IUCrazy2

Then that is a recruiting failure. We have at least 3 guys on staff whose main contribution, by far, is supposed to be recruiting. If you strike out so many times that you can't even bring in one dude (allegedly, I don't know you from Adam and this is only going by what you are selling here), then you suck at your job. We apparently had 3 dudes that sucked at their job. All these recruiters have gone on after that to land ONE incoming recruit from the 2024 class and since we are going by hearsay, they are also currently in the process of fumbling away a really good in state 2025 class. I start saving money for the buyout this year. Armond Hill is gone. I am not padding retirement for a guy who doesn't add any value. Woody may think he does and if so, Woody could pay him out of his own $4 million salary. I would send a few of the other assistants packing as well. Everybody in this program rested on their laurels after two lackluster tournament appearances and it shows.

They ought to pay back some of the donors they suckered into buying out Archie to only be back here 3 years later.

With a new coach I can buy that. With Woodson I don't. We had that NIL money and some questionable guards and he couldn't convince even one guy to come here out of the portal. Also, I don't want NIL to be the main/only reason guys are coming here. I think that a team of mercenaries doesn't play well for program stability either. I want guys who have an interest in being here first with NIL maybe helping tip the balance.

I mean anything is possible I suppose but 20-12 sounds like a long shot if everything happens like people are saying right now. You can't build stability going to the transfer portal as often as we do. How many instances are there of coaches grabbing that many portal players and being successful where they aren't doing that to start a tenure? The portal is most effective in jump starting a new staff or filling in a piece here or there. If you are consistently pulling major pieces of your team out of the portal, you are going to struggle.

The circle I am having an issue squaring is that we are basically looking at implementing a year 1 rebuild in year 4 for what will be a 66 year old coach. Take everything that has happened up to this point and flush the majority of it from a stability standpoint because we are talking about losing Ware, Mgbako, Leal, Walker, Banks, Gunn, and Johnson. That is 7 of your current 12 scholarship players. One of the remaining 5 has had the type of injury he may never recover from and we haven't heard anything about his recovery in forever. So Cupps, Galloway, Reneau, and Sparks are your most likely returning pieces next year and you have 1 incoming Freshman committed. So we are talking potentially running to the portal or hoping for late decommits for 7 of our scholarships. That is just personnel. I think everyone believes we have to overhaul the offense and defense a bit over the summer as well. That is a complete rebuild. Keeping Woodson and staff around for year 4 is continuity in name only. Everything about how this next offseason is shaping up is screaming "total rebuild". Why should I trust that the guy who led us back to this point in 3 years is in any way, shape, or form equipped to rebuild it? Furthermore, what is the likelihood of a total rebuild, year one, start over season to end up looking like something that will probably lead to him getting fired anyway? We are starting over next year no matter who is in the head coaching spot. We have all seen this show before. We will get a bunch of new faces in. They won't have experience playing with each other. The "culture" is 4 guys who will be outnumbered by the newcomers so the likelihood of whatever culture we have soaking in next year is next to zero. What are the odds we are about 14-9 or 14-10 around this point next year talking about getting over humps and hoping our coach gets canned at the end of the year again? Greater than 50% is my guess.

Say for the sake of argument we give him 3 more years. What is your confidence level that with that time he is able to do anything better than a first round flame out in the tournament? I am not super confident. He is going to get at least one more year to shut everybody up. However, he isn't going to be able to just roll in with the attitude he has shown to date and have things go well. This isn't an easy job and the name Mike Woodson and Indiana doesn't mean what he thinks it does. He can't be on autopilot this off season. His @$$ needs to be out recruiting. His assistants don't develop anyone so he better be doing it or getting himself a whole new slate of bench coaches. I don't think it matters whether Woodson gers no more years, 1, 2, or 3. He isn't the guy. Keep him for 3 more years of mediocrity and piss poor play like we have seen, without 2 NBA draft picks (one of which he was forced to play in a different position because of injuries) and I think this program will be broken anyways. We aren't getting a top dude in here. There are some up and coming guys who appear to maybe have "it". I would much rather see an actual program being put together by one of those dudes which lays a foundation for the future then to spend 3 more years doing a reset every year because Woodson doesn't know WTF he is doing at the college level and he is too old and set in his ways to learn any differently AND he doesn't have the time to "grow" into the job. Goodman was Archie's butt boy. I don't give a sh** what he thought was going on. Trying another young mid major would have been better than what we did.

