Aeggie

Devonte got benched for most of the 2nd half last night. We basically had the same problem and were able to win because we were only facing Northwestern - we haven't had more than one guard play well during the same game for a LONG while and Northwestern is probably the only B1G team we can beat with only one guard playing well. Hopefully the benching will spur Devonte on because he looked lethargic last night. Al has been inconsistent but maybe last night will get him going. And Phinisee can't be THIS bad out of nowhere, can he? We saw this guy score in the B1G all last year when available. One piece of good news is that Archie mentioned that the 11-man rotation "maybe" wasn't going to work so it looks like the rotation is going to be shaved a bit which I DO think will help some. Will it be enough I'm much less certain but I think it's a step in the right direction depending on who gets cut. My advice? Hunter, Damezi, and Armaan need a minutes reduction and Race is probably slightly better than De'Ron even though Thompson falls asleep defensively at times. We'll see. Shortening the rotation and playing our better players a bit more will help but we really need our guards to turn it around and start contributing every night somehow. If we can get about ~20-30 efficient points and 6 assists out of Phinisee/Al/Devonte this team could maybe be decent. If not last year is going to look like a cakewalk because their poor play is what allows defenses to sag so deep into the paint to prevent post touches.

I think our problems are all rooted in how badly our guards are playing. They can't shoot so defenses can collapse in the paint without penalty. They also struggle to enter the ball into the post which rewards defenses for collapsing in the paint because that forces our bad shooters to shoot the ball. Al and Armaan in particular, and Devonte and Rob at times, get beat off the dribble at the point of attack often and constantly get our defense into rotation which leads to breakdowns and open shots. Our guards don't beat defenses down the floor, they don't finish well in the paint, they're not creating much for teammates, they're telegraphing their passes and allowing the defense to anticipate and intercept them, they're turning the ball over by throwing it to the opponent and into the stands... what do these guys do well? Devonte Green is our only guard that's a scoring threat and he's not a consistent performer. Al Durham is not a consistent performer. Rob Phinisee is not a consistent performer right now. Armaan Franklin, understandably, is not a consistent performer quite yet. I'm not sure how this team can fix this without any reliable guards. Without any perimeter scoring, why would defenses do anything other than pack the paint? Further, does this get better next year? Is the Phinisee we saw last year or the Phinisee we're seeing this year more what we should expect going forward? Have we seen any guards take big steps forward under Archie so far?

None of the people saying we only won the games we were supposed to picked us to win 8 games this year. The over/under according to Vegas was 6.5 iirc and people thought it was way too high. We exceeded any reasonable expectations. Period. That simple. Anyone complaining about how we played this year must be a new fan because winning 8 games is not the norm at Indiana to put it very lightly. There were mistakes made by players and coaches that hurt for sure, but I feel good about letting Coach Allen grow into the best coach he can be on the job here. We return every single player that rushed or caught a pass in the bowl game outside of Nick Westbrook. Most of our team, and the bulk of our talent, are freshmen and sophomores. This team is going to get better as it gets older and that's still happening. Looking at the schedule next year there's a chance we could reach 9 wins in the regular season. It'd take more than a little luck but this team has a real chance to have an even bigger breakthrough very soon and I'm excited about that. Allen is still building the roster to a place where more freshmen can redshirt. We're not rolling quite yet and I think we're ahead of schedule so I don't get the doom and gloom.

It has been less than 24 hours but Allen said he received calls weeks back so I'm sure he's fielding calls today and will be in the coming days as well. I think we'll hear more at Allen's next press conference on Monday which should set a timeline

The way that Trayce is playing there's a chance he earns a first round grade and if he earns a first round grade, who knows? If he's going to get a guaranteed deal and a couple years to develop while collecting a pro check that's a tough deal to turn down. Does he need to learn to shoot? Yeah, sure, if he's trying to be a lottery pick. If he's okay with going in the second half of the first round and maybe spending some time in the G league I think he has a real chance if he continues to perform well throughout Big Ten play. That's a big if but if an NBA team took a look at his FT% and convinced themselves that they could teach Trayce to shoot they wouldn't be the first team to take on a prospect with that in mind. Trayce has been way outperforming my expectations and I think a lot of other people's as well. If he can keep it up he has a real chance to play into the first round especially after the success of smaller "bigs" like Draymond Green and now Brandon Clarke. He could come back anyway, or grade out just outside of the first round if he is more up and down in conference play but he really has been fantastic.

You think this is the only "easy" schedule IU has had in the last 26 years? Somehow Allen was the only one to actually go and win eight games in all that time, and we didn't have to play Ohio State, Michigan, AND Penn State every year for most of that stretch. The people complaining about who we beat have totally lost the plot. No one ever brings up who we beat when we last won 8 games in 1993. They're not going to talk about it with this team either. Indiana has won 9 games only twice. Ever. Against all sorts of schedules. And people are spitting in the face of 8 wins? Get some perspective, please!

McRobbie has been and will continue to be a huge obstacle for our athletics programs and taking advantage of this momentum that Allen has established. Glass has always had a hand tied behind his back due to McRobbie raiding the piggy bank for non-athletic projects and has done pretty well considering those circumstances by raising money on his own. I think it is going to depend a lot on how much Glass can raise on his own, unfortunately. I think other programs have benefited from renovations to the point where we might be in position to shift more towards football but that's not a long term solution.

I think that we'll be ranked coming out of the bye. Enough teams ahead of us will lose in those two weeks for us to sneak in.

