College Bball Thread

[MartintheMopMan]

http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-basketball-news/4696911-indiana-basketball-tom-crean-big-ten-title?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

http://www.wdrb.com/story/31361707/bozich-crean-ferrell-direct-indiana-to-outright-big-ten-title

The Sporting News/DeCourcy article must have hit www.tomcreanbuyout.com while they were updating because while he made it into a great closer, the site is still available.

 

It's actually even more impressive now, it just reads "Congratulations, Tom! INDIANA BASKETBALL 2016 Big Ten Champions" with no buyout clock.

[MartintheMopMan]

Also, they have an autoplay video, so screw them:

 

Indiana's miraculous recovery is one shining moment in Hoosiers' recent gloom by Mike DeCourcy

 

The problem for Indiana and Tom Crean is they can’t just go back and start over.

 

If they’d met under different circumstances, their relationship might be altogether different. But IU was broken when Crean came along, smashed into a million pieces, and he took the considerable time and care necessary to restore it to working order.

 

Time does not heal in sports. Time warps.

 

But it's long past time for the whole of Indiana to appreciate what it has.

 

The three long years Crean required to return Indiana basketball to respectability fundamentally altered the chemistry between coach and fan base.

 

So even as the Hoosiers were earning an impressive road victory Tuesday night at Iowa that clinched an outright Big Ten Conference championship the person who Tweets from the “Fire Tom Crean” account  — who has sent nearly 1,800 tweets since February 2012, when the Hoosiers were completing their first 27-win season in 19 years — was complaining about the team’s reliance on the 3-point shot.

 

Because, as we know from a history that includes Steve Alford, Calbert Cheaney, Damon Bailey and A.J. Guyton — or, for that matter, Jimmie Chitwood — Indiana basketball and the jumpshot have never been much of a combination.

 

It took far more than a decade for Indiana’s basketball program to be wrecked from inside and out. It began with the final years of Bob Knight, his welcome worn and his fastball fading, six consecutive first-weekend NCAA Tournament losses piling up for the public to see and, on the inside, the conflict and drama growing ever more untenable.

 

It escalated with the graceless dismissal of Knight, the zero-tolerance policy that humiliated him when the proper course was for the university to make a clear decision: Do we want him around or not?

 

It was amplified when a fine man and promising coach, Mike Davis, was handed a job for which he was not yet quite ready and a circumstance for which no adult could ever be prepared. Even an improbable run to the NCAA championship game generated little progress. His five seasons on the job in some ways exceeded the final five of Knight’s tenure, but they were entirely lacking in one critical component: Knight himself.

 

Do we even need to get started on how miscast Kelvin Sampson was as Davis’ successor?

 

It was like asking Sylvester Stallone to play the Queen of England. Stallone’s got a few Oscar nominations to his credit and 72 credits on his IMDB page, so we know he’s a talent, but the actor has to fit the role. Sampson had an active NCAA case against him when the Hoosiers hired him in 2006. And yes, the search firm that put him in front of IU still gets lots of gigs.

 

The extent of the mess Crean inherited in 2008 was staggering. It was his misfortune to attract a good deal of the blame for this circumstance as he worked through three dismal seasons to repair it; it was like yelling at MAACO for taking too long to fix the mangled wreck towed into their garage.

 

It was Crean’s mistake to react to the volume of criticism by turning inward, trusting less, perhaps perceiving the Indiana high school coaches who’d been an intrinsic part of the program’s past success as less essential to its future.

 

So here we are.

 

Indiana now has achieved two undisputed Big Ten championships in the past four years, something Knight last accomplished in 1981 and 1983.( In his final 17 seasons, his teams only twice managed to stand alone on top of the conference, and shared the title twice more.)

 

This is not some historically weak iteration of the conference Crean somehow lucked into; the Big Ten produced four Final Four teams and 20 NCAA entrants over the past three seasons and this year has had four other teams take up residence in the top 25.

 

That portion of the fan base that regularly fills Assembly Hall to the ceiling, that even showed up Tuesday night to watch the game beamed from Iowa on the big screen and celebrate a Big Ten championship together, seems pleased with the course of the program. One wonders how universal that sentiment might be. Are Crean’s detractors simply dormant, waiting for the first single-elimination stumble to unleash their anger yet again?

 

One hopes this result has contented them at last. Indiana basketball needs a greater sense of unanimity. The current players deserve a wider sweep of acclaim. They have recovered from an abysmal start to the season that included losses to Wake Forest and UNLV to stand above Michigan State, Maryland, Purdue and Iowa.

 

It has been so long since the Indiana fan base as a whole has been predominantly happy. There were those displeased with how Knight was treated at the end, and some not thrilled with how he performed in those final years. There was the entire lost decade of the 2000s. And there has been this tenuous relationship between Crean and the Hoosiers.

 

Think about that: It’s almost 20 years of melancholy. This stuff is supposed to be fun.