It is all about culture. We don't have one anymore. Indiana kids are going to have a little more buy in. You don't have Anthony Leal waiting around for 4 years for a few chances to contribute if he is from New Jersey. A core group of Indiana dudes on the team are where you build your culture and stability. The reason the players didn't work for Archie is because of Archie, not because of where the players were from. ETA: Also, outside of Texas, the places you mentioned aren't exactly oozing HS basketball talent. Kentucky goes national because they have to. Same with UConn. They couldn't sustain a program with home grown talent if they wanted to.

The thing with those kids is that you have to have a system they fit in and coaches who develop them. It isn't just a matter of going out and grabbing Braden Smith and plugging him in for Xavier Johnson. The system sucks and the coaching sucks. I watched Gabe Cupps give up a wide open 3 last night because he had a defender coming at him. He passes up the good shot, dribbles inside the arc about 3 feet, and then launches a long, off balance 2...and misses. I don't care who you bring in here, you, as a coaching staff, have to put them into a position to win. Our guys don't do that. Mr. NBA isn't doing it and the 3 recruiters and former terrible college coach aren't doing it. We lost several decades of college experience in Fife and Matta and we haven't done anything to replace it. And it shows. One last thing, our strength and conditioning program sucks @$$. I don't care if players look like the hulk at the end of each summer. We always appear a step slow and more winded than the other team. Kick that dude to the curb with Hill, Hunter, and Rosemond this summer and bring in guys who do more than recruit or get a front row nap to every game.

He'd drop that job like a hot potato to come to Indiana. Nevermind the ties he has here, the Big Ten and SEC are creating a real hierarchy of future haves and have nots. WVU would be the latter.

Purdue has a real chance to win everything this year. If we miss the tournament completely and our rival is in the Final Four or God forbid wins it all, the fans will be in full on pitchfork panic mode.

I wish I had so much money that I could literally light it on fire. Archie, Allen, and now Woodson. If I am somebody that the University keeps coming to with their hand out for money, they are going to have to come to me for approval before they hire the next guy. And there isn't a BoT member allowed within a thousand miles of the decision. And if the school didn't like it they could kiss my @$$ and my money goodbye.

Well put. I don't have anything to add except to say you succinctly said what I have been trying to convey.

Last thought on this. Michigan is a "cool" school. They have the Nike gear, they have a member of the Fab Five as a coach, they have always been seen as "cool" in my 44 year lifetime particularly since the Fab Five showed up with the baggy shorts. Some of their best ball the past 3 decades was during the Beilein era and that guy got run out of the NBA for being anything but cool. There is nothing cool about Wisconsin and they are up there frequently. Same with Purdue as of late. Cool doesn't win games and you won't find Purdue and Wisconsin fans looking to change up how they do things to be "cool" like Juwan Howard's Wolverines, because they suck at what matters. If we stop sucking at what matters, nobody will give a crap about the other stuff. Winning cures almost everything in sports.

You know what I mean.

This is where we disagree. Everything you dislike is the only thing with any connection to winning right now. The play on the court isn't and any changes you make to the aesthetics aren't either. What exactly do you think they can do to the jersey to make it "cooler". The only difference between the jerseys worn by arguably the best program the past 30 years and our jerseys are the school colors and a Nike Swoosh. Not sure how you update the jerseys to he cool. Maybe you could go out and show an example. Maybe I am just dumb and not seeing it. Specifically, what would you like to see things changed to. What school is a model for your preference?

