crutches. Good news is our next 4 games are against bad teams and we need to win them all with or without those two. I know we were picked to win the Big Ten but I was skeptical we could top Maryland. Basically we were picked ahead of them because of experience and Maryland losing a couple players. Doesn't matter they re-load with 5* recruits every year. It would be like IU picked to win Big Ten East next year over OSU in Football because we return more players. Realistically though those teams have plenty of players in waiting and will still be better. My bigger question is much like the Football team, can we jump Iowa, NW and OSU and clearly position ourselves as second best team in conference instead of 4th or 5th. That is what I am looking for. What happened tonight I knew was coming a mile away and doesn't change anything. Only worried about the unjuries.