str8baller

I thought Maryland was “must win.” Mostly because it was home and they are not good. I think we need 1 between Minny and Rutgers. Then maybe another in the BTT. So let’s win this and remove most of the doubt about our tourney chances.

67-66. IU ekes it out and almost secures a spot in the tourney.

There’s where I’ve been at. Just to simplify things a little, 19 win teams in the B1G, especially those with a couple big wins, tend to get into the tourney.

I think we’ll need a superhuman effort from TJD to win at Minny. So maybe it will motivate him a little that he didn’t play that well today. Would love to see Geronimo have a break out game and we need the bench scoring. His jumper looks good.

Damn it, I can’t believe we dropped both UW games. Win one of those and we’re probably already in the tourney.

I find Bardo to be about the worst announcer we get. He shouldn’t be calling anyone dumb…

I’ve blocked a lot of those guys from my memory. But I’ll say that i think XJ can be better at times than Green, especially defensively.

Xavier Johnson is such a weird player. At his best he looks like one of the best pgs in the B1G. At his worst he doesn’t even look like he belongs in a major conf. It’s mostly mental too. I don’t remember a player with so many ups and downs

These guys are incapable of playing loose on offense and good defense. Whenever they get a little flow going their defense goes to crap

We do not look like a tournament team. Sadly.

Lol…what a awful five min

This is pretty much a must win, right? Our margin of error is almost down to nothing. Hard to see any realistic path to the tourney if we drop this one.

Yep. And if you generously assume we’re 75% to beat Maryland at home the odds of us winning all three are about 19%. Kenpom is going to have Rutgers seriously underrated compared to how they’ve played the last few weeks.

I agree. Works for some. We’re way too unskilled. We’d be better off with the stupid Crean/Calipari dribble drive and let XJ beat people off the dribble (the thought of which makes me puke). The problem there is it’s tough to play Race and TJD at the same time. Woody deserves some criticism but the more I think on it, the more I really dislike our personnel situation.

I think rutgers at home and minny on the road are coin flips at best. So probably a 10-15% chance at the scenario you’re describing. That’s probably gets us in the tourney tho.

Ha…I think two wins in season (Maryland and one of rutgers/minny) plus a win in BTT gets us in with 19 wins. Just barely. I kind of disagree. P n Roll has 4 options. You need smart players to read those and skilled players to execute. We have neither. For example none of our bigs can pop. You don’t necessarily need athletic players especially just to initiate the offense which is what Stevens at butler and the mid 2010s spurs did. Both smart and skilled tho.

It’s embarrassing, but we’ve also been in these games. Our defense has been really good this year. And we start two swinging garden gates on D. A lot of these end of the games have come down to FT’s which were not good at either. If Woody can continue to teach that D and get us to average on offense we’ll be in a good spot when he retires.

This is decidedly NOT how I’d describe the Bracy Wright experience.

Uh…because Knight was finally run out for “just going to the tournament.” I feel old reading this. Bottom line is that Davis found his level as a low major coach. He was in no way shape or form ready to be IU’s coach.

Those are some good ones. It really all started with Davis, the dumb idea to make them co-coaches then to extend Davis. Kept him too long. Been a compounding of errors since then. Ironically, hiring Archie was probably the most competent search and netted us a promising young coach and he worked out the worst. Because the search was normal we wrapped it up before Holtman became available. I think it’s mostly incompetence, but possibly a little snakebitten too.

OSU and Illinois recently made big-ish type hires. But I also sense you’re partly correct. Michigan had to go to the alumni well. It’ll be interesting to see what Michigan St does when Izzo goes.

Have you seen Maryland play any of their last 4 games? They’ll eat our lunch if that’s who they really are. Hopefully Purdue broke their spell and they turn back into their early season selves. They’ve looked really good though.

They guy is older than Woodson and just got to his second FF (a second straight embarrassment). He’s also untrustworthy. I know we’ve fallen as a program, but I hope our standards are higher than 2 FF’s in 30 years. Hell Tom Crean and Mike Davis have 1….we could’ve just kept them.

XJ didn’t forget. He’s just not capable. That’s why you get a TO, imo. I’ve seen those situations practiced a thousand times. Some guys can execute. Some can’t.

Yea, I think his FF blowout loss got forgotten by your truly. I didn’t forget him getting worked by mike davis tho. Not prime time. Awful coach for IU basketball.