IU’s basketball culture is dead (and the case for why our next coach should be given 6+ seasons)

[fwgreenway]

55 minutes ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

His personality is bland but kinda likeable in the Everyman sense.  If he starts winning, I’ll love him. He seems from the outside looking in, a bit overwhelmed. 

 

1 hour ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

DeVries is not Cig in any form or fashion.

My biggest concern for DDV is his overall demeanor. I've always had the sense (post RMK) that a 'fiery' personality was going to work best at IU...to go along with "confident, cocky and capable" in implementing an unrelenting identity of what the program would be going forward.

[Ryno6284]

27 minutes ago, Home Jersey said:

You can't become a revolving door with the 3-4 year cycle because of the buyout money. The takeaway isn't to give mediocre or bad coaches a longer leash, it's to hire a good or great coach. 3 years is enough time to prove you're the man for the job. If you don't have momentum after 3 years at a place like IU you probably never will. Eventually you have to pick a guy you will ride through the ups and downs with, including a rare bad year here and there. But you gotta ride with the right guy otherwise you're stuck going in the wrong direction.  

I agree with almost all of this other than the 3 years.  I think it depends on the situation, it could be less than 3.  I don't think it is a one size fits all with coaching situations.

[Ryno6284]

13 minutes ago, fwgreenway said:

 

My biggest concern for DDV is his overall demeanor. I've always had the sense (post RMK) that a 'fiery' personality was going to work best at IU...to go along with "confident, cocky and capable" in implementing an unrelenting identity of what the program would be going forward.

 

14 minutes ago, fwgreenway said:

 

My biggest concern for DDV is his overall demeanor. I've always had the sense (post RMK) that a 'fiery' personality was going to work best at IU...to go along with "confident, cocky and capable" in implementing an unrelenting identity of what the program would be going forward.

Coach Cig?...Maybe the whole plan was to bury the basketball program and become a football school!  Only half joking!

[fwgreenway]

5 minutes ago, Ryno6284 said:

 

Coach Cig?...Maybe the whole plan was to bury the basketball program and become a football school!  Only half joking!

Nah...and I know you're kidding - Cig doesn't need the IUBB program to be less than so that football reigns above all else. Cig's a big enough person to cheer on the entire Athletic Department.

[BA47591]

I would ask everyone to remember last years timeline and compare it to what takes place in the next two months. This year will be different.  

[Ryno6284]

3 minutes ago, BA47591 said:

I would ask everyone to remember last years timeline and compare it to what takes place in the next two months. This year will be different.  

I tend to agree, although TBD!  I think this coming year is make or break for DDV!

[WayneFleekHoosier]

20 minutes ago, BA47591 said:

I would ask everyone to remember last years timeline and compare it to what takes place in the next two months. This year will be different.  

Sounds like targets identified. Hopefully they aim high enough. 

[Stuhoo]

4 hours ago, Magnanimous said:

As we embark on yet another NCAAT void of Indiana basketball, one where our team’s and fanbase’s absences will not be noticed, I’ll reiterate what I just said in the title - Indiana University’s basketball culture is dead. Whatever it was, however we used to describe it, the feeling it once gave us…it’s gone. When did it finally disappear? I don’t know, maybe around when we resorted to something as pathetic as putting five stars on our shorts to remind television viewers how great we used to be. I would love for a sixth banner to hang in Assembly Hall. I do not want to see a sixth star on our players’ shorts (or any stars on our uniforms for that matter). 

After the actual program’s success started to disappear, we began to get by on nostalgia - the nameless uniforms, imagery of heartland Americana fundamentals, the shadow of Bob Knight, the banners hanging in the background of every picture and television angle. It worked for a while, but now we actually need names on the uniforms to know who is even on our team these days, Bob Knight both finally returned to AH and passed away, and today’s student body wasn’t alive for 9/11, let alone would recognize any semblance of 1987 or the lingering pride that lasted for many years after.

The nostalgic angle could only go on for so long, and I’m afraid we’ve finally reached IUBB apathy at critical mass. True, some of it is a reflection of the greater college basketball landscape. Between one-and-done/the G-League, the transfer portal, and conference realignment, college basketball as a whole is a shell of its former self. But what made Indiana basketball a selling point to recruits, prospective coaches, students, alumni, and the overall fan base is gone. Here’s why:

Two things regarding recruits - (1) there are programs with a foothold on getting top players and it is not us; and (2) there remains a slightly “disturbing sense” (i.e., minor stink) around this program and what it means for a player’s development, the treatment from the fan base, and an inability for players to want to take pride in being an Indiana Hoosier not just as a player but for decades after graduating. How many players from the last 15 years do we expect to show up to IUBB games when they’re 45 years old and wave to receptive fans on the Jumbotron? And if they did, would the fans in attendance even recognize them?

