str8baller

Same. I was a little older than you but he was my favorite thing away. Some of the games are still up on YouTube. Occasionally I’ll go back and watch.

I’m a little surprised by this. I find Bates to be ok on the ball (for a frosh), but he gets caught out of position away from the ball (not surprising for a frosh). Maybe Woody sees a lot this in practice. Either way, I think this team is in its final form when Bates can push Stewart or Kopp to the second unit. This would increase or shooting on the second unit, and improve or dynamism on the first unit. From a decision making standpoint I can see why Woody doesn’t want X and Bates playing together a lot right now. Either way, starting with this game I hope to see Bates get some more run with the first unit.

I’m pumped. I know we played UW already but this feels like the start of conference to me.

I’m old enough to remember when Goodman crapped on IU fans for wanting Crean gone. College basketball media is pretty bad. I struggle to think of good ones at this point. UGA is supposedly awful though. Like 0-fer in the SEC awful.

Crean usually makes hay through recruiting. If he doesn’t have talent, I can’t imagine how bad that UGA team is. Some of you probably can, but I’ve successfully blocked his first couple seasons at IU from my memory.

Scheduling UK at the last minute would’ve been a wild turn of events that would’ve made my week. Crazy to think about.

The IMHE was laughably bad at the beginning. They have little to no credibility. The tourney won’t be canceled due to IMHE calculations or hospital resources or any other metric at this point.

Durr is a warm big body on D and an ok rebounder. He shouldn’t touch the ball on offense. Duncomb will get abused on D in the B1G and won’t rebound well enough for his position, either. Whatever he gives on offense likely won’t offset his liabilities on the other end. We can stagger Race and TJD and fill in Geronimo or even play a little small to soak up a lot of those bench minutes. Ideally Durr plays 4min or less. God help us if TJD or Race get in foul trouble this season.

I didn’t see the game but listened to the last ten minutes or so on the radio. The radio team wasn’t real happy about the turnovers and the end of the game. It almost sounded like we were losing from the time of their voices when I first tuned in.

That combo is just begging for an 8min scoreless streak every B1G game. Realistically, Parker or Kopp both aren’t needed in the starting line-up. They’re both liabilities on D and the bench rotation could use the extra shooting. Ideally, Bates would mature enough to be slotted in there. Rob, Leal, Kopp, and Geronimo off the bench gives us a solid 9 man rotation, albeit a little small still.

Go watch his first turnover yesterday. Horrible angle for an entry pass. Instead moving the ball to create an angle and make a good pass he just lazily tosses the ball in. That’s effort. It could have been avoided by putting in more work but he took the easy way out. Same with TJD’s turnover on the next possession. I agree that effort isn’t typically an issue with him. He’s the epitome of errors of commission. But yesterday they came out unwilling to put in the work to do the small things that lead to proper execution. If you don’twant to call it effort then whatever…I’m not arguing semantics on here. But it’s the simple type of stuff I see continually reinforced by plenty of good coaches all the way down to the middle school level. It’s generally referred to as effort, or something to that effect, because the problems stem from things the player is capable of doing and knows to do. But they don’t do it because it’s easier not to. Humans will generally take the path of least resistance if given an option. On offense it generally is not moving to improve your position and settling for suboptimal outcomes instead. Those early turnover year were the epitome of that and the type of easily avoidable turnovers this team needs to eliminate (your not going to be able to eliminate XJ’s “turnovers of commission “) for the team to hit their turnover goals and become a tourney type team.

Sounds to me like you answered your own question. You can’t play hard and make lazy passes. Execution often follows effort. You can have effort without execution—think the annoying try-hard at the end of the bench everyone loves but nobody wants to see play much. But you rarely get execution without proper effort. This is doubly true on defense. Your example is the one I would use. TJD and XJ, two of our leaders on a team with major turnover issues, start the game with horrendously lazy passes that result in…wait for it…you guessed it: more turnovers. Most of the first fifteen minutes went the same. The mistakes to be avoided aren’t complicated, in this case. It’s the result of low effort and not enough mental engagement.

I agree. For more northern fans or fans in Indy without season tix it was always a good chance to watch IU (plus butler and nd). The wife and I always enjoyed coming down for the weekend, getting some last minute xmas shopping and visiting friends. I got to watch IU in the middle of it.

Lazy and Weak. They may pull it out, but another poor showing.

Cocaine and adderall. Even then I’d put my kids college fund on them sleepwalking thru the first 15min

Same offense. Worse d. Worse rebounding. this team won’t sniff the tourney as currently configured

Lazy basketball. same as Merrimac.

I saw that after I commented. He’s like half their offense.

St. John’s needs to beat this bad pitt team

you misunderstood me. We’ve been blowing by (the lesser athletes of) Merrimac not vice versa.

I’ve watched the whole game. The only thing different is that we’re playing a low D1 team with lesser athletes that they’ve blown by for a free buckets that won’t be there against B1G level teams. I’m surprised some are so impressed by it. Only difference from Weds is the opponent and team. We’re at about 14 turnovers (per the interwebs) with 5min to go. Against Merrimac. A team from the NEC that plays a 2-3 zone.

We must be. The one I’m watching had them both on the floor where they committed back to back turnovers between the pair of them. One on a lazy drive where X didn’t stick his feet and another on lazy simple entry pass to the high post by Phin. We’re playing Merrimac. Those HS-level mistakes turn into the long string of errors against better teams that we continually see from those two. I personally would like to see better (ie smarter) play out of those two. I don’t really care if they rack up a few buckets against scrub teams.

Our point guard position is a mess. No idea why you’d even have X and phin on at the same time. I’d typically have neither on the floor if I could.

Yea, I was surprised to see them ranked in the 250ish range on Kenpom. Figured they be closer to 350. We should win easily, but not the worst opponent in the world.

It’s sad but this actually makes me feel better.