Home Jersey

Please merciful God no.

You handle any/many racial discrimination cases before?

SIAP but what’s the rumor with Ballo?

I think great coaches steal sets from each other all the time. Don't have to be innovative to do that IMO.

Clearly he knows how to set them up for success and get the best out of them. Being a good motivator is one of the most important things for a college coach. The Pitino clip you shared in the other thread was excellent. I think being a motivator is probably Dan Hurley's biggest strength. They are struggling this year but every game is close. They never get blown out. Their perimeter defense is not as good as it has been and their bigs are not Sanogo or Clingan. But that staff sets them up to succeed and gets every ounce of effort out of their teams. I'm excited to watch a coach with some fire at IU.

Hard not to be impressed seeing Bates production there.

Might take you up on that, but I think my boys out here in Jersey can hook me up. GTL baby.

Maybe yours is too boney... I've got plenty cushion for the pushin...

Meh, that post does not convince me he knows anyone for real and the Fox sports thing undermines the idea he's not purely a troll. Just my opinion

Don't push it. You're gonna have to pay for that. Lol

Isaac is a complete and total troll IMO and the "March 2 3pm Foxsports" beyond confirms that for me. Personally put zero stock in him. Has helped rack up the page count though, I'll give him that. Unreal pace in this thread

If Brad Stevens coaches at IU next year, I will tattoo "BS" on my a$$ cheek. Lol... happily too... upping the stakes on this speculation (I have no tattoos)

No....sounds like most would rather have Cryin Cronin... I’d definitely take Self over Cronin but think the odds of Self are so astronomically low you may as well call it 0

BRAD ******* STEVENS You should get that trademarked @68Hoosier Lol Tis a joke before anyone takes this sh!tpost seriously…

I’ve shared my Jeremiah April story here before but since his name is rarely mentioned I’ll take the opportunity to share it again. Psych 101 lecture. Sitting a few rows back from the front when Priller and April sit next to me. April asked if I could share notes for the entire semester with him and Priller slaps him on the shoulder, goes “dude we have to take our own” lol. Then they were talking amongst themselves and Jeremiah randomly goes “man… if basketball doesn’t work out, I’m moving to Colorado and becoming a Rastafarian man…” Sometimes I wonder if he’s living his dream out there…

Good questions, I don’t know the answers. I’ll speculate because this is a message board so keep in mind it’s just one guys opinion. My experience with UCLA fans is that they’re typical fair weather fans and because of the program’s tradition, the expectation is very high (similar to ours). He’s commented about being frustrated with NIL and the transfer portal out there. And they’re hardly at the stadium. So you get all the expectations of a blue blood and not a commensurate amount of support / resources. Then when the fans do show up, because of their high expectations, they don’t really create a home court advantage and sometimes boo, which in an already half empty stadium, can be deflating at home. So I can see that getting a guy worked up after losing the game enough to say that the fans “make it worse.” I’m sure there are many examples of him being callous toward fans at Cincy too, but I think IU fans wouldn’t present the same challenges he’s had to call out at UCLA to try and help the program. We support our teams - to your point - only after things were totally off the rails did we boo. And we put our money where our mouth is. Too many other things going on in LA, have to fight for it… served on a silver platter here. A parallel for our current reality may be if Cronin were hired and after his first year talked about fans needing to reign each other in when they act crazy on social media. Could people stomach that? Some better than others. But I think it would largely depend on how it’s presented to fans. I’m not trying to be a Cronin guy at all, but I think people are making way too much hay out of “what will fly with fans” or not. IMO Cronin, a coach’s son, who left his alma mater Cincinnati for UCLA, is a guy that’s a proven winner and wants a title as bad as anybody. He’s not afraid of the expectations that come with a blue blood - he chased the prestige but LA doesn’t seem like a personality fit. Think he’d win over the majority of the fanbase in due time because we haven’t seen a coach who is visibly dying to win on the IU sidelines in what feels like forever. Yes he’s a curmudgeon. He’s also about to be the youngest active coach to 500 wins. Again just one guys opinion. IMO probably doesn’t happen coz of the buyout anyway. But I wouldn’t be upset if it does.

I can’t remember which game, but early in conference play I think, I remember the camera panning to the bench while we were down big and showing Ballo and Reneau with James next to them. James seemed to say “I may actually get to play” because of all the foul trouble and Ballo burst out laughing, Reneau had a stank face on as if to say this is not the time for laughter. So comical

Any more than 3 shakes and you’re playing with yourself. Lol

Yes I think there are much better ways to frame the sentiment than Cronin did. Conceptually though I do think sometimes it makes sense for coaches to “check” fans as long as it doesn’t come off as resentment or something. 100% agree on needing someone who can coach the fans too

For sure, not helping himself in LA with already lackluster fan support. We’ve said how many times that IU fans are hungry for a winner? IMO, don’t see our fans really booing in the same scenario anyways. If we did, we’d deserve to be called out by the coach. But again, just IMO, people are acutely sensitive to never criticizing the fans after Woody’s campaign the last year, for lack of a better term. People here would totally rip our own fans for booing in the same scenario. Especially if the coach wasn’t Woodson.