If we want to be a local recruiting power with an Indiana/midwestern identity that retains players for 3+ years then we need to become Purdue. If we want to be a national recruiting power then we need to become UNC and Duke. We’re currently neither despite spending more, and it’s not like those other programs are going anywhere anytime soon. We need to pick a lane. So what is it about this program that we can actually sell to players beyond money?

It’s not like we’ve been killing it in recruiting recently anyway. We do not recruit anywhere near actual top programs, and of the guys we do get, they barely stick around…Since 2004 we have had 85 commitments come here (not including transfers). Granted, some of these commits were JUCOs with two years of eligibility, but of the 85 players, a total of 30 have stayed 3+ seasons with the program. They are:

DJ White, AJ Ratliff, Verdell Jones, Matt Roth, Tom Pritchard, Jordan Hulls,  Maurice Creek, Christian Watford, Derek Elston, Victor Oladipo, Will Sheehy, Yogi Ferrell, Hanner Mosquera-Perea, Collin Hartman, Troy Williams, James Blackmon, Robert Johnson, Tim Priller, Juwan Morgan, Devonte Green, De’Ron Davis, Justin Smith, Al Durham, Race Thompson, Rob Phinisee,  Trayce Jackson-Davis, Jordan Geronimo, Trey Galloway, Anthony Leal, and Malik Reneau.

I don’t know…how many of these names were guys you could really build a nationally competitive program around? Four or five over 20 years?

On prospective coaches, our last 4+ coaching cycles have proven where we stand among the coaching ranks. This is not just an IU problem, but if anyone thinks that “coaching at Indiana” is an opportunity that means much these days then you’re kidding yourself. IU is not a top 10 job anymore (and neither is just about any job except Duke, Kansas, and maybe UNC). Everyone else is tied at 4-40, meaning if you’re coaching at a decent school in a P4 conference then you have all you need to win occasionally at your current school and do not need to be at Indiana, or Louisville, or UCLA, or even Kentucky to win big. And most of those other jobs pay very well and have much lower expectations than what comes with coaching here.

Now on to the students…For the longest time our basketball team got a pass for its mediocrity because football was even worse. We could sell freshmen on Indiana basketball being part of the student experience, something they will remember after they graduate and a privilege to be a part of while on campus. That’s gone with today’s student body, and it will only get harder to sell the longer we go without winning on the court, especially for out-of-state students who did not grow up with generational IUBB stories and lore. Our student body now has the ultimate bragging rights in the country’s biggest sport. Our football coach is the face of the sport and our university. Indiana students have finally tasted success and they’ve experienced it in something that is more fun to watch, attend, and socialize around than basketball. Why would (or should) they haul their butts to AH on a cold January night to support a mediocre team with a new rotation of faces that will be gone each year? I certainly do not think we’ll become Auburn or Texas where basketball is something cute that is only there to kill time in the winter, but at least as long as Cignetti is here IUBB will also have to compete with IUFB. 

Finally the fans and alumni…I haven’t been tracking attendance this year, but I can say that I have never been less enthusiastic or interested in following a team than this year. Part of it was definitely football cutting well into basketball season, but the underwhelming hire that was DeVries and the player turnover allowed apathy to settle in quickly once the losses piled in. Myself aside, in general, the buzz around the program on the internet, media, among friends, game watches at bars, it all feels missing right now. We finally played Kentucky in basketball this year. The buildup for that game was nothing compared to how it was 15+ years ago. The fans and alumni are the glue that have held this program together for 25 years. Unlike Nebraska football, which is all their fans have (this basketball season aside), Hoosier Nation is more dispersed and has other teams to follow, even in our own state. The lynchpin for IUBB being our eternally optimistic and loyal fan base is not sustainable if the program is no longer creating new generations of fans at scale. 

None of this is to say that Indiana basketball is not historic or does not hold a special place in the sport, but nostalgia and fan support have not won us games and an open checkbook in an era where players can be paid is not getting us winning rosters. There has been something fundamentally off with how this program is approaching the sport because it should not be this difficult for this long. The administration is not the problem, which some alluded to as the cause in previous years. We now have a university president who helped support a championship team in football from the ground up in two years. It should not be this hard for Indiana basketball to be good, especially since we’re one of 6-8 resource-rich programs in the country that actually emphasizes basketball…but yet it still is… 

So what now is Indiana University basketball? To be honest, I really don’t know. We can say we’re a blue blood and point to our banners, tradition, and fans, but that doesn’t win us games and at this point recruits don’t care. No one under 30 has “grown up with Indiana basketball.” We can say we’re always only one coach away, and if we keep trying enough coaches then we’ll finally land the guy who can keep local talent at home and sprinkle in national recruits to finally make us a perennial top 10 team again. To be honest, I think there may be too much cultural inertia and delusional fan expectations to let a coach breathe and build here. To be more succinct,  I’m skeptical if we had landed Brad Stephens or Dusty May that they would have been as successful here as they were/are at Butler and Michigan.

