str8baller

I'm no Crean fanboy but if anybody deserves a dig like that at Cal, it's Crean after he kicked Cals butt and made them cry and end the series.

That one with MSU and Tennessee last year was really good and pretty much put Knecht on the map. I'd rather have a real game but I'll be more likely to tune into this than our 3rd actual game against NW Mankato tech.

Hurley is owed any amount of money imaginable if that happens. It would be one of the very few programs where the basketball team is leading the football into a better situation during conference realignment. I had thought they had given up on football. But their basketball program is so hot a big conference is willing to admit them on the strength of it and a promise to reinvest in football? Kinda crazy.

I rarely venture over to Rivals anymore but being bored and chained to my desk yesterday, I clicked over and saw an article on likely starting lineups and rotations. 2 things stuck out: 1) The article had Galloway starting, which seems to be a minority opinion over here. 2) it has both Tucker and Cupps essentially out of the main rotation. I find both of those things less probable than not of happening. I don’t the quality of writer or how plugged in those guys are over there anymore, but it did make me at least wonder if other people are expecting Galloway to start.

I've literally done this conversation with "diehard" IU fans during the tenure of every failed coach going back to Davis so I'm not going to disprove all your examples. But you mentioned Wright first and I know his tenure fairly. At the end of year 3 he had a roster full of highly regarded talent, all conf and All American players and Kyle Lowery coming in. He was building a team and everyone was on board. The rest is mostly history. Archie Miller showed nothing other than the covid season where he tepidly would've limped into the tourney then he regressed again in year 4. His teams couldn't shoot and he hadn't addressed that through recruiting in 4 years and we still stink there to this day. By year 4 Wright had two All-Americans and a future NBA all-star as his 3 man back court. I don't believe any knowledgeable basketball fan thinks Archie Miller's and Jay Wrights first 4 years in major conf basketball are remotely similar. But in the words of inscrutable Dennis Miller, "that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. "

That's a pretty good draw for a team that could use the boost in SoS. First game should be imminently winnable. Then either win-lose or lose-win would be decent outcomes and give us a solid resume. Of course winning the whole thing would put us firmly in the top 10 until the new year most likely. Of course losing to Lville then losing to WVU and barely squeaking by Dayton/Providence/OU would have fans on suicide watch. Either way, I like the draw. You have to test yourself against good teams if you want to be good.

Along with what Stuhoo said, Archie looked in over his head almost from the beginning. Probably because he was young I held out a little hope longer than I normally would. But most other HoF coaches listed gave fans/admins real tangible evidence of an upward trajectory, often in the form of recruiting. With that said, recruiting is different now with unlimited transfers and NIL. I’d give Woody the benefit of the doubt and say this offseason (basically, March till now) he’s nailed it. That’s different than what those other coaches did through recruiting, but it’s quite possible we live in an entirely different cbb world now. If he can continue to dominate that aspect combined with some minor coaching adjustments, people are going to give him more time. I still think there a limited time frame given his age, but we take things one season at a time.

Those are some rough examples if you’re a Woody defender because he doesn’t match up well at all. The best you could do is maybe a young Scott Drew who took over a dead Baylor program. You’d be hard pressed to convince me that IU would’ve fired him given the leash that was given to Crean. But I don’t think anyone, including Woody himself, believes he’s on a 15 year timeline. Those guys were young coaches building recruiting and programs juggernauts that were paying off by years 3-5. I guess we’ll see if Woody is in that same boat. I wouldn’t bet money on your theory, though.

I'd be interested in that list. Surely the few you can find would be the exception to the rule. You don't find a lot of success chasing exceptions against the rule. I honestly doubt there are any championship coaches in the modern era with a worse record than Creans first 3-4 seasons. There can't be that many worse than Archie's either. So that leaves Davis. A guy who quite obviously had his success with the previous coach's team and was on a downward trajectory--a trajectory IU has never really recovered from, not that Davis is entirely to blame for the last decade. Given hindsight is 20/20 and we now know all 3 of those guys are failures as high major coaches, I literally can't fathom the argument for keeping any of them longer. (With that said, I'm fine giving Woody this season given his NIL success). I'm definitely curious about your list. Go...

Please explain how you arrived at that conclusion from my reply.

The University of Kentucky has hired 3 championship coaches in a row. I can't fathom the line of rationale that would lead one to think IU's method of hiring/ firing coaches is superior to UK's over the last 30-40 years. Respectfully, the notion is laughable.

This is exactly backwards and 100% wrong, statistically speaking. The quicker you fire coaches the better chance you have to hire a home run coach, statistically speaking anyways. The longer you keep the Davis's , the Crean's, the Archie's , the Woodys around the less opportunity you have to hire the next year coach. IU has adopted your irrational thinking and been awful for it. I'd argue for a change of philosophy.

I don’t really count Dakich. Probably shouldn’t even include Oliver, either. Less than one season isn’t much of a tell. I only mentioned McCracken because if you count the last 60 seasons on bball ref, McCracken’s last season was exactly 60 seasons ago. He went 19-5 and is indisputably our second best coach ever. If we leave Dean (interesting career, fwiw) aside since most of his greatness was accomplished else where, it’s not a real high bar to get to #3 all-time on IU’s list. A B10 champ and FF run for Woody would probably do it assuming he doesn’t have any more seasons like last year on his way out.

At one point we were the only school with two coaches with multiple titles in basketball. That fact along with Everett Dean (essentially 3 HoF coaches hired in a 50yr stretch ) would’ve made me think IU was different. And maybe we were at one point, a long time ago. Whatever magic might have existed has long run its course.

60 seasons technically brings in Branch so he’d be 4th best. Remove Branch and we’ve only had one good coach in that time plus 1.5 seasons of Sampson. So while an interesting framing, it is kind of damning with faint praise. Either way, I’d concede he’s better than Watson, Oliver, Davis and Archie. The scary thing is that outside of Branch and Knight, we’re basically not much. Almost no intuitional inertia.