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I really appreciate this labor of love you do LI! I definitely create work for you, think I'm averaging 2.5 revisions per game lol

I am very happy to see that Race is still around the program while rehabbing! Good influence hopefully in the locker room... we need leadership in any form we can get it.

Right. As Stu said, need rim protection somewhere. Guess that's on the portal shopping list along with hopefully 2-3 guards. If Mgbako does not return, which I am slightly less confident about than others generally are, let's just say Spring will be... busy! Don't have any info to support that view on Mgbako ... just a random guy's gut feel, I'd handicap the odds at 70/30 he leaves as of now. Queen has to like what he's seen from IU big men regardless

There's no guarantee that Queen would start as a freshman IMO

Great post! You made a ton of great points. Someone said it the other day... we look like an AAU team out there sometimes. No boxing out when a shot goes up (as fundamental as it gets!) Not taking advantage of 2 for 1 opportunities/generally not smart basketball (turnovers, bad fouls.. sometimes bad body language) Bad communication on defense Play style that basically is dependent on having better/more dominant player(s) Like you said, sometimes it looks like they don't study a scouting report at all. Or if they do, most (not all) are only interested in the part that tells them about how the staff thinks they can score. We're gonna get double/triple teamed in the post all year... adjust already. We just had a relatively a long break and weren't prepared for that? That does not bode well for the rest of the year. Personnel limits us.* Of course, this team also beat Michigan on the road. The above is my hyper critical POV as of today. It's a long season. In all likelihood we will win a few games we shouldn't. But right now it looks like that win was more of an outlier in terms of our play than we can expect to see the rest of the way. I'm hoping to see the better version at Jersey Mike's Arena... it will be loud. It's a long year, who knows! Some individual aspects of individual play have improved... as a team, improvement has been anywhere from marginal to decent at best IMO depending on how you view things. And this team started from a really bad position. Just been ugly most of the year. *When I say personnel limits us, I'm specifically talking about the backcourt. But that sparked a thought - many people feel Mack should be playing 4 instead of a 3. Mack may have wanted to be a 3 as a condition of his recruitment. It's been widely publicized that Mgbako's mother directly reached out to Woody (essentially a top 10-15 ranked player falling in your lap). How much of that recruitment can we attribute as an earned win for the staff? How much worse off would we be if we didn't add him, our best shooting threat? What was the plan if we didn't add him? Yes Woody has landed a bunch of five star recruits... their ranking hasn't mattered on the court yet. Mods feel free to move to the rant thread.

I don't know how anybody browses this site without an ad blocker! :)

Sarratt is currently on a visit per Osterman/social media

I don't have a problem with calling out your players in the press. I just think he didn't also adequately acknowledge the role the staff had in this loss (awful game plan). I know he doesn't enjoy dealing with the press and you're unlikely to ever get real insight from press conferences anyway, but it does leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. The locker room must be (should be) pretty tense right now.

Can't let the girl he's dating now know she's not the love of his life. Lol

Retain Mackenzie and Malik. Add McNeeley, Queen, and Daquan Davis. I could see us having anywhere from 3-5 leavers (Ware, Gunn, Banks, Leal, Newton). Let's say Ware, Gunn, Banks and Leal leave. Assuming the above that we add Queen and Davis, that's 8 scholarship players, leaving 5 open. That is a lot of ground to cover while ensuring quality (seemingly not this staff's strong suit). IMO you need to add 2-3 more guards ideally from the portal and at least one rim protector. Maybe a guard/wing who can shoot (crazy idea I know) It definitely feels like the talent evaluation/development aspect of things are what this staff is so sorely lacking. Relying on Gunn and Banks to be net positives this year is a huge indictment of the staff. I know they tried to land better players but didn't... That's understandable but this is a results business and if you've got a top NIL program/the resources of Indiana, you've got to deliver. You can have a recruiting strategy focused on a handful of top guys....... but you better land em most of the time and be working on plan B/C/D. IMO the fundamental issue is that we're relying on Woody as a "bridge" guy but to actually BUILD the bridge, you need to be spot on with your roster management. Some level of continuity/balance over the years so you can improve. Yes putting guys in the NBA is good for the program but its worse for the program when they are quickly written off as a bust when they could've been helping us win for 1-3 more years. Woody's coaching philosophies/schemes are obviously old-school NBA influenced and thus rely on having more talented guys. Having a "bridge" guy is fine and well, as long as they're actually going to build it in a way that it's driving-ready for the next guy. Woody has delivered two fine-to-good seasons (depending how you see things) but his plan to build a bridge has been totally undermined by his roster management, which is made worse by the staff's inability to adapt their approaches. It's kind of ironic/crazy to me that a staff of NBA-oriented guys have apparently been so blatantly wrong in their assessment of the current roster over the offseason. If they were to turn the keys over now, the cupboard would be pretty bare. That speaks to their recruiting strategy/talent assessment/dev results. Right now we've got the support beams in place for the road but they're shaky we're missing some equipment. Hope is not lost but things are looking down. Good thing is, next game is only a few more days away. OK enough bridge analogies, back to work I guess lol