This football championship and the culture/identity that Cignetti instilled to make it happen has been really sobering when looking at our meddling basketball program. Do we need a basketball coach who has experience, can lead his team, and build a culture? Absolutely. We cannot have someone lazy like Woodson, completely misguided like Archie, or in over his head like Davis. But to do so we either (1) need to keep the coaching carousel moving until we finally hit, or (2) we can be hands off, let this program finally get some stability, and allow a new culture to emerge. 

I’m firmly in the camp of option #2 at this point. 

I really like the Carr hire, and I’m hopeful that DeVries will be accepting of Carr/Dolson running the show and DeVries just managing the games. If DeVries can’t accept the new approach next season then I say we get rid of him in March 2027. But if he stays beyond Year 2, or if we bring someone in to replace him for 2027-2028, then DeVries/this other coach should be given a while to let this new Carr approach work and make something of their own in Bloomington. The fans/IU media need to let go of what Indiana was and allow whatever Indiana can be to manifest. I’m talking giving whoever is our 2027-28 coach 6-8 seasons to breathe and let something build organically. Get a new culture in here, even if it takes a few years to emerge. What that looks like or will be is TBD right now, but it needs to be forward thinking and look beyond selling tradition and nostalgia. Keep the candy stripes, keep the simple uniforms, and make sure the players are not scumbags…other than that, I’m indifferent to what this program looks like 3-5 years from now as long as something sustainable is allowed to happen. Because whatever Indiana basketball was or thinks it is….it isn’t. 

“Alex, I’ll take 1,800 word book reports on IUBB for $400.”

[Alford Bailey]

I’m not sure there was a worse culture in the history of college sports than IU football and that changed in one season. Basketball extremely easy to fix vs football.

[hoopsta007]

We don’t need to give a coach that much time.  We knew the previous coaches weren’t going to cut it yet drove more fans to apathy by keeping them too long.  Hire a top coach and get top results.  It really is that simple.  Employee coaches that are bottom tier in the B1G and get bottom tier results

[Golfman25]

You can build culture overnight these days.  CDDv isn’t an over the top personality.  No rah, rah.  No catch phrases. So it’s hard to gauge what he is all about.  Thus, it’s difficult to know what his plans are.  
 

On the plus side, I suppose, we haven’t heard any portal transfers yet.  So either evaluations are taking time, or we aren’t going to see a lot of turnover.   So we could get consistency, which will help build that culture.   

[AZ Hoosier]

41 minutes ago, hoopsta007 said:

We don’t need to give a coach that much time.  We knew the previous coaches weren’t going to cut it yet drove more fans to apathy by keeping them too long.  Hire a top coach and get top results.  It really is that simple.  Employee coaches that are bottom tier in the B1G and get bottom tier results

Good luck with that.

It's not "really that simple". We're just another has-been program now trying to find our way back. Even with NIL and the portal, no top coach is leaving a top program to come here and save us. If we can catch lightning in a bottle again (like we did with Cig), we might get lucky with an up and comer who's willing to give it a shot - and he might get lucky and actually make some noise for us, Otherwise, we're (Scott Dolson) is gonna have to just keep plugging away to find the right guy and ride the wave for a few years to see if we got a winner.

DeVries has all the markings of a winner to me... but we'll have to see if last season was just a though deal resulting from a really rough start, or if he's just another in the string of hopefuls.

[AZ Hoosier]

54 minutes ago, Alford Bailey said:

I’m not sure there was a worse culture in the history of college sports than IU football and that changed in one season. Basketball extremely easy to fix vs football.

The Indiana football program was a dog. Everybody knew it. We had 100 years of crappy history.

Basketball is different. We used to be somebody, and on some levels, we still think we are. And we've tried for the las 25-30 years to fix basketball with not much to show for our effort except lots of mediocre results. If it was an easy fix, what's taking so long?

