The Season Is Finally Over, Now Where Does This Program Go?

[RaceToTheTop]

On 4/11/2019 at 9:39 PM, Iugradman said:

Archie Miller is not Tony Bennett. Bennett took Washington State to the Sweet Sixteen. Pullman is a basketball wasteland. There are far more coaches who had two bad first years and ended up getting fired than there are coaches who ended up being successful. 

Yawn.  And Archie Miller took Dayton to the Elite Eight.

[HoosierTrav]

On 4/11/2019 at 10:37 PM, Iugradman said:

IU was the healthiest it had ever been against Ohio State and laid a complete egg in what was essentially an NCAA tournament play-in game.

Deron got limited mins, Race wasn’t near ready to get big mins, Hunter missing, romeo playing with a bad shooting hand. Being the healthiest they’d been all season doesn’t really say much imo.

[Brass Cannon]

3 minutes ago, HoosierTrav said:

Deron got limited mins, Race wasn’t near ready to get big mins, Hunter missing, romeo playing with a bad shooting hand. Being the healthiest they’d been all season doesn’t really say much imo.

Good enough to beat MSU and Wisconsin 

[JSHoosier]

They lost to OSU because their effort sucked.  Just like they missed the tournament because they went nearly 2 months thinking effort was optional and opting out.

This team beat MSU and Wisconsin without being fully healthy.  Let's stop making excuses.

[Brass Cannon]

10 hours ago, JSHoosier said:

They lost to OSU because their effort sucked.  Just like they missed the tournament because they went nearly 2 months thinking effort was optional and opting out.

This team beat MSU and Wisconsin without being fully healthy.  Let's stop making excuses.

Bingo. We had what a 20 point lead on a Maryland and gave it away. Don’t tell me we were too injured to run with them. 

 

[Aeggie]

Injuries can have a cumulative effect. That we were able to overcome them in some instances doesn't make it an excuse. Playing more minutes than usual, playing outside of your normal role, getting scoring from further down the bench... sure it can work sometimes. Sometimes a player like Justin Smith will hit 3 threes and post a career high and you can beat MSU without all of your players but that's not a sustainable formula and it's not on the coach if they can't keep bottling lightning over and over. 

[Hillsdale87]

Cool....they were at their healthiest (sans Hunter still) and had players still trying to gel because they had hardly been on the court together all season.

Another problem with guys being injured is that it really impacts your ability to have good competitive practices. When you consistently have 4 rotation players injured, you're not going to have good practices. Even guys that were playing were having to be cautious in practice. I doubt Zach and Deron did a full practice all season. We all wanted Archie to push guys harder in practice, but I'm not sure he could. He didn't have a full team.


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[Brass Cannon]

No amount of injuries should cause a lack of effort. 

[Josh]

43 minutes ago, Brass Cannon said:

No amount of injuries should cause a lack of effort. 

Correct.  That's on the coach to get right.

[JSHoosier]

2 hours ago, Brass Cannon said:

Bingo. We had what a 20 point lead on a Maryland and gave it away. Don’t tell me we were too injured to run with them. 

 

It wasn't just MSU, twice, and Wiscy we beat with injuries either.  We crushed Marquette.

Did injuries help?  Of course not.  They weren't the back breaker though, a total lack of effort far too often was.

[Josh]

29 minutes ago, JSHoosier said:

It wasn't just MSU, twice, and Wiscy we beat with injuries either.  We crushed Marquette.

Did injuries help?  Of course not.  They weren't the back breaker though, a total lack of effort far too often was.

I feel like it was one part lack of effort and one part lack of preparation.  Those slow starts due to lack of preparation killed us.

[Walking Boot of Doom]

Lack of preparation? Lol. They weren’t practicing all year? Aight.


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[Aeggie]

I don't see how a slow start necessarily means a lack of preparation, that's just one of many, many possibilities. Could've just as easily been a lack of sleep for one or more key players or a breakup or family issue or something totally unrelated to basketball. It could be nerves. It could be anything. 