 

On Tuesday night, a Twitter search for “Fire Tom Crean” turned up mostly mockery of the idea that some loud Indiana fans once lobbied for such an action. And an attempt to access the website that has hosted the Tom Crean buyout clock for nearly a year simply failed.

 

“Error establishing a database connection,” it said.

 

It would have been more fun had it read: “That does not compute.”

[Dalton26]

It's still there just in the link under the congrats.

[MartintheMopMan]

It's still there just in the link under the congrats.

I'm not going to be exploring things and clicking links Dalton!

 

But good find, I still think changing the main page is classy as heck. Plus, in 17 weeks the whole countdown is pretty much meaningless, that's exciting. Once the buyout falls to $4m that's such a low amount for how the contract is arranged it's not even worth considering in any "can he be fired?" conversations.

[Brass Cannon]

I'm going to be cheering on the Badgers and MSU. Would love them to become the 2 and 3 seeds so at most we only have to face one of them.

[TheWatShot]

Lot of mental gymnastics on GBI today… (post #11)

 

 

https://purdue.forums.rivals.com/threads/conference-tournament-vs-regular-season-title.82983/

 

 

Perusing some other threads, I'm not sure I've ever seen a poster more full of **** than honey_badger. 

[MartintheMopMan]

I'm going to be cheering on the Badgers and MSU. Would love them to become the 2 and 3 seeds so at most we only have to face one of them.

MSU should be in great shape, @ Rutgers and v. OSU is all they have left. Two games they have no excuse for losing.

 

Wisco is significantly less likely to make it, traveling to Minnesota and then West Lafayette for their two last games. I don't see them winning @ Tractortown so, they'll end up tied. I don't understand the tie-breaking so I can't tell you who gets the 4 and who gets the 5 in that case. 

[MartintheMopMan]

Lot of mental gymnastics on GBI today… (post #11)

 

 

https://purdue.forums.rivals.com/threads/conference-tournament-vs-regular-season-title.82983/

 

 

Perusing some other threads, I'm not sure I've ever seen a poster more full of **** than honey_badger. 

Why wouldn't record books list them separately? They already do. Is paper going to become scarce?

[Uspshoosier]

Notre dame is getting steam rolled by Miami at home. Miami up 18 with 12 min in the 1st

[HoosierAloha]

Just switched over to MSU-Rutgers... MSU down 4. 

[Uspshoosier]

Rutgers trying to get their annual beat a top 5 team in conference game. Down 2 at half to Msu

[HoosierAloha]

Bryn Forbes is good at shooting a basketball from more than 20 feet 9 inches from the basket.

[Brass Cannon]

If MSU loses to Rutgers the "easy schedule" crowd can shove it

[MartintheMopMan]

If MSU loses to Rutgers the "easy schedule" crowd can shove it

If MSU loses to Rutgers in their first game in March, I think the world may literally end in a fiery explosion.

[JSHoosier]

If MSU loses to Rutgers in their first game in March, I think the world may literally end in a fiery explosion.

MSU and fans would probably assume Izzo had been kidnapped and an imposter was on the sideline.

[LIHoosier]

If MSU loses to Rutgers in their first game in March, I think the world may literally end in a fiery explosion.

18-3 run for MSU in the 4 minutes of the 2nd half. The order of the universe has been restored.

[HoosierAloha]

If MSU loses to Rutgers the "easy schedule" crowd can shove it

 

Going off of KenPom's conference SOS...

 

O$U - 14

Ill - 13

IU - 12

Neb - 11

MSU - 10

 

Illinois has @Maryland and then @Penn State.  IU has Maryland at home.  Nebraska has @Northwestern.  MSU is @Rutgers and home to Ohio $tate.  IU's final KenPom SOS will probably be 11 or 12 in conference. 

[Uspshoosier]

Stony brook is a step closer getting over the hump and making the dance. There rival Albany got upset today in the quarters. Stony brook has been the best team in the American east for the last couple years but always get upset in their tourney. If they get in the dance remember the name Jameel warney he is really good he had 27 Pts and 23 rebounds today. To me championship week is just as exciting as the the big tounament. I love watching the small conferences have their moment to shine

[TheWatShot]

Why wouldn't record books list them separately? They already do. Is paper going to become scarce?

 

It's comical. Many of them have fully convinced themselves the tournament champion is the official league champion. It's been so hard for them to accept they can't claim to have more Big Ten titles than us without significantly moving the goalposts and I love it. 

[HoosierAloha]

Going off of KenPom's conference SOS...

 

O$U - 14

Ill - 13

IU - 12

Neb - 11

MSU - 10

 

Illinois has @Maryland and then @Penn State.  IU has Maryland at home.  Nebraska has @Northwestern.  MSU is @Rutgers and home to Ohio $tate.  IU's final KenPom SOS will probably be 11 or 12 in conference. 

 

Updated after Wednesday night games

 

O$U - 14

MSU - 13

Ill - 12

IU - 11

Neb - 10