General Coach Candidate News

[MikeRoberts 7,617]

54 minutes ago, Home Jersey said:

Such a good point. I don't believe IU's fans are the reason the program has struggled - on the contrary, it's one of the program's few remaining strengths. All major programs have fans that can act wacky and sometimes become toxic, especially online. What is unhelpful though, is that it seems our fanbase largely has a skewed idea of what a "successful" D1 basketball coach looks like. 

Coach K went to 13 FFs. John Wooden went to 12. Dean Smith went to 11. Roy Williams went to 9. Tom Izzo went to 8. Denny Crum and Adolph Rupp went to 6. Knight, Boeheim, Guy Lewis, Lute Olson, and Rick Pitino went to 5. 

Rupp and Wooden are the only ones with a better success rate than Knight at converting F4s to championships. Knight was at IU for 29 years, won 3 titles, and hardly ever missed the tournament. 11 B10 titles. That is a level of success that you can't realistically expect to replicate IMO - definitely not going to flip a switch with one coaching hire and make that the standard again overnight. 

Most recent article I could find was from 2022 ... since the year 2000, Duke made the S16 15 times. Kansas 13. MSU 12. Kentucky 12. UNC 11. Wisconsin, UCLA, Cuse, Gonzaga, and Arizona with 10 (as of 2022). 

Nobody in the sport goes to the S16 every year. Only the elite are going at such a regular frequency. IU has been far from elite since Knight left. From 1992-2000, Knight was pedestrian by his standards. He still won almost 20 games and made the tournament each year. By non-Blue Blood standards, that's a pretty decent stretch. But people are unimpressed by Cronin going dancing every year from 2010-11 through 2022-2023 or "only" having four S16s. 

Most coaches never win a title. A guy who can consistently make March Madness - given enough time - is more likely to eventually break through and win a title than any school - IU or not - is to hire the next Bob Knight. 

The fans are the last thing holding this program together so I agree the fans aren’t the issue. That said, there is a debate about Cronin and his remarks after their loss the other night wouldn’t sit well with IU fans. He essentially blamed the fans for their poor shooting. It was odd to say the least

[jimsorgi 418]

7 minutes ago, MikeRoberts said:

The fans are the last thing holding this program together so I agree the fans aren’t the issue. That said, there is a debate about Cronin and his remarks after their loss the other night wouldn’t sit well with IU fans. He essentially blamed the fans for their poor shooting. It was odd to say the least

That's not odd for Cronin - he has a long history of things like that.

[BBTB 64]

So trying to catch up ,seems there is nobody interested ,if you read every post that comes out or listen to every youtube/podcast  out .If there is nobody  guess we can be a football school  .

[Ryno6284 3,517]

2 hours ago, Trish said:

Well, have any of you pissed next to Tom Crean at an IU Football game?

BECAUSE I HAVE! #BringBackCrean if Brad Stevens says no. 

You looked over, didn't you?!

[woodenshoemanHoosierfan 6,522]

20 minutes ago, MikeRoberts said:

The fans are the last thing holding this program together so I agree the fans aren’t the issue. That said, there is a debate about Cronin and his remarks after their loss the other night wouldn’t sit well with IU fans. He essentially blamed the fans for their poor shooting. It was odd to say the least

Much better argument for not having Cronin, than "he lost to a team he shouldn't have"

[IUHAHN81 2,910]

27 minutes ago, MikeRoberts said:

What are options 1 and 2?

Hell if I know! Haha

[iubb 3,619]

27 minutes ago, MikeRoberts said:

What are options 1 and 2?

 

[Home Jersey 12,241]

14 minutes ago, MikeRoberts said:

The fans are the last thing holding this program together so I agree the fans aren’t the issue. That said, there is a debate about Cronin and his remarks after their loss the other night wouldn’t sit well with IU fans. He essentially blamed the fans for their poor shooting. It was odd to say the least

There for sure is a question/debate to be had about Cronin’s personality fit at IU. Agree. Him calling out home fans for booing at critical parts of the game instead of cheering them on and trying to will them to victory isn’t a big concern to me. I will have to watch the video later but think someone posted the quote and he referenced pressure while shooting FTs specifically (could be mistaken). I think “pressure” is a lame word for a coach to use most of the time. But booing during FTs is something only the away team should have to deal with IMO. Probably better ways to address that with the fans, but I like a coach willing to call out his own players when it’s deserved and also will defend them where warranted. This is related to the idea of being “in community” with each other I posted earlier and the pact that exists between programs and their fans. IMO, the IU admin broke the pact by bringing Woodson back this year, so yeah, people were well within their rights to boo the hell out of him. I don’t think a team that’s led the game for 37 mins and is blowing it down the stretch needs negative noise from their own fans. That’s when they need home court advantage the most. To me, unless there are extenuating circumstances I don’t know about, that is fans breaking the pact and deserves to be called out. That’s not IMO a smack in the face to fans, it’s holding them accountable for doing their part. 

