IUCrazy2

Fair enough. My opinion is his coaching leaves a whole lot to be desired, he has an advantage now that those coaches going back to 2008 could only dream of, and he is an arrogant *******. Not a fan. He has completely turned me off. I couldn't give a **** what they do the rest of the year. They aren't winning anything that matters so go win some games in the BTT, go on some run in the NIT. Who gives a .....

What Mike Woodson did these past 4 games was the equivalent of CJ Gunn becoming a dead eye 3 point shooter in several games this year when we were down 15+ with a minute to go. Except CJ didn't jump on the scorers table after hitting them and pound his chest like he just hit "the shot". And Woodson's teams have made a really bad habit of severely underperforming each year he has been here and then turning it on late in a few games to "gut past the adversity" so that they could brag on mediocrity. The Big Ten absolutely sucks this year. Going 10-10 in this league or making a "turn around" from 6-10 to 10-10 isn't some amazing feat. It was hitting shots in junk time of a game you already lost.

As of today, I wanted him fired. I knew he wasn't going to be so I was kind of hoping he would draw on that inside straight, have a decent year, and then hang it up. Now I am kind of falling in the "Do I really enjoy this sh*t anymore" category. Woodson is an arrogant @$$ with really nothing to back up the arrogance. The team is taking this whole "---- the fans" persona on (when they are getting paid multiple times what the average IU fan makes in a year) and, I don't know, I have kind of been backing this because of emotional habit and I don't know how much longer I am in. If NGW has any true insight, the program he is describing isn't really what made me like IU basketball. It doesn't appeal to me. Woodson's attitude doesn't appeal to me. The players are taking his attitude and that doesn't appeal to me. Having a bunch of Xavier Johnsons cycling through the program chasing a payday and then sh*t talking the people that help pay them doesn't appeal to me. I wasn't on the Woodson train but I was still on the IU train. I have to say that there are a whole host of reasons for me not to support the school anymore from politics to athletics. Having my nose rubbed in sh*t after being here to support the absolute crap show this program has been for 2 decades has me really reconsidering my time and money on all of it. Football, basketball, women's basketball, the academics, apparel...my attitude right now was ---- Woody and I am kind of feeling ---- IU.

F--- Quinn Buckner.

If that is the case, Woodson can't get the ---- out of here quick enough for me.

That is only really good news to me if he isn't our 3.

Now give that fanbase our results over even just a 6 year period and what do we think they look like?

Define not working well for awhile. Duke made a coaching change from an all time great to a former player, kept their recruiting style, and are currently (or were before UNC beat them last night) a consensus Top 10 team. Kentucky was sitting around Top 15. The Top 25 is littered with programs that have built a core and supplemented with portal players. What you are suggesting we are about to try has not been anywhere near as successful. Woodson may be a savant who is about to revolutionize the game or he may be an idiot who dug himself a hole so deep that a Hail Mary is his only chance to succeed now. Which do you think is the more likely scenario? My guess, we are looking up at Duke again next year with their "hasn't worked well" approach.

School!!!? We talking about school!!!??

How are they selling this? Seriously, I want to be in a room with the Cooks and Simons discussing investment opportunities in my pet rock business if they think dropping $6 million on a likely bubble ceiling basketball team is a good use of their money. I have always heard that rich people did not get that way by being stupid and wasting money but here we are.....

I mean what he is saying could work next year but it isn't a recipe for sustained success. Woodson's strategy is to draw an inside straight every year apparently. While that is technically possible and you could potentially win big if you do it, it is a completely bass ackwards way to build a program. As I have seen people say, it doesn't have to be this hard at Indiana. This is wasting money and resources for what is likely to be wildly inconsistent play from year to year. It is stupid, which is why no one else that we currently aspire to be is doing it.

Remember this is the same person saying it is too risky to go get a coach like May because that doesn't work out very often.....

Nothing Woodson has done as Coach of Indiana matches your last paragraph. Glad the 66 year old professional coach who has cashed over $10 million is ready to "get serious" now. DWS

Why do you think they are any more likely to have this perfect hire set up after another disaster season next year than they are this year? Who identifies themselves as a target other than another flavor of the month which you seem afraid of trying? Your scenario is just as likely to trade 4 bad years for 5 by keeping the current bad hire around an extra year.