I get why there can be a drive to fill in the blanks sometimes on things we don't know - like the gross Romeo rumor - but the wild speculation doesn't actually get us any closer to understanding anything meaningful even if it might feel that way. 

[RaceToTheTop]

13 hours ago, JSHoosier said:

They lost to OSU because their effort sucked.  Just like they missed the tournament because they went nearly 2 months thinking effort was optional and opting out.

This team beat MSU and Wisconsin without being fully healthy.  Let's stop making excuses.

So....they essentially played four straight elimination games and we should focus on the one loss?

[Josh]

19 minutes ago, Walking Boot of Doom said:

Lack of preparation? Lol. They weren’t practicing all year? Aight.


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Did they look prepared to play at the beginnings of games to you?

[Hillsdale87]

It wasn't just MSU, twice, and Wiscy we beat with injuries either.  We crushed Marquette.
Did injuries help?  Of course not.  They weren't the back breaker though, a total lack of effort far too often was.

Injuries are going to keep a team from being consistent though. Yes, teams can be good when everything is clicking. But they're going to keep a team from being in synch. When guys can't play together consistently and aren't able to get good practices, they're going to be unsure on the court, especially when most players are freshmen and sophomores. That's going to manifest in a number of ways, but when guys aren't comfortable on the court, that's often going to look like a lack of effort. There's no excuse for jogging down the court, and some of those types of plays that we saw. But I think a lot of what looked like lack of effort was just a team that struggled to gel


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[Brass Cannon]

3 minutes ago, Free Jurkin! said:

 

Injuries are going to keep a team from being consistent though. Yes, teams can be good when everything is clicking. But they're going to keep a team from being in synch. When guys can't play together consistently and aren't able to get good practices, they're going to be unsure on the court, especially when most players are freshmen and sophomores. That's going to manifest in a number of ways, but when guys aren't comfortable on the court, that's often going to look like a lack of effort. There's no excuse for jogging down the court, and some of those types of plays that we saw. But I think a lot of what looked like lack of effort was just a team that struggled to gel


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We gelled well enough to start the season 12-2 and finish it 6-2. But yeah the team wasn’t gelled for the 1-12 stretch. 

[JSHoosier]

19 minutes ago, brumdog45 said:

So....they essentially played four straight elimination games and we should focus on the one loss?

I didn't focus on one loss.  I also mentioned the fact they mailed it in for the better part of two months, which is why those late games even mattered that much.

[Hillsdale87]

Bingo. We had what a 20 point lead on a Maryland and gave it away. Don’t tell me we were too injured to run with them. 
 

We were too injured to run with them, and we only led by 14. We gave up that lead exclusively because of Smith's foul trouble, which forced Fitzner into too much playing time. We had no Davis (he played 4 minutes) or Thompson in that game. I believe Fitzner was -20 for the game in 18 minutes. We got outrebounded by 17, and Maryland had 18 offensive boards. Fitzner against Fernando and Smith is a crazy mismatch. Effort alone isn't going to keep up with the strongest front line in the Big 10.

If Davis had been healthy, that's likely a win.



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[Hillsdale87]

We gelled well enough to start the season 12-2 and finish it 6-2. But yeah the team wasn’t gelled for the 1-12 stretch. 

We had some luck in the 12-2 stretch (and beat a number of bad teams) and some bad luck in the 1-12 one. We won a number of one possession games early that could have gone either way, but we pulled them out with timely shots at the end. We also got run off the court by Duke, so it's not like we were really good, even at 12-2. We lost those ose games during the losing streak. Ohio State, Iowa 2x, Purdue were all games that we were in and got crushed by bad luck when the other team made some miracle shots.

Yes, the team played worse during the losing streak, but we were never as good as we thought at 12-2 or as bad as it felt when we went 1-12


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