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Indiana University Athletics Thread 2017-2018

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  • hoosierguy
    replied
    If anything IU’s fanbase is excessively patient. UK fans would have burnt down Lexington if they had to endure what IU fans have gone through the last twenty five years.

    Leave a comment:


  • LuckSwagger
    replied
    Another thing I'm getting sick of hearing is that the fanbase is a detriment to this program. The fans aren't the reason Mike Davis was hired, or that Kelvin Sampson broke rules, or that we had Tom Crean well past his expiration date. The fans are fed up with having a basketball program that's been criminally mismanaged for two decades.


    And no, recruits aren't going to think twice about coming here because of what some knucklehead said on Twitter. UK has a coach who's brought them a banner, four Final Fours and never has any trouble landing elite recruits, yet there were fans calling for him to be fired after they lost to Seton Hall. As bad as you may think the IU fanbase is, I guarantee UK is 1,000 times worse when it comes to fan behavior.

    Leave a comment:


  • LuckSwagger
    replied
    Originally posted by Sollozzo View Post

    You could almost say that getting Langford has been a bad thing because it’s made IU look bad for future recruits. Do you really want to go to IU when they couldn’t even figure a way out to win with Langford?
    I hear stuff like this all the time, and it always bugs me. Getting a 5 star recruit in your program is NEVER a bad thing. For years, all we heard was that top recruits in this state had no interest in IU anymore because the program isn't elite. Langford picked IU over Kansas, UCLA, UK, UNC and Louisville. It says something that IU can still win recruiting battles with those programs despite being far less successful recently.


    Noah Vonleh and Cody Zeller were horribly utilized, neither one of them improved any aspect of their game while they were here, and Vonleh didn't even get to play in a postseason game, but that didn't matter to Thomas Bryant. Kids don't care about previous teams or players, they care about their team and what they think they can do.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sollozzo
    replied
    Originally posted by Shade View Post
    First off, let me just say that I was not a huge fan of the Archie hiring. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either. I felt like we really needed to swing for the fences following Crean. I will also add that I swore not to criticize Archie much until Year 3, when he had mostly his guys on the roster. That said...some of the performances of the last couple of the years are the worst I've seen in my 33 years as a fan. Getting blown out at home by Fort Wayne last season was a big red flag, but the most disappointing thing about this season is that they have put up ZERO fight during the conference schedule. Getting blown out is the norm now, even by bad teams. They just look like they don't care, don't have any confidence, don't have any pride. And that falls squarely on the coach.

    I knew we weren't as good as we showed against Marquette, but we shouldn't be this bad, either.
    Yeah, the lack of fire is the most damning thing. These guys get beaten down easy. As soon as Rutgers made a run to close out the first half, you could tell IU looked totally defeated. They just don’t have any fight in them.

    The Big 10 is a dogfight that wears teams down. You have to get right back up after getting punched in the mouth or you’re dead in the water. Instead of battling to scratch out of this streak, it just seems to get worse and worse. Losing to Rutgers is a low point.
    Last edited by Sollozzo; 01-31-2019, 04:39 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • Shade
    replied
    First off, let me just say that I was not a huge fan of the Archie hiring. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either. I felt like we really needed to swing for the fences following Crean. I will also add that I swore not to criticize Archie much until Year 3, when he had mostly his guys on the roster. That said...some of the performances of the last couple of the years are the worst I've seen in my 33 years as a fan. Getting blown out at home by Fort Wayne last season was a big red flag, but the most disappointing thing about this season is that they have put up ZERO fight during the conference schedule. Getting blown out is the norm now, even by bad teams. They just look like they don't care, don't have any confidence, don't have any pride. And that falls squarely on the coach.

    I knew we weren't as good as we showed against Marquette, but we shouldn't be this bad, either.

