IUHoosierJoe

There’s probably some new technology since Ballou and Rhea left IU 4 years ago. Not sure how much we were fully taking advantage of that since then.

True, but this far into the season, I think they will also need to blow a couple teams out to improve it that much.

Great post, thank you.

Ohio St 76, Indiana 68

Yeah, I think there’s a difference.

I’ve heard that “forced” isn’t the right word, “talked him into it” is more accurate.

My computer rankings, which include games through yesterday, 2/4/24. I've added Div. I records and last week's ranking: 1 Purdue 21 - 2 ( 2 ) 2 Houston 19 - 3 ( 1 ) 3 Arizona 17 - 5 ( 3 ) 4 Connecticut 20 - 2 ( 6 ) 5 Alabama 16 - 6 ( 7 ) 6 Tennessee 16 - 5 ( 4 ) 7 North Carolina 18 - 4 ( 5 ) 8 BYU 16 - 5 ( 8 ) 9 Auburn 18 - 4 ( 11 ) 10 Iowa St 16 - 5 ( 9 ) 11 Illinois 17 - 5 ( 13 ) 12 New Mexico 17 - 4 ( 10 ) 13 Baylor 15 - 5 ( 18 ) 14 Kansas 17 - 4 ( 15 ) 15 Utah St 17 - 3 ( 12 ) 16 Marquette 17 - 5 ( 19 ) 17 San Diego St 15 - 5 ( 17 ) 18 Wisconsin 16 - 6 ( 14 ) 19 Creighton 16 - 6 ( 16 ) 20 Dayton 18 - 3 ( 20 ) 21 Duke 16 - 5 ( 23 ) 22 Indiana St 19 - 3 ( 21 ) 23 Colorado St 15 - 5 ( 26 ) 24 Michigan St 14 - 8 ( 30 ) 25 FL Atlantic 18 - 4 ( 24 )

As I said in another post, it's not about what side of political fence he's on, it's about the hypocrisy, which you provided a perfect example of.

Purdue is 44 years removed from their last Final Four and has never won a national championship. They are in no way, shape, or form what we used to be.

Ohio State is very good.

My point is the hypocrisy, not which side of the fence he is on politically.

I don’t know, Dakich is probably right about some things. But a guy who littered his radio show with his politics and then accuses Woodson of being political doesn’t have much credibility.

Could you be more specific about exactly why Indiana’s basketball culture is the worst, and exactly how you think Josh Schertz is equipped to overcome that?

Archie brought him in. His experience was mainly in football, but he did do some work with Archie's basketball team in Dayton, as well as, I believe, Xavier's team. Regardless, despite all the hoopla surrounding him when he was hired, I've seen no evidence that he's any better than anybody else.

The problem with that, as I understand it, is a large chunk of Steven’s potential salary was going to come from a very wealthy donor. Perhaps that donor wasn’t willing to donate for any other coach.

You greatly underestimate the posting efficiency of folks here, lol. I’ll say more like 236.

Indiana 77, Penn St 74

I'll add my computer version that I posted for a while last season, a combination of result-based and score-based (predictive): 1 Houston 2 Purdue 3 Arizona 4 Tennessee 5 North Carolina 6 Connecticut 7 Alabama 8 BYU 9 Iowa St 10 New Mexico 11 Auburn 12 Utah St 13 Illinois 14 Wisconsin 15 Kansas 16 Creighton 17 San Diego St 18 Baylor 19 Marquette 20 Dayton 21 Indiana St 22 Kentucky 23 Duke 24 FL Atlantic 25 Texas Tech

Oh, I don’t disagree with that. And mid-majors that get automatic bids are often seeded too low. The biggest example of that last year was Florida Atlantic, although it didn’t matter. Thought they should have easily been a 4 or 5 seed.

I think you make a good point here. The way teams are evaluated now in terms of Quad wins and losses, a mid-major has an almost impossible task in making it as an at-large. They'd have to schedule like Gonzaga and then actually win a chunk of those games.

Interesting question. I haven't read all the replies yet, but the first thing that popped into my head was, "I'll know it when I see it." Then I realized that probably isn't even true, because I thought we were "back" after the two Cody Zeller years, even though we fell short of our tournament goal his second year. We had two of our best years in a decade and recruiting commitments were rolling in. Then, inexplicably, we had two decommitments, recruiting fell off, and we were looking for a new coach a few years later. At this point, my thought is it's going to take a special coach to get us back to where we want to be. "Back" to me consists of stacking seasons where we at least compete for a Big Ten championship (and win some now and then), are good enough to be considered a Final Four contender (and make it once or twice a decade), and where our rare "down seasons" are no worse than Mike Woodson's first year. And also, start winning some Big Ten tournaments. To me, probably the most damning thing about where we are now is that we have never even won a Big Ten tournament.

Iowa 82, Indiana 78. Giving some folks a chance to move into 2nd place. Hopefully.

Fran will come into our huddle, stare X down for 30 seconds, and X will be called for a Flagrant 1.

Just shows how hard it is, even for RMK

We didn’t make the FF in ‘75. Kentucky beat us in the Elite 8 game.