[spe317]

i ain’t reading all that

i’m happy for you tho

or sorry that happened

 

[AH1971]

7 hours ago, hoopsta007 said:

We don’t need to give a coach that much time.  We knew the previous coaches weren’t going to cut it yet drove more fans to apathy by keeping them too long.  Hire a top coach and get top results.  It really is that simple.  Employee coaches that are bottom tier in the B1G and get bottom tier results

“Hire a top coach”. I’m all for it, what top coach is coming to coach IU basketball? It’s not that simple, really.

[str8baller]

9 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

You can't become a revolving door with the 3-4 year cycle because of the buyout money

As a thought exercise I could see that changing if a school wanted to just take a shot on a hot young coach. Not the midmajor flavor of the month but further down the totem pole. “Hey buddy, come take a shot in the big leagues. We’ll give you a huge salary but no buyout….you might only get two years but $5mil/yr” Would a Josh Shertz have been willing to have forgone a little comfort at SLU for a riskier shot at the IU job?  

[Pagoda]

You know about coach after two or three years.  Giving Archie more time would not have worked, and that proved out even further once he left IU.  Giving Woody more time would not have worked, I don't need to explain that one.  Giving Tom more time?  Maybe.  But he went 15-57 in conference at UGA, so it's hard to make a case we just had to hold on to him.

I'm not sure the standards here are ridiculous.  All a coach needs to do here to get more time is show improvement.  It doesn't even need to be drastic improvement. 

Archie didn't improve.  Woody did for two years and people were happy, then he totally imploded on the court and behind the scenes.  Tom did show improvement and... he ended up getting nine years!

Anyways, the bummer is CDD didn't show improvement this year over last.  Hope he does next season.

I'm in the camp you need to keep trying hires until you get it right.  Giving guys who can't improve the program over two or three years more time doesn't make sense to me.  We'll eventually get the coach hire right.  Maybe it's CDD.  If it's not, it won't be a "top" coach in the game, they can't be hired, but there are good mid-level coaches out there ready to make the leap to P5 ball.  Will we ever find the right one?  Who knows.

[Stuhoo]

16 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

I'm in the camp you need to keep trying hires until you get it right.  

Me too. That's the perfect sauce.

Give a coach enough time to be sure about him and to lower the buyout, and then move on as soon as we're sure he's not the decades-worthy choice. The beauty of it is that IU has plenty of resources to retain that great coach once we find him.

It took IUFB 80 years of rotating through head coaches to find that right choice; currently IUBB has gone 24 years without that great fit. So give CDD a real shot and if he's not it, then keep trying!

[IUCrazy2]

12 hours ago, AH1971 said:

Ding ding ding

Had Cig gone 6-6 year 1 no one is talking about firing him.

6-6 would have gotten him into the post season.  I mean that is really the low bar we have at this point that we have missed or barely met for like a decade now.  I don't think there is as much angst about the program if Devries really just handles Northwestern.  I think there were other head scratches in there but the difference between that 6-6 Cignetti type of season was that the team appeared to throw in the towel a bit at the end and the end involved 2 games against a pretty bad Northwestern team.

We were among the first 4 out, the bubble was extremely soft this year and we just tanked down the stretch.

That said, I am fine with giving Devries time and lowering the expectations around the program, but if we are going to do that, the amount of money that is funneled into this now low expectation team has to be adjusted to match.  Football is winning now, if we are saying we need 4 years to build a team the old way, fine, but this being in the Top 10 spend for 70+ place results has got to go.

[Golfman25]

28 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

You know about coach after two or three years.  Giving Archie more time would not have worked, and that proved out even further once he left IU.  Giving Woody more time would not have worked, I don't need to explain that one.  Giving Tom more time?  Maybe.  But he went 15-57 in conference at UGA, so it's hard to make a case we just had to hold on to him.

I'm not sure the standards here are ridiculous.  All a coach needs to do here to get more time is show improvement.  It doesn't even need to be drastic improvement. 

Archie didn't improve.  Woody did for two years and people were happy, then he totally imploded on the court and behind the scenes.  Tom did show improvement and... he ended up getting nine years!

Anyways, the bummer is CDD didn't show improvement this year over last.  Hope he does next season.

I'm in the camp you need to keep trying hires until you get it right.  Giving guys who can't improve the program over two or three years more time doesn't make sense to me.  We'll eventually get the coach hire right.  Maybe it's CDD.  If it's not, it won't be a "top" coach in the game, they can't be hired, but there are good mid-level coaches out there ready to make the leap to P5 ball.  Will we ever find the right one?  Who knows.

I don’t thunk it should take that long.  You should know about a coach when you hire him. There is enough history out there to model the characteristics of a winner and hire to that model.   Just copy Cig.