HoosierX

When is Pasternack going to get a chance at a high major? His run at UCSB has been pretty remarkable.

Berger quiet all game and then went off when the team needed buckets in the 4th.

Exactly. Wtf was his leverage?

I think it’s safe to say X meant a lot more to this team than anyone realized.

It's crazy to me that whenever we punch a team in the mouth, you almost know for sure they are going to come back. When other teams do it to us, it tends to just get worse.

First of all, I think it's really hard to make a statement like that. You are intimately familiar with the IU fanbase and I would wager not intimately familiar with any other ones. Second, I'm genuinely curious, how do you feel the actions of the fans are affecting the team's play? Logically, how would that actually work? I'm going to throw an Occam's Razor explanation out for our results/slumps - our coaches and/or players just haven't been that good. It would be pretty silly, with as large as the fan population is, to assume the personality profile of our fanbase is very different from other fanbases that also have very large populations. From a statistical perspective, it's just very unlikely. Is there more negativity with our fanbase? Probably, which I would have to wager is the result of two things: 1) There are a lot of fans that care about the basketball program, and a lot of them care a great deal about IU basketball which leads to higher intensity of emotions, both good and bad. And when we don't play well, it leads to a large amount of high-intensity negativity from a sheer volume perspective. The same way that from a volume perspective, there was a lot more negativity from Oklahoma football fans than IU football fans this past year. 2) So often, it's very hard to see how the future is going to be better than the present. It's really hard again right now. This season is looking lost, which injuries are for sure playing a big part of. But even though that's true the injury narrative doesn't help the future. We're going to lose most of our best players next year, and are going to have comparable or less talent than a lot of other teams in the Big Ten. And quite frankly, we need to out-talent other teams because we have a coaching staff that isn't going to outcoach the other team on many occasions. I also think the NIL changes the game when it comes to the logically lazy explanation (in my opinion) that the fans contribute to losing. These players are going to make as much as they do in NIL money because the fans care, period. If the players don't have marketing reach, they won't make money. The fans are showing up for games, they are getting the players paid, they are not the reason we are losing games.

So you don't enjoy IU basketball as much anymore because other people you don't know have different opinions than you? Sounds like a you problem.

We aren't mighty Indiana anymore. It's an absurd narrative to say a part of the reason we lose games is that teams get more up to play against us than other teams. That's just not true at this point.

Just because you did that then, doesn’t make your rankings logical now.

Lol the defender even raised his hand for the foul.

Man, I remember that guy causing a firestorm on the message boards, because he clearly wasn’t good enough to play in the BIG. Supposedly Crean hadn’t even seen him play before offering. I’m not sure he ever played D1 ball. Edit: I was wrong, apparently he played an UNC Greensboro and averaged 5 points a game. https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/player/_/id/52334/david-williams

I know Stuhoo already covered this, but you can't ignore the fact that IU has 2 quad 1 wins and UK has none. UK shouldn't be ranked, taking Mizzou on the ML last night was easy money.

Tom Geyer

I'm not making a comparison, outside of the message board aspect. My point is that fan negativity on message boards has literally nothing to do with the decisions of recruits. IU football has sucked for decades, fan interest is not just going to magically appear.. It will come after we start winning, not before.

Interesting, now I know why all the basketball recruits choose Kentucky, they love the positivity on Rupp Rafters!