JustWinBaby

Kentucky is a fishbowl. Pope is having no problems handling it. It's a weird (and bad) excuse for mediocre coaches to fall back on when they don't succeed here. The right coach will embrace it. Aside from his recruiting issues, Tom Crean is probably the only coach since Bob Knight to properly handle the fish bowl here. In my opinion he did an incredible job with fan engagement during his time with the program, especially the first three years when we were @$$. He failed here for other reasons.

I've been on Peegs a while and joined here recently as well. The discussion here definitely has a different tone, which is nice.

Pitino and Beard are friends. Doesn't mean anything beyond that. Dick Vitale tweeted that IU should hire Tony Bennett. There's no indication that there's any interest in making that happen from either side.

I'm sure we'll hire a good coach. But being able to hire a good coach and being able to hire THE coach that you want is not the same thing. I've not given up hope. I'm just saying that some of the coaches that we think are within reach are in fact completely uninterested in coming here.

I texted a friend of mine who knows some folks at UM athletics when this news broke. He said Dusty was never even planning on entertaining an offer from IU. I think perhaps the most damaging think that IU did by keeping Woodson for a meaningless 4th year was scare away talented coaches. People see the dumpster fire that is the IU administration and want nothing to do with it. And frankly I can't blame them.

More like Chris Beer'd, amirite chat

Self is an elite coach but with his age and health concerns I don't know. That said the dude wins at an elite level. I don't hate the idea. But I seriously doubt he's someone that's on Dolson's radar at the moment. Seems like Scott has things narrowed down right now and won't deviate unless something significant changes.

The Crean years were marked by high peaks and really low valleys. 2008-2011 can't fairly be blamed on him entirely, but 2011-13 and 2015-16 were great while every other season was a disaster. The inconsistency on the court was a symptom of the recruiting failures that began to plague the program after 2013. Crean burned a lot of bridges in Indiana at the HS level and AAU circuit. Coaches didn't want to send their players to IU while he was there. If he had been able to maintain those relationships and keep Kentucky, Michigan State, etc., from coming into town and taking our best players every year, things might've ended differently (or never ended at all). Crean's a good guy. And I think at this stage of life he's had more time for self-reflection and personal growth, and I think he's in a healthy spot. He definitely took his firing hard and never really recovered while coaching. It made me happy to see him call a game with John Fanta the other day, and I hope they team up to call many more. That was fun. But none of that makes me want him back as the coach. Thanks for linking the vid, definitely gonna watch that back. That was such an incredible game.

I think all the likes on his posts got to his head and he got too far ahead of his skis. Frankly if it's true that there is/was a deal in place with Stevens but they needed to turn the heat down, it makes total sense to release that statement to Goodman. I'm not holding out hope. I believe it's gonna be Dusty and I will be very, very thrilled if/when that happens. However I'm willing to entertain the possibility we're getting Stevens. I just don't want to be fooled again.

I don't think an extension at Michigan would make much difference. Even with an increased buyout. Unless it's an astronomical number, if May is ho Dolson zeroes in on that's who we'll get.

Most of Peegs' connections these days are in the agent world. That explains it. I wouldn't put too much thought into this possibility.

what are we doing

Yeah I don't see him ever being the guy here, just screams "bad fit" to me. We don't need another bad fit like Archie.

I was told we'd be seeing a Brad Stevens-to-Indiana announcement yesterday, what happened? On a serious note, I'm willing to hold out hope he may come and there's a lot going on behind the scenes we aren't privy to. I see and hear rumblings in various places that the Stevens saga isn't over. Only time will tell I guess. Odds are we've still got 6+ weeks to go before we'll know much of anything for certain. However, I'm super stoked about Dusty May and I don't think that anyone should feel like it's a significant step down from Brad Stevens. If anything, we're more likely to be winning games with more immediacy given that Dusty is a *current* college coach and Stevens would be making a stark adjustment (yes he's done the job before, but that was 10+ years ago). Also, I gotta say it's pretty funny seeing how everyone went from "if it's Cronin I'm out" to "I'm warming up to Cronin" in a span of about 72 hours. I guess throwing names around like Buzz Williams, Brad Brownell, and Mark Turgeon is having the intended effect haha