We are in agreement here.

Crean found the zone offense for dummies guide in the corner of the room and made it out. Woody saw and copied his escape. Archie remained in the opposite corner of the room repeatedly running head first into a wall, screaming.

JHS was getting absolutely torn apart on Twitter last night by NBA fans. Wonder if he wishes he was dominating college basketball while improving his game and potentially going higher in the draft. Even if he doesn't personally feel that way, I hope Mackenzie considers that. Not sure about JHS's family background but MM comes from a financially comfortable family... in other words nobody is relying on him to improve their situation. I know he stated his goal of being 1 and done but have to think it would be best for him to get another year of development under his belt

Totally agree. To be remotely optimistic about next year, you've got to be banking on returning at least Mackenzie and Malik. That is far from being guaranteed (hopefully we can hold onto Malik at least). Without those two, we have one 5-star committed and a roster full of transfer candidates/role players at best. They really need to finish the season strong and land a killer class in the spring. The buyout after this year is 12.5M, I wonder what it is after next season... I'm not saying push Woody now or then, just curious (by the end of January/mid-Feb I could feel very differently...). I'm going to support Woody and root for this team. Depending how the rest of the conference season goes, we may need to be more fluid in our planning and accelerate the succession timeline. That's where I'm at right now. "Woody is not the guy" yes... I think 99.9% of our fans will admit that. I still hope this team figures things out, firstly because I'm a fan, but also because it will put us in better position to go get "the guy" ... if we don't make the tournament this season and don't have a class of studs in the spring, is there really a point in a 4th season w/ Woody? Guess it depends on the $$$.

One bad game doesn't have me ready to panic. I am very very concerned though by the same issues on the court and Woodson's press conference yesterday. He sort of threw the guards and Mackenzie under the bus... he's the one who built the roster. A little accountability would be nice. There's got to be a lot of mixed feelings in the locker room. JHS was getting roasted on Twitter last night for playing poorly with the Lakers... sure would be nice if he were playing himself into the lottery instead. Hope Mackenzie is taking note... Getting to the tournament would be a great year. But the bar has to be higher in year 3. Get them playing strong through the rest of the conference season then go get some stud guards Woody!

I hear that. A second year with Mack would be cool. He'd benefit from it a lot too.

This is the sort of game that helps destroy a locker room. Mack/Banks/Gunn could all reasonably view their minutes as herky jerky and start thinking about what comes next. Ware obviously has his sights on the NBA (no issue with that). Our senior guards, with 10 years of combined experience, turn the ball over and can't shoot. Relying on Cupps as much as we have is the nightmare scenario many feared. I'm going to always root for the team and program - including the staff as long as they're here - but we already know how this song ends.

Waving the white flag? Wreaks of a desperation move from a coach at his wit's end. "Looking for a spark" "I wasn't getting what we needed from the guys so I had to go to someone else" The wheels could come off on this year very quickly. Gotta be better than this in January.

Not Andrew Hurley against UConn though, thank God

Rebounding atrocious. Defense atrocious. Offense garbage. Conference officiating garbage. Going to the Rutgers game, had higher hopes for this team than we're going to get. Deflating performance tonight. The season is not lost but it will most likely be mediocre. In other words, more of the same. Would love to dominate some day.

Have we legitimately turned the ball over or fouled on half our possessions? Maybe more?

Rapidly approaching the decision between going to bed at halftime and hoping to wake up to good news vs. torturing myself and staying up to watch this train wreck in the second half.

When Leal is playing the best of the 5 on the court, you're in trouble.

The lack of depth on this team is really and truly glaring. Regardless of tonight's outcome, I am more concerned about conference season after watching OSU vs Rutgers too