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

[Home Jersey]

Fans ultimately just aren't that impactful when it comes to winning and losing. No fans are happy with a losing teams. We've only made the tournament a third of the time over the past 18 years. That's not because of the fans. 

I don't get why people over inflate the importance of sentiment on message boards and twitter lol. Maybe it's a stress reaction from everyone not singing hakuna matata and holding hands. People will have conflicting opinions on everything and that's OK.*

* = assuming no lines are crossed (i.e. harassing players), which does occasionally happen in large, passionate fanbases; the fans are still a net positive for the program

[AH1971]

1 minute ago, Pagoda said:

That’s not the assumption.  lol.

The conclusion is he wasn’t a very good coach.  A good coach does not go 15-57 in conference anywhere.

How many “not very good coaches” win multiple B10 titles and reach multiple S16’s in a 5 year span? This is the delusional expectations of the fan base speaking out loud. He was a horrible fit at Georgia. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Kentuckysucks]

Just now, Five Prime said:

My argument is a simple one:

Poor decision making by IU leadership + unrealistic fan expectations = toxic culture to coach

Fan expectations for Creans first few years were tempered by extraneous circumstances. The poor leadership was the same. 

How are fan expectations unrealistic?  No one was expecting a FF or B1G title this season.  Most just expected to make the tournament and hopefully win a game.  Very realistic with our NIL and see what first year coaches like McCollum, Lucas, McMillan, Odom etc have done.

[Five Prime]

1 minute ago, Kentuckysucks said:

How are fan expectations unrealistic?  No one was expecting a FF or B1G title this season.  Most just expected to make the tournament and hopefully win a game.  Very realistic with our NIL and see what first year coaches like McCollum, Lucas, McMillan, Odom etc have done.

So is that because Devries isnt a good coach but all those other guys are? 

[Home Jersey]

2 minutes ago, Five Prime said:

So is that because Devries isnt a good coach but all those other guys are? 

How does fans not universally loving the coach after year 1 meaningfully harm the program?

[Pagoda]

Just now, AH1971 said:

How many “not very good coaches” win multiple B10 titles and reach multiple S16’s in a 5 year span? This is the delusional expectations of the fan base speaking out loud. He was a horrible fit at Georgia. Nothing more, nothing less.

Why?  Perfect place.  No expectations.  No toxic fans.  No pressure.  Right?

If he was good he would not have gone 15-57 in conference and got fired.

The guy Tom replaced at UGA was 77-79 in conference.  Mark Fox.  Tom did a lot worse.  Another sign Tom just wasn’t that good.

[Home Jersey]

Just now, Pagoda said:

Why?  Perfect place.  No expectations.  No toxic fans.  No pressure.  Right?

If he was good he would not have gone 15-57 in conference and got fired.

The guy Tom replaced at UGA was 77-79 in conference.  Mark Fox.  Tom did a lot worse.  Another sign Tom just wasn’t that good.

Quit "extrapolating" with Tom Crean's actual record from 2018-2022!! Ugh!!

[Jeff Flabjohns]

1 minute ago, Pagoda said:

Why?  Perfect place.  No expectations.  No toxic fans.  No pressure.  Right?

If he was good he would not have gone 15-57 in conference and got fired.

The guy Tom replaced at UGA was 77-79 in conference.  Mark Fox.  Tom did a lot worse.  Another sign Tom just wasn’t that good.

Yes but you don’t get it. Mark Fox was a good fit at Georgia. 
Foxes and Bulldogs. Both animals (this was confirmed by a reputable source of mine). Good fit. 

[Kentuckysucks]

4 minutes ago, Five Prime said:

So is that because Devries isnt a good coach but all those other guys are? 

They were much better coaches this season and certainly did a much better job constructing their roster.  We all called out how poorly constructed this roster was last Spring.  We knew you couldn't win in the B1G without size.  Everyone knew it except for the man getting paid $5 million.

[AH1971]

3 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

Why?  Perfect place.  No expectations.  No toxic fans.  No pressure.  Right?

If he was good he would not have gone 15-57 in conference and got fired.

The guy Tom replaced at UGA was 77-79 in conference.  Mark Fox.  Tom did a lot worse.  Another sign Tom just wasn’t that good.

Again, relevancy to his tenure at IU?

[str8baller]

11 minutes ago, Five Prime said:

toxic culture to coach

This is just a fantasy people cook up in their minds to cope with all the losing. People desire agency, so in their minds fans can make a difference by being nicer, more patient, or wearing their lucky socks. It doesn’t matter. 
 

There was just another anonymous coaches poll posted a month or so back showing IU is still a top job in the Big Ten, as ranked by other coaches.  

[AH1971]

9 minutes ago, str8baller said:

This is just a fantasy people cook up in their minds to cope with all the losing. People desire agency, so in their minds fans can make a difference by being nicer, more patient, or wearing their lucky socks. It doesn’t matter. 
 