[OKHOOSIER 4,924]

1 minute ago, Home Jersey said:

There for sure is a question/debate to be had about Cronin’s personality fit at IU. Agree. Him calling out home fans for booing at critical parts of the game instead of cheering them on and trying to will them to victory isn’t a big concern to me. I will have to watch the video later but think someone posted the quote and he referenced pressure while shooting FTs specifically (could be mistaken). I think “pressure” is a lame word for a coach to use most of the time. But booing during FTs is something only the away team should have to deal with IMO. Probably better ways to address that with the fans, but I like a coach willing to call out his own players when it’s deserved and also will defend them where warranted. This is related to the idea of being “in community” with each other I posted earlier and the pact that exists between programs and their fans. IMO, the IU admin broke the pact by bringing Woodson back this year, so yeah, people were well within their rights to boo the hell out of him. I don’t think a team that’s led the game for 37 mins and is blowing it down the stretch needs negative noise from their own fans. That’s when they need home court advantage the most. To me, unless there are extenuating circumstances I don’t know about, that is fans breaking the pact and deserves to be called out. That’s not IMO a smack in the face to fans, it’s holding them accountable for doing their part. 

Comparing him calling out fans over that to Woody whining about fans booing when down 30 at home are not remotely similar. 

[Silat Player 1,026]

17 minutes ago, BBTB said:

So trying to catch up ,seems there is nobody interested ,if you read every post that comes out or listen to every youtube/podcast  out .If there is nobody  guess we can be a football school  .

Right? It's amazing how the situation has changed in a couple of weeks. 

We went from being a great job with lots of interest to nobody being interested in the job, and we're going to end up with someone like Turgeon.

This fanbase has a real case of PTSD. LOL

[Uspshoosier 50,367]

4 minutes ago, Home Jersey said:

To me, unless there are extenuating circumstances I don’t know about

That place holds close to 14,000 and they average about 6800.   It’s been a problem for awhile getting fans to show up out in LA 

[spe317 715]

College sports and LA are always a hard sale. USC football games at the peak weren’t the biggest priority. 

[Dave from Dayton 3,859]

2 minutes ago, Silat Player said:

Right? It's amazing how the situation has changed in a couple of weeks. 

We went from being a great job with lots of interest to nobody being interested in the job, and we're going to end up with someone like Turgeon.

This fanbase has a real case of PTSD. LOL

Is this a joke?

Lumping all of posting fans together is ludicrous...or something...maybe funny.

I'm not demoralized.  I realize that the green flag to start looking around at prospective coach candidates dropped a year or so ago.  And most of the pack of good coaches are still coaching.

Sure there are many that want immediate gratification and are expressing themselves while not having to show really who they are.

I speculate that a lot more of the fans on the bell curve are not frustrated with the search.  If they are, they are chasing conspiracy theories...kind of like people do that have never learned critical thinking skills.

It's not PTSD.  It's just not thinking clearly...and objectively...and fact checking.

 

 

[Home Jersey 12,241]

7 minutes ago, Uspshoosier said:

That place holds close to 14,000 and they average about 6800.   It’s been a problem for awhile getting fans to show up out in LA 

For sure, not helping himself in LA with already lackluster fan support. We’ve said how many times that IU fans are hungry for a winner? IMO, don’t see our fans really booing in the same scenario anyways. If we did, we’d deserve to be called out by the coach. But again, just IMO, people are acutely sensitive to never criticizing the fans after Woody’s campaign the last year, for lack of a better term. People here would totally rip our own fans for booing in the same scenario. Especially if the coach wasn’t Woodson. 

[HoosierInParadise 928]

I don't know...I feel like you gain nothing by calling the fans out. You say thing like "our fans have the same expectations we do, to win and finish games, and we didn't do that today" or "we need to continue to keep our intensity high so that our fans keep their energy high." It's almost like you have to coach the fans by telling them what you expect out of your team.

[Hoosierfanyuh 3,734]

https://x.com/jennifer40iu/status/1892313205688476020?s=46
 

jen is a gem and this made me laugh lol

[Hovadipo 59,424]

32 minutes ago, jimsorgi said:

That's not odd for Cronin - he has a long history of things like that.

Exactly. This isn’t a one off thing. That guy is miserable and has been for as long as I’ve been paying attention. I have no interest in personally disliking the IUBB coach again. 

[Home Jersey 12,241]

1 minute ago, HoosierInParadise said:

I don't know...I feel like you gain nothing by calling the fans out. You say thing like "our fans have the same expectations we do, to win and finish games, and we didn't do that today" or "we need to continue to keep our intensity high so that our fans keep their energy high." It's almost like you have to coach the fans by telling them what you expect out of your team.

Yes I think there are much better ways to frame the sentiment than Cronin did. Conceptually though I do think sometimes it makes sense for coaches to “check” fans as long as it doesn’t come off as resentment or something. 100% agree on needing someone who can coach the fans too 

[iubb 3,619]

1 minute ago, Hovadipo said:

Exactly. This isn’t a one off thing. That guy is miserable and has been for as long as I’ve been paying attention. I have no interest in personally disliking the IUBB coach again. 

100% accurate... (LA native here)

[IndianaSconnie90 576]

3 hours ago, Trish said:

Well, have any of you pissed next to Tom Crean at an IU Football game?

BECAUSE I HAVE! #BringBackCrean if Brad Stevens says no. 

No, but i have pissed next to Dolson before at the Barn a few years ago. Not only do they put their pants on just like we do but they also shake just like we do, incredible.