There for sure is a question/debate to be had about Cronin’s personality fit at IU. Agree. Him calling out home fans for booing at critical parts of the game instead of cheering them on and trying to will them to victory isn’t a big concern to me. I will have to watch the video later but think someone posted the quote and he referenced pressure while shooting FTs specifically (could be mistaken). I think “pressure” is a lame word for a coach to use most of the time. But booing during FTs is something only the away team should have to deal with IMO. Probably better ways to address that with the fans, but I like a coach willing to call out his own players when it’s deserved and also will defend them where warranted. This is related to the idea of being “in community” with each other I posted earlier and the pact that exists between programs and their fans. IMO, the IU admin broke the pact by bringing Woodson back this year, so yeah, people were well within their rights to boo the hell out of him. I don’t think a team that’s led the game for 37 mins and is blowing it down the stretch needs negative noise from their own fans. That’s when they need home court advantage the most. To me, unless there are extenuating circumstances I don’t know about, that is fans breaking the pact and deserves to be called out. That’s not IMO a smack in the face to fans, it’s holding them accountable for doing their part.

Such a good point. I don't believe IU's fans are the reason the program has struggled - on the contrary, it's one of the program's few remaining strengths. All major programs have fans that can act wacky and sometimes become toxic, especially online. What is unhelpful though, is that it seems our fanbase largely has a skewed idea of what a "successful" D1 basketball coach looks like. Coach K went to 13 FFs. John Wooden went to 12. Dean Smith went to 11. Roy Williams went to 9. Tom Izzo went to 8. Denny Crum and Adolph Rupp went to 6. Knight, Boeheim, Guy Lewis, Lute Olson, and Rick Pitino went to 5. Rupp and Wooden are the only ones with a better success rate than Knight at converting F4s to championships. Knight was at IU for 29 years, won 3 titles, and hardly ever missed the tournament. 11 B10 titles. That is a level of success that you can't realistically expect to replicate IMO - definitely not going to flip a switch with one coaching hire and make that the standard again overnight. Most recent article I could find was from 2022 ... since the year 2000, Duke made the S16 15 times. Kansas 13. MSU 12. Kentucky 12. UNC 11. Wisconsin, UCLA, Cuse, Gonzaga, and Arizona with 10 (as of 2022). Nobody in the sport goes to the S16 every year. Only the elite are going at such a regular frequency. IU has been far from elite since Knight left. From 1992-2000, Knight was pedestrian by his standards. He still won almost 20 games and made the tournament each year. By non-Blue Blood standards, that's a pretty decent stretch. But people are unimpressed by Cronin going dancing every year from 2010-11 through 2022-2023 or "only" having four S16s. Most coaches never win a title. A guy who can consistently make March Madness - given enough time - is more likely to eventually break through and win a title than any school - IU or not - is to hire the next Bob Knight.

Interesting data

It could work out as a disaster. When you say borderline losing his mind over the past 2 seasons, not sure if you're referring to something specific or the general reported unhappiness in LA and being snippy with people? In LA, there are so many other things to do... I think he'd welcome an environment that appreciates and celebrates good basketball. Don't think UCLA fits that bill so much. I actually think that's where it could be a good fit here. That guy wants to win and he does a lot of it. He wants to win probably worse than any fans do. Definitely more than our current head coach. I think fans would come to appreciate his fire, even if it comes off curmudgeon-y at times. Fresh start with a new fan base, I think he'd win people over by being an old school basketball coach type. They're not always going to use kind words to make people feel warm and fuzzy. I think Cronin was justified in calling out fans yesterday. Totally different situation from us this year. It was complete BS for Woody to blame fans for his failures, but fans are not above being called out when it's warranted. IU fans have very high expectations that don't align with the reality of CBB IMO. Still, we only started booing when the team was getting blown out. IMO Assembly Hall would not be booing a team trying to fend off a comeback for a win. If they did, they should be called out. I get not being excited about him personality wise. But it's true he's been way better than IU has in recent history. That's not the bar for success, but making the tournament every year is a pretty good floor. Not the best coach we've talked about but the kind of guy who can give you a shot. People won't find a coach that's regularly making the S16 every single year and also willing to come here right now IMO. Think there is a tendency to way overestimate the amount of coaches who fit that billing of success. Deep runs in March are special. Largely because they usually happen pretty infrequently for almost every program except UConn, Duke, Nova semi-recently. Unless you have a truly elite coach, every guy is going to have some stank on him. Just gotta find a stank you can tolerate and ride with em.