Going off the Assembly Call show they did earlier this week, Mike Weismuth (sp) Iu_in_philly or something like that when he was a lowly poster like us said that when he was looking at things and putting together his stats to see what successful coaches looked like early on, the most important thing was that second and third recruiting cycle. You have to hit on those guys. You have to get the right guys in to run what you want to run. You mess up on those 2 recruiting cycles and you are not likely to last past year 5. I think any new coach should have that in mind. You can have hiccups in year 1 and 2. That is when you have your fan honeymoon and can still sell recruits on the idea that things aren't great yet because I haven't been able to completely enact my vision yet. By year 3 or 4 you have to have things moving positively or you are toast. Woodson's biggest issue this year isn't so much just the losses, it is that he has doubled down on a philosophy that isn't in vogue (or winning enough) and he has absolutely nothing he can point to for the fanbase going into year 4 to say, "See, help is on the way. Can you see my vision with what we have coming?" He has nothing to sell right now. You can't be in that spot in year 3. You have to come in with a five year plan and execute it. I don't think Woodson really thought that far ahead. I think he thought the Indiana name, his NBA experience, and money was going to buy him some of the best rosters in college and he would just outcoach these minor leaguers from there. That hasn't been the case. In fact, it was super unlikely to work that way and was a flawed approach to begin with.

So my opinion, take it for what it is worth, I think you go out and find a good coach. A good X's and O's guy who seems competent at landing players. I think either Pearl or May could fall into that category. However, I think you look for a winner. I think Pearl's positives are clear. To make a case for May, he and his staff walked into a spot where they had to hide facilities and they were still able to identify the right players and recruit to a point where they turned around that program and were winning despite their disadvantages. I could work with that. Hopefully whomever you bring in has an idea of what he wants to run and what his ideal players look like. From there, I play a bit of the moneyball approach to recruiting at the college level. We have a bunch of money to use. I wouldn't do what Woodson has done and swung for so many big fish. I would target a few of them but I would really focus in on guys in that 40-100 range to try and build a foundation. And I would make that clear. I plan on building a bit of a foundation that we can always fall back on to try and avoid wild fluctuations in performance from year to year. Stick with me, my goal is challenging for a conference title and Sweet 16 type of team by year 4. You should see us grow to that. The portal would be used to fill gaps, not rosters. Hopefully I am successful enough that in years 5-10 I get more shots at the 1-40 guys but the bread and butter should be the kids that are in that 40 to 100 range that tend to stick longer. Does that get a title? I don't know. However, with the right guy who has a plan I think it at least gets us to a stable point like a Purdue has been. Then you can start talking about pushing the NIL a little more and gamble a little more on the big fish. I don't think the crash diet version of roster building is going to work long term.

You can't just hold on because of fear of the unknown either.

Cupps is the type of player people wish Woodson was getting as like the third or fourth guy in a recruiting class. Kids like him usually take a bit of time to get acclimated and I think that is especially true when it is clear their coach is telling them A)you need to get the ball to the post and B)it isn't my job to get you shots. Cupps is a system player. I bet he is a 8 to 10 point a night kid at a place like Purdue or Wisconsin where it is the coaches job to get players shots. I think the kid can play and if you keep players like him around for 4 years, they are the type that pay dividends. We are Mercenary U under Woodson though. He had no intention of building anything but a team (not a program) that would get him to the Finals and he could walk off with his brilliance proven. It is an attempt at the Lakers approach to roster building. We don't draft and develop guys, we just go and take our pick of free agents. I think that is what he was expecting to be able to do here. Cupps doesn't fit that model. Cupps does fit the model of a bunch of teams that have been stealing our lunch for a long time though....

Dude every coach gets a honeymoon. The fans backed off Miller and Woodson their first few years too. Crean got a little longer honeymoon because the administration burned the program to the ground when he took over. And even then people were annoyed in year 3 when things weren't progressing like we wanted. You know what kept people mostly quiet another year? Cody Zeller and a foundation of Hulls, Watford, and Verdell Jones still in place. The emergence of Oladipo that coincided with Zeller's arrival on campus is what gave him room. The fans will give you room if you are giving them hope. Woodson isn't giving hope. What little hope he had for next year walked out the door with McNeely. Finally, Woodson's approach to recruiting and the money he has at his disposal to buy a roster (something no other coach before him has had) also hurts his ability to claim he needs time for things to develop. He is almost exclusively operating on landing either 5* supposedly ready made Freshman or on proven guys from the portal. That method is built on the idea of win now. There isn't much development happening there. So his own approach screws him over with making the "give me time" argument that someone like Crean could have made in the past.

And you gotta think the reason his Dad is invested like that is because they view Indiana as an institution as one of the better options but they just have an issue with management. Same with Sisley. Get any semi-competent coach in here and we can still land that 2025 class that has kids you build around. This portal Uber alles approach isn't a winner. It is lazy, short term thinking that not only is going to sink Woodson, it is going to put his inevitable replacement in a deeper hole than they should be.

Co-f---ing-sign I liked that response but just liking it wasn't enough. Spot on.

No need to apologize. That is 100% the situation.

All I needed to know. Thanks for the co-sign to what that guy put out there.

If Dakich is taking a side opposite of yours today, just wait a day, he'll be with you then.