We have a real chance to make a move in the pecking order if Dantonio's time is coming to an end in East Lansing as many suspect. If that's true and they don't make the right hire we could make a move. I'm not ready to say Locksley is a bad hire at Maryland but the early returns aren't great at least. We have a great opportunity in the coming years for sure. If we can even get to being a 6-7 win average over the next say 5 seasons that would be huge for us.

I know we're all having a good laugh in the Fire Tom Allen thread, but I wanted to pick up on what I was saying when that thread started. We are now in Tom Allen's third season, he has more win than any IU coach in history to this point, and we've secured our 4th bowl berth in the last 26 seasons. Meanwhile, I believe our talent level is slowly improving and our depth is slowly getting better. Allen was hired on December 01, 2016 so I don't really consider the 2017 class "his," but I'll include them because those kids are still here. Per 247, these were our national and B1G recruiting rankings 2017 National - 62 B1G - 13th 2018 National - 50 B1G - 10 2019 National - 36 B1G - 8 Now, 2020 doesn't look so good so far at 60th nationally and 12th in the B1G as things stand but we also only have 14 commitments as of now. I don't know how big that class will end up being, but Tom Allen did mention during his press conference that he was planning on calling a couple recruits that same night so hopefully this season bears some fruit on the recruiting trail. But these last few classes have been good and our depth has been improving. We have a lot of young talent at RB and will eventually have a deep, seasoned RB room because of it. Guys like Matthew Bedford and David Ellis and Mullen are getting playing time as true freshmen. Given the quality of this class a lot of the RS freshmen we start seeing next year should be impact players and we have a 4* WR coming in that has a chance to step right into a deep and talented receiving corps. I want to see how we finish this recruiting class, hopefully we can get to 8-4 or better and ****** some more 4* talent. We've got first year coordinators on both sides of the ball. I think most are very happy with DeBoer already - I know I am - and we've been frustrated by the early returns of Wommack's young defense. But it is his first year too. I expect us to take a step ahead on both sides of the ball next year due to both continuity and getting more talented as Allen's 2018/19 recruits get older. Plus whichever couple 2020 recruits are too talented to redshirt. Next year we'll return most of our offensive skill players and we're looking at this schedule: Home: WKU, Ball State, Maryland, Michigan State, Penn State, Illinois, Purdue Away: Wisconsin, Connecticut, Rutgers, Ohio State, Michigan We could be bowl eligible based solely on our home games. Then we have Connecticut and Rutgers on the road. Hell, even the Wisconsin game is the season opener so maybe we could catch them off guard. If we can get to 8 wins this season maybe we could do it again in 2020. Our 2021 schedule is definitely harder, with both Michigan and Ohio State visiting Bloomington as well as Cincinnati coming in(though I'm assuming they won't have Fickell anymore by then), but maybe by then we'll have enough depth that we look as those home games as bigger opportunities than they used to be. Imagine a RS Junior Penix throwing for 10 TDs combined against Michigan and Ohio State in 2021... I said this in the Fire Tom Allen thread a month ago but I really like what I see as far as the direction the program is heading in. I think we're seeing some growing pains from the new coordinators being new and we're still bowl eligible in October. And next year I think we're set up really well to get back to a bowl. And we've got one of the better recruiters we've had to take advantage of back-to-back bowl berths. We could be seeing a real foundation being laid here

We were running Penix quite a bit today before he got hurt, which I wasn't thrilled about. Then we also ran Ramsey a bunch even though we'd be extremely thin had he gone down too. I also didn't like punting inside the 40, though it didn't bite us. Our defense seems to be growing together a bit, but they haven't been strong enough to justify playing so conservatively. For better or worse, this year's Hoosiers are an offensively-oriented team whether the coaches would prefer that or not. Thankfully Ramsey didn't get hurt carrying the ball. Hopefully Penix can get back for the Nebraska game but even if he isn't back I think we still have a chance if Martinez isn't back for them yet. Could be an ugly game but well today's game was an ugly win and I certainly don't mind.

I believe Nebraska has the record for most consecutive sellouts and it's ongoing. It'll be sold out.

Sure looks like more than zero to me

Yes, you are. How many times in this thread have you whined that you're not allowed to have an opinion because not everyone agrees with you?

This thread is just crazy. Allen has this program moving in the right direction and hasn't even finished his third season. I'd like some of the folks suggesting we fire him to actually name some potential replacements for him. Who is going to come to Indiana and get less than three seasons to rebuild the roster even? Allen is bringing more talent to Indiana than we've ever had and this is his first season with a quarterback that can actually compete in this league. Let him and Penix grow together with guys like Mullen and the other talented underclassmen we have on the field. It's too early to judge Allen and a program like ours needs to exercise more patience. No one is going to be able to flip the roster in two recruiting classes here. I don't understand getting angsty because our young team played a good Michigan State squad tough at their place. We looked like we belonged all afternoon. We didn't need fluke plays or turnovers to sustain us or stay in the game. We slipped up late but if we play that well at Nebraska we have a good shot. We'll have a good shot in a lot of games this season. It doesn't make sense to write off this team, this coach, or the positive steps this program has taken. The Big Ten is playing nine conference games now, not eight, and this program did not backslide. A 5-7 finish now means more than it did under Wilson. It's a small step, and not enough, but unless you want to just ignore Indiana's long football history even small steps mean something. This team has a good shot at making a bowl this year so I don't get the doom and gloom. Penix makes this team a lot different. I think Allen should get at least five seasons unless the team craters and wins three games one year.