IUHoosierJoe

There were a lot of people on this board and social media in general who, two or three years ago, said Dusty May was “mid major flavor of the month” and that nobody would want him here if wasn’t an IU grad. I remember it clearly because many were in response to my posts as to how good May is. But of course most will deny saying that now. I have posted this here before, but my son has talked at great length with one of Crean’s former assistants about Crean as a head coach. He said Crean is as good as anybody at X’s and O’s and coaching adjustments, but is held back by a lack of organizational skills. Where Cig has a “process” and “routine” and “working the plan,” Crean had chaos. Good coach, bad CEO, so to speak.

You understand it better than the refs, I guarantee.

I was encouraged by the Oregon series. Didn’t win any but competed with a very good team.

The thing is...if it comes down to Auburn or Texas for the last spot, Auburn is higher in the WAB, higher in the NET, and beat Texas head-to-head (albeit at Auburn).

Predictive metrics are outstanding right now.

I think you are probably spot on. The only teams you have out that I think have any chance whatsoever are Auburn and San Diego State.

That was the trend for Knight, that his teams were better at the end of the year, until his last 6 years here. The last 6 years, that trend woefully reversed.

No, he's not a better coach than DeVries, lol.

Prevailing thought last night was SDSU and New Mexico were playing for a tournament bid, and SDSU won. I'm not real confident that a bid-stealer here at the end wouldn't knock them back out, though. VCU I'm a little more confident is in.

They're #38 in the WAB as of this morning. There are 37 at-large teams, but there will also be 5 to 7 automatic qualifiers ranked above #38 the WAB, so they will need to go down to the mid-40s WAB teams for at-large selections. For as much as they've talked up the WAB metric this year, it would be a pretty bad look to bypass Miami at #38 and go all the way down to the #45 or #46 teams for selection of at-large teams.

The John Groce that went 37-53 in the Big Ten while at Illinois? Yeah, that hire would be well-received by this board, lol.

Yes, agree with everything you said.

We’ll see. I do kind of a copycat calculation so we’ll see how accurate it is.

I don’t think they will drop much. Probably down to 35-36.

Crazy thing is, if we beat Northwestern both times, we’re probably easily in the tournament, not even in Dayton, without needing to beat Purdue today. The bubble is extremely weak. It was all right there for the taking.

So Tucker DeVries cost me the championship with a meaningless layup at the buzzer in the Ohio State game. Oh well, lol.

Indiana 76, Northwestern 71

I’m not sure if they’ve necessarily discounted it, but there’s so much data in the bank by now that, normally, one or two games won’t change the metrics much unless a team makes a really big splash. This year seems a bit different to me, with 10-12 mediocre teams fighting for 3-4 spots, and none have accomplished much lately, the 3-4 that win an extra game or 2 will make the difference.

Ohio St 79, Indiana 76

Been going to games for over 40 years, so I don’t really need to tell myself anything. Yeah, as I said, it’s not like it used to be. Our fans don’t totally show out unless the team is unusually good or a championship contender. That’s the way it’s always been for all sports.

I think that depends on who you hang around with and what you’re interested in. My son is a student there and has been to almost every game, as has a lot of people he knows. Is it like it used to be? No, it isn’t. But it’s not near as bad as some people want to portray it.

Indiana 74, Minnesota 66

The big selling point DeVries used to recruit this team was playing in front of a great fan base. That’s recruiting pitch went out the window today for a kid today.

Yeah. Right. I’ll tell you what…I understand there probably aren’t enough smart people still around to make up a smart fan base, but surely you can figure out that booing your own players with recruits in the stands is program suicide, right? You can call me whatever you want and pretend whatever you like, but you understand that a high level recruit, even if he’s from this state, has a lot a better choices than what he witnessed today, right?

lol. How many recruits do you think we’re getting when they’re sitting in Assembly Hall listening to our “fans” boo our own players? Is it really that difficult to understand? I guess it must be.