    Leave a comment:


  • Trader Joe
    replied
    Originally posted by hoosierguy View Post

    Thank you for this insightful contribution. Much appreciated.
    I mean isn't he saying what we're all thinking lol

    Leave a comment:


  • hoosierguy
    replied
    Originally posted by Heisenberg View Post
    Holy ****, I know it's only year 2 but...
    Thank you for this insightful contribution. Much appreciated.

    Leave a comment:


  • hoosierguy
    replied
    IU needs to hire a PROVEN high major coach, but that would require big bucks and a willingness by the BOT to cede some influence and power. Davis was an overmatched assistant, Crean was a yes man who never rocked the boat, and Archie only had mid-major head coaching experience. The one time IU hired a proven head coach, he turned the program around almost immediately. But he recruited the wrong types of players apparently and people in the athletics department worked hard to find a way to get rid of him. Funny how other schools had no problem snatching up Sampson’s players and recruits.
    Last edited by hoosierguy; 01-31-2019, 02:49 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • Trader Joe
    replied
    Originally posted by Sollozzo View Post

    I agree with most of your Crean criticisms and am certainly no big Crean fan. That being said, I don’t see how you can say that Archie is better than Crean. Nothing we have seen so far backs that up. By all measures, Archie has been way worse. So far, Archie is making Crean look like Roy Williams. The season has just been a total disaster. While Crean didn’t leave the program in great shape, the roster isn’t so bad that you should lose 8 straight Big Tens (obviously I’m already penciling in MSU as a loss).

    Archie deserves credit for getting Langford, but getting the big Indiana kids means nothing if you can’t even make the tournament with them. You could almost say that getting Langford has been a bad thing because it’s made IU look bad for future recruits. Do you really want to go to IU when they couldn’t even figure a way out to win with Langford?

    Every game is lost because we give up BRUTAL runs to the other team that we can’t overcome. Most of the time it’s to start the game. Last night was almost even worse because we had a nice lead in the first half. Instead of opening it up and putting a chokehold on the game, we allowed them a huge run at the end of the first half that gave them confidence and got their crowd into it. Even worse, we seemed to lose all of our confidence. The coach deserves blame when it happens every game.

    We’ve bad a horrible month and couldn’t even save face against freaking Rutgers. Just beyond pitiful.

    I agree that we might as well give Archie a chance for a couple of more years. If the past has taught us anything, it’s that the next guy ultimately isn’t able to do much more than the previous guy. If we canned Archie, the next coach would likely be overmatched by the curse that is the IU program. I’m not superstitious, but if I was I would absolutely believe there was a hex on this program. Virtually everything it touches over the last 25 years turns to disappointment and pure agony. To put it bluntly, this program sucks and has overall sucked for a while.

    Meanwhile, Louisville gets totally humiliated with hookers, losing a championship banner, the Bowen scandal, and Pitino getting fired......yet their program IMMMEDIATELY finds a good coach and just keeps winning. IU OTOH has had 20 years of “”well, just give this coach a couple years and it will be fine.”” It’s just a never ending cycle of pure hell.
    For the record, I think Kelvin Sampson was and is a very good coach. He would have been wildly successful here if he had just avoided breaking a rule that basically doesn't even matter anymore.

    Leave a comment:


  • Trader Joe
    replied
    I'll put it like this. Look at our schedule, there is a VERY REAL chance, Archie's conference record in year 2 is the EXACT SAME as Crean's conference record in year 2 and that is insane. Crean did not leave the program in nearly the same shape he found it in. Archie is failign with two guys who were all preseason everything on the roster. Whether Romeo has lived up to the hype or not, I don't know, but the way we run our offense is certainly not ****ing helping him.

    Leave a comment:


  • Trader Joe
    replied
    Originally posted by Bball View Post
    Crean HAD to go. He was a bad ingame coach who had been exposed and his recruiting was headed south. The ONLY way he could win was stack the team so Indiana could out talent the other team. But that at best was just a recipe to lose in the tournament once the talent advantage was neutralized because Crean had little chance in outcoaching anyone of note.