There was just another anonymous coaches poll posted a month or so back showing IU is still a top job in the Big Ten, as ranked by other coaches.  

Yeah I’m sure all these anonymous coaches have been lining up for the IU opening seeing it’s been open several times the last decade.

[Hoosier987]

38 minutes ago, AH1971 said:

The assumption that Crean would have gone 15-57 in the B10 had he been retained is just preposterous. He had a ranked team and was well on his way to making his 5th tournament in 6 years until OG blew out his knee. He likely would have retained Blackmon for his senior year who had no interest in playing in Archie’s system along with Robert Johnson and upperclassman Juwan Morgan. Extrapolating Crean’s years at Georgia to Indiana is effing STUPID.

Lol. Even if you ignore Crean’s abysmal record at UGA with a generational talent in Ant Man (btw Mike White, has won a lot more at UGA than Crean, which isn’t saying much) I’ll repeat…He still had burned a lot of bridges, especially in-state, indicative of him handing out scholarships like candy. The program also had multiple embarrassing moments including anumber of arrests under his watch, and another incident where one player quite literally ran over another with a car…moving on from him was the right move. It was time to move on. He had 9 years.

[Five Prime]

17 minutes ago, str8baller said:

This is just a fantasy people cook up in their minds to cope with all the losing. People desire agency, so in their minds fans can make a difference by being nicer, more patient, or wearing their lucky socks. It doesn’t matter. 
 

There was just another anonymous coaches poll posted a month or so back showing IU is still a top job in the Big Ten, as ranked by other coaches.  

Where in the world are the top coaches then? 

[AH1971]

3 minutes ago, Hoosier987 said:

Lol. Even if you ignore Crean’s abysmal record at UGA (btw Mike White, has won a lot more at UGA than Crean) I’ll repeat…He still had burned a lot of bridges, especially in-state, indicative of him handing out scholarships like candy. The program also had multiple embarrassing moments including anumber of arrests under his watch, and another incident where one player quite literally ran over another with a car…moving on from him was the right move. 

More trivial nonsense. Crean had several top 100 players both on the roster and committed when was fired. 

[Five Prime]

19 minutes ago, str8baller said:

This is just a fantasy people cook up in their minds to cope with all the losing. People desire agency, so in their minds fans can make a difference by being nicer, more patient, or wearing their lucky socks. It doesn’t matter. 
 

There was just another anonymous coaches poll posted a month or so back showing IU is still a top job in the Big Ten, as ranked by other coaches.  

It doesnt change the fact that most of the fan base lives in la-la land. 

[Hoosier987]

2 minutes ago, AH1971 said:

More trivial nonsense. Crean has several top 100 players both on the roster and committed when was fired. 

What are you talking about? That quite literally happened. Why aren’t schools lining up to have Crean as their next coach? Let me guess, you’ll say it’s because he’s doesn’t want to coach. lol, keep dreaming. 

[AH1971]

1 minute ago, Hoosier987 said:

What are you talking about? That quite literally happened. Why aren’t schools lining up to have Crean as their next coach? Let me guess, you’ll say it’s because he’s doesn’t want to coach. lol, keep dreaming. 

This idea that Crean had to go because nobody wanted to play for him is a myth. Several top 100 players were either on the roster or committee to play for Crean when he was fired. He literally signed the #1 recruit in the country while at Georgia. Stop with the pontificating BS that nobody wanted to play for Crean and that’s why he was fired.

[Hoosier987]

7 minutes ago, AH1971 said:

This idea that Crean had to go because nobody wanted to play for him is a myth. Several top 100 players were either on the roster or committee to play for Crean when he was fired. He literally signed the #1 recruit in the country while at Georgia. Stop with the pontificating BS that nobody wanted to play for Crean and that’s why he was fired.

Crean was fired because it was time to move on. Yes..he had the # 1 recruit at UGA - a generational talent -  and still was abysmal at UGA. Yes, He had 2 top 4 draft picks at Indiana…and didn’t know how to beat a zone. All things considered, Im taking CDD all day over CTC…and I still don’t know if CDD is going to be a great coach but I do know what CTC is, and that’s not very good. He had plenty of time here. 

[str8baller]

4 minutes ago, Five Prime said:

Where in the world are the top coaches then? 

We just hired a guy away from a good P5 program. The list of college programs that can do that is incredibly short. Woody was just a dumb Fred Glass move. Archie was the top target that off-season. Crean was a P5 hire. So was Sampson. At any random time we could’ve hired guys like Beilien, Pitino, or May.  We could’ve hired guys like Golden, but other programs saw the potential in them and hired them first. 
 

We just let guys like McRobbie and Glass be in charge for long stretches. That’s an unholy combination of dumb and unlucky.