IUCrazy2

***hole

You have a fair and valid point. I am 42. I was in the 2nd grade when we last won a Championship. Knight got fired my senior year at Indiana (I was 21...nearing 22). I think the last time we missed the tournament from that point looking back was 1985. I don't remember that season at all. That means that the connection to Knight is mostly going to be remembered by people who are 40+ years old. His firing was an inflection point for the fanbase. When I was 12 we had just gone through a period where IU fans watched a championship, saw Edward's, and had the beginning of the Cheaney years. By the time I was 13 we had been back to the Final Four again. Over a 5 year period. I have a 12 year old now (which is why I bring this up.) His last 5 years have been Crean and Archie garbage ball. And he has zero interest in watching Indiana basketball. The past 21 years have put a huge dent in the fanbase. Anyone who does not believe that is kidding themselves. The further we get from that inflection point, the older and older the die hard portion of this fanbase gets. I don't think young fans are impatient. The have constantly had it thrown in their face how awesome this program can be their entire lives. Twenty One years since Knight was fired. Our last Final four run is almost 2 decades old. The guys that made that run are about my age. I was in school with Fife, Coverdale, Hornsby, Jefferies, Moye, Newton, etc. These younger guys have been extremely patient. Some of them have been patient their entire lives.

We are stalking a black SUV at the moment. We are certifiable.

I am 42 and was in middle school when he played. I think that the 12-14 age range is just kind of the prime geek out for sports guys fan age. You start to get a little older and realize these are 18-22 year olds who are kids turning into young men, so the idolization thing goes away. But middle school me would argue around the lunch table for days about how much better Cheaney was than those losers at Michigan. He didn't win a title at Indiana, but to this day he is far and away my all time favorite player.

Wore #40...scored a whole bunch of points....

Well if it is Woodson, it will be entertaining to watch how many of us throw ourselves off a proverbial bridge of despair in the wake of the announcement.

Isaiah?

The players are getting jumpy I think. They probably read the same stuff we do and from the outside looking in, this looks like it is circling the drain. Anybody can jump in and say there is time and things like that, but Dolson is in direct contact with the players and it sounds like any patience talk he is giving them is falling on deaf ears because they probably perceive things like many of us, there was a huge miss on Plan A and there did not seem to be much plan in place for anyone after that. I agree, you want the right guy before you worry about losing players but you really, truly put the next guy at a disadvantage if you have him lose half his team and then take so long to get him in place that he is missing out on these transfers. So if we are waiting on one of the guys in the tournament, I hope Dolson is making really damn sure he has a better handle on their willingness to actually come here than he did for Stevens. If we have another 3 or 4 year complete rebuild, you can just mark this program DOA.

I don't know what to believe anymore. If it wasn't true, you want to squash the rumor. If it was true, both sides would probably still want to squash the rumor. I think the fan base needs to be prepared for getting someone that was not high up on the lists or Beilein. That is where it feels this is going. This program is a wreck and there is going to be no easy way out of it. This has been bad decision after bad decision from the firing of Knight forward. And instead of the administration being left holding the bag, it is the fans. We are talking about hiring guys that we could have had a decade ago. RIP Indiana, we don't need a doctor. We need Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead.

That's fair. I think the guy would win a whole bunch here, where I think he would start to lose people is if the inexplicable early round tournament losses continue to be a thing. Losing to a 16 seed as a 1. They went out early again this year. It just seems to me that the Bennett/Miller defense is really susceptible to getting killed by teams that can shoot the 3 because you are worried about stopping the other team's 6'8" center from scoring in the paint. I think that and boring basketball would be the potential downside to Bennett. On the upside, there would be a whole lot more winning than we have seen around here for most of the last 20 years.

For real. And this dude is not even mentioning a name.

We will have found a reason not to hire every person on these lists by the time this is over. The perfect candidate does not exist. You are not picking to the extreme here.

Because he probably could have sat out for quite awhile for health reasons and still been under contract. So they have an interim coach for a good deal of time wondering when he is going to get better, or they buy him out and move on.

Then he can write articles for the next few years saying how toxic our fanbase is, how we should have stuck with his good buddy Miller, and how we just need to accept that we are a crappy program now. **** that guy, seriously, he should be on ignore for every Indiana fan.

Yeah, I just don't really have a guy now. It is all a crap shoot and none of the names being thrown around right now are a guarantee of anything. My only stance is that whomever is hired has to be a winner. And I don't mean a Tom Crean roller coaster winner, I mean a guy who consistently is in the tournament, consistently pushing the top levels of the BIG, and consistently getting past the first weekend of the tournament. And it is a guy who is going to have to show that trajectory quickly. I am over this 4 years to see a pulse BS of the past few hires. When our guy is available, whomever that is, the school needs to hurry the hell up and get him in place so he can start working the transfer market for the missing pieces to this team. If the majority of the team stays put and we add a few transfers, there is no reason to not expect a tournament appearance next year from the right guy.

Better question is...are you?

Or more likely he is out and we are moving in another direction. There is no scenario where this drags out to May and June and people do not start to question if we are waiting him out. Then he is answering the questions he got during the playoffs. He's a masshole now. He is not our guy. He will never be our guy. Move on from this past week.

I am over Stevens. I hope 0708 is right and this is done. I can understand that money plays a part in this stuff but we are really at a crazy point to be offering a guy, who has not won a championship at any of his stops, $8 to $10 million to come here. If where he coaches is 100% about the money, he is better to stay in the NBA.

I am more than happy to have Bennett not considering us. His system is like watching paint dry and makes you extremely prone to early tournament flame outs. I will be fine if I never see the pack line at IU ever again.

Edit. Deleted because why bother.

No, no, no. To be clear this was not about those with connections. I appreciate what those guys bring.

From my view nobody at IU gained. Seriously, with those rumors swirling around it throws a big damper on whomever they bring in here now for quite a few people. If you are inferring that Dolson gained, I would say that nothing could be further from the truth. The school had their people saying they had filet mignon for dinner. They are going to be bringing in a strip steak at best now. Nothing wrong with a strip steak, but it isn't a filet. To me, this was horrible for Dolson to be so close that you have people leaking done deal and now you did not deliver. "Hey, this strip steak is great isn't it?" "Yeah, it is good, but it isn't filet mignon...." And if he lands on a great cheeseburger instead of a steak....geez.

It's cool. He's a total Masshole now. Those are his peeps. He is not a kid anymore so they were probably just posting the location for the wine party.

Cool, entitled to your opinion.

He brought the Indiana questions on himself by playing footsie with Dolson for 3 months. He could have stopped any talk from the first phone call. In the rest, I have tried to type out my feeling on it several times and I cannot find the words to do justice to it. The best I can say is that the chip on my shoulder when it comes to the area of the country that you and he live in is gigantic and touches on so much more than basketball. And I feel like he plucked a nerve he didn't have to pluck. That is the nicest way I can put it.