Be specific. I would suggest that the problem with the culture is that it isn't stuffy enough. I wouldn't have guys dancing on ----ing Tik Tok in a season where they are flirting with Ken Pom and NET 100 land. The problem with the culture is losing. Period.

How? How will it help? The only thing that might impact recruiting is getting Nike. And nobody but nobody in the fanbase cares one way or the other about that happening. You are just irrationally lashing out at everything because we aren't winning. Our biggest problem right now is how the administration goes about picking who to lead the program and who subsequently ends up in charge of the program. Woodson is pulling dudes and apparently he is half assing it if what we read here is to be believed. We have the NIL money in place. We have the engaged fanbase. With all our old and stodgy fans, we are the ones with 1 million Twitter supporters. Nearly double the next closest team in the BIG and 3 to 5 times more than the majority. The problem isn't striped pants, classic jerseys, the court (this is one of the dumbest of your complaints), the cheerleaders wearing more conservative outfits, the band, Adidas, the fact it is hard to see from some spots in the building, stale popcorn, lack of all beef hot dogs, nerdy usher apparel, or any other item from a long list of cosmetic things. We were losing for 2 big reasons. We didn't play the shoe game in the period from the mid-90's to the start of NIL and we hired coaches who we expected to recruit like we did and who did not have systems designed around winning. Except for one guy we had for 2 years who couldn't keep his team's nose clean and/or the fact they couldn't keep that quiet. That's it. You could change everything you mentioned over the past 2 decades and keep everything else the same and we would be a bunch of "cool" losers who had thrown away everything that connected the program to its winning past. Brilliant.

The striped pants don't have **** to do with any of that. You could sex up the cheerleaders, change the court, pump rap music in during time outs, get new jerseys, new shoes, replace the band with a DJ, replace Assembly Hall and you could have done all of that 15 years ago and it wouldn't have mattered because of Tom Crean, Archie Miller, and Mike Woodson and the couple dozen players who were here during that time. Then all that new stuff is tied to losing. You have it exactly backwards, all the hokey boring stuff that doesn't matter and the old head fans are what ties us to the last time we were winning. Go ahead and change all the stuff you want to change. It isn't going to make a bit of difference to what actually matters.

There isn't anything wrong with the court or jerseys. Even if you switch to Nike those jerseys are going to look really similar. And why change them? On a basketball recruit's list of crap they care about, I bet jersey and court appearance aren't in the Top 20. All of the hokey traditions or whatever are "super cool" if you are winning. Chanting "Rock chalk, Jay Hawk" at every game is lame as hell. If it was Northwestern doing it people wouldn't say it was a great basketball tradition, they would say it is stupid. So all of that is to say that THE most important thing is winning. If we were winning 70% of our games and going to the Sweet 16 and beyond regularly, you would think all the "classic" stuff about Indiana is cool. Winning is the only thing that matters, this other stuff is just window dressing whose worthiness is judged almost completely on how the team performs.

Most people of any age don't matter as much as the Top 10 donors and the BoT. Lashing out at old people is misplaced anger. (And I fall in your young category).

I know people hate him but if it had to be an IU guy, Alford was the only guy ready to step into the job. Is that the best hire? Probably not, but if you are restricting yourself to only Indiana guys he was #1 and whoever was below him was a distant 2nd.

No it isn't. It is pretty darn important but if it was most important Beard would still be at Texas.

My kids range in age from 8 to 15. They will come in and check with me on the score when I am watching the games and it is quite often your hear, "So we suck again...." from them. I think the idea that Indiana is always going to have strong fan support is a fantasy. People get hooked when they are young. What hooks them in is the idea that this is fun to watch. Winning is fun. Losing sucks. We have people who have seen the great who are struggling to stay engaged. I imagine that is so much harder when your high point is Cody Zeller and Victor Oladipo and that happened a decade ago.

We're #1! We're #1! We're #1!

Yep, for the long term you are exactly who I am talking about.