str8baller

I’ve never seen two players for IU come up smaller in big moments.

Who’s the number one guy and where does he have IU?

GAME DAY!!!

Of course they weathered our second half run, tied up the game, and won in over time. Sadly….

Let’s go St. John’s!

True. Their ratio of solid fans to ****** bag players is sky high.

Credit to the guys being positive at pg 15. I caught us at the 3 min mark and still didn’t feel confident we’d win. Lol

I weirdly am fine with him at the FT line. It’s just making decisions in the heat of the moment.

That was my guess 5 -ish games ago. But I’m no bracketoligist.

Only caught the last 3min, but we finally pulled one out!!! Hell yea!

I can’t remember IU being this close to the cut line before. Seems like we’re always squarely out or in and hoping for a slightly better seed.

If they get in and we get dinged for losing to them that’s some interesting mental gymnastics. But I find myself agreeing with you. How far is Rutgers from Q2 territory?

My calendar got messed up. I will probably only catch the last 10min, which means I know I’ll see our worst basketball. (Hopefully we have a big lead by then.)

Go back and watch the second half of OSU or the MSU game. He played decent early on against Nebraska. You can clearly see he can get his own shot off against B1G level athletes in those games. His play, and thus minutes, was very inconsistent. But again, I would expect that from a freshman. If he works hard in the off-seasons he could be a nice player for us.

I think we’re more down on our chances than the metrics due to the butt kicking they gave us at home. They were unreasonably hot from 3 that game (which was my assessment at the time) but I share other’s concerns about matchup issues. I think we have to bring our A/A- game to win today.

Historically that’s always been a good guess with Wisconsin. I will say that I don’t think Gard seems to have Bo’s magic touch in that regard. Gard was left Happ by Bo. He got the OSU kid as a transfer. Ruevers never panned out and they look a little thin there now. But it wouldn’t surprise me if you turn out to be right.

Did he get ejected for that?

the point you’re getting at is we’re kind of screwed this year by historically bad Mac-type teams, and I agree that that’s the main culprit. But we do put reliably bad 300-level teams on every year. I’m talking about the Jackson St’s, Howard’s, Chicago St’s, etc …that we always have on our schedule once or twice every year. Those teams are reliably 300+ (Or close) almost every year. Those games are a waste of time. They can’t help the players that much because they’re not competitive. Winning by 40 doesn’t off-set the crappy SOS hit because most formulas have a max score cut-off. They’re there because they are a cheap buy and season tix are sold no matter what. But they’re a waste for everyone and help bring the SOS down every year. I wasn’t really talking about E Michigan, because you’re correct that in most other years they’d be on the right side of 250, or better. (They were 290 last year though, so it’s not completely unexpected that they would suck again).

It shouldn’t. But it is what you get when you have people using statistics and formulas they don’t understand along with a general non-understanding a basic stats. The football committee is worse than the basketball one, imo. I always love when one of the members explains something with the rationale of I give them credit for being ranked 5th (or whatever) in ABC formula, but I had to ding them for their SOS rating when inevitably the SOS was already calculated in the ABC formula they were using. I always want to scream at my tv “hey dingus you just factored in SOS twice…why did you use a SOS weighted system if you wanted to factor in SOS separately in your head!!!” But nobody listens… Either way, our trash non-conf schedule is an embarrassment. Literally swap out the 325 ranked buy games for teams in the 250’s and we’re not in this discussion.

I get that it’s been almost 25 years since we have had any sustained success and that for younger fans Crean represents the high water mark got the program. But it still makes me sad. Is one helluva sign of how far this program has fallen that people are talking about getting Crean back. I guess the good news, for some, is that Crean is now available after getting fired from UGA. ***Just for historical perspective, winning the B1G is a bare minimum accomplishment that every coach who’s coached at IU at least 4 years over the last hundred years has accomplished…until Archie. Btw, that stat would be every coach who was here at least 3 seasons, but Harry Good’s 18-3 team finished in second place when he was coaching for McCracken while the latter served in WW2. In other words, the program elevates coaches, even bad coaches. But we still need a good coach to be a top program in the country. We’re the flagship university in the most basketball crazed place in the world. This should not be as hard as we’ve made it the last two decades.

We had two top 5 lottery picks. One a junior and one a senior, plus tons of experienced role players. Michigan didn’t seem to have much trouble with them. We looked lost against the 2-3, like we always did under Crean, so much so that Bohiem was poking fun of Crean after the game.

I don’t pay attention to recruiting, so I have no idea what he was supposed to do according to some. From my perspective, I’m fairly high on him because he’s the type of player you need in your roster to eventually be successful. He’s long, fairly athletic and decently skilled. He can get his own shot and handle the rock and then guard multiple positions on the floor at the other end of the court. He didn’t do any of those things well this year. But he’sa freshman. Most freshman don’t. He should be here 3-4 years. He’s has the potential to be type of guys that as a Junior or senior you see on a team like Villanova who plays good, hard nosed basketball and you say “why don’t we have guys like that?” Nothing is for certain. You have to have multiple guys like that and hope a few work out. I’d say Galloway, Geronimo and Bates are in that category. The more you have, the better the chance you have at getting a couple Jrs or Seniors who can take you far in the tourney. Outside of UK and Duke, very few teams are driven by stud freshman.

Yea…his offense was a gimmicky. And anyone who took away that gimmick (basically selling everything other aspect of the game to get into transition) stalled IU’s offense in it’s tracks whether that was playing zone or controlling the pace and forcing us into half court (Bo Ryan). Crean could recruit and he was a good salesman. But he was not a good coach.

I really like Geronimo and think one of him and Galloway or Bates have good chance of really breaking out next year. But Geronimo and Bates have the same issue of getting lost or making one boneheaded play on defense every 5 min or so. Just basic freshman stuff, but I imagine it drives Woody crazy, especially since defense is about all we can consistently rely on. I’m with you in hoping we don’t lose them. Losing our talented young guys would hurt, because they’re the one bright spot on this roster.

I’d say so. He’s made the tourney every year (minus 2020 when they would’ve made it) , but been bounced a little early. If that gets him on the hot seat at O$U they have some pretty high expectations for a football school.