    Archie is better than Crean. Crean left the program in a pretty bad place. Of course if Crean was better he wouldn't have been fired and there would've been a better and more balanced team here last season. Injuries and still playing thru Crean's players are the problem this season.
    Season 3 and 4 will be more telling for Archie as a coach.

    Actually, a big part of the problem is Crean was kept too long once it was obvious he wasn't good enough to hang with upper echelon coaches. Once that happened, the recruiting took a hit. He couldn't coach bigs. He was in love with 3's. Indiana HS coaches were against him. He was inconsistent because he had to stack the team with talent to win. Couldn't do that consistently. And average talent stood no chance with poor coaching.

    Archie didn't take over a program that was in great shape with players. He didn't take over situation where he was expected to further the existing system as a baseline. He was hired to install a new system and do things consistently. He basically has started from scratch in that regard.
    Crean didn't leave the program in a bad place. He left the program a year removed from an outright big ten title. I wantedhim fired and and I get why we did it, but the writing should have been on the wall when we saw what we paid Archie.

    Leave a comment:


  • Trader Joe
    replied
    Originally posted by Sollozzo View Post
    For the last 25 years, quite a few programs, both in our conference and all over the country, have upped the ante with coaching, recruits, facilities, etc. There are a hell of a lot of competitive basketball programs out there right now.

    Meanwhile, IU has had far more go wrong than right in those years. So we are where we are.
    I wanted to like Archie, but the reality was the proof was in the pudding when we saw what we paid him. Glass would rather spend another $50 million on our pathetic for decades football program than go out and pay the type of coach a program like IU needed to take the next step. Archie was putting lipstick on a pig and calling it a day. It's absolutely wild he was deemed better than Crean when you really take a step back and consider the resumes without the gleam of the "Hey I'm really tired of Crean and really happy to have a new coach!" which we were all pretty much guilty of.

    Leave a comment:


  • Trader Joe
    replied
    Originally posted by LuckSwagger View Post

    Crean should have been fired in 2015. THAT was the mistake.
    Yeah and this is why I land back on Glass again. If you were going to fire Crean that was the moment.

    Leave a comment:


  • Trader Joe
    replied
    We have to accept that this program is dead. Crean was at least good enough to deliver a Big Ten championship every few years and a team that could maybe make the final four. That's pretty good all things considered. Firing him looks like a huge mistake or at least the hiring of Archie has made it that. Crean was a horrid in game coach, but so is Archie and Archie looks far worse when it comes to actually establishing any sort of system. The fact this team is so bad with this amount of talent is absolutely nausea inducing. Archie is lucky that next year's class is so full of committed talent, but man if I was those guys I would certainly have to wonder what the hell I'm getting myself into.

    I know Glass is a fundraising dynamo so he will probably never go anywhere, but I think his head should be on the chopping block.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sollozzo
    replied
    Originally posted by Bball View Post
    Crean HAD to go. He was a bad ingame coach who had been exposed and his recruiting was headed south. The ONLY way he could win was stack the team so Indiana could out talent the other team. But that at best was just a recipe to lose in the tournament once the talent advantage was neutralized because Crean had little chance in outcoaching anyone of note.

    Archie is better than Crean. Crean left the program in a pretty bad place. Of course if Crean was better he wouldn't have been fired and there would've been a better and more balanced team here last season. Injuries and still playing thru Crean's players are the problem this season.
    Season 3 and 4 will be more telling for Archie as a coach.

    I agree with most of your Crean criticisms and am certainly no big Crean fan. That being said, I don’t see how you can say that Archie is better than Crean. Nothing we have seen so far backs that up. By all measures, Archie has been way worse. So far, Archie is making Crean look like Roy Williams. The season has just been a total disaster. While Crean didn’t leave the program in great shape, the roster isn’t so bad that you should lose 8 straight Big Tens (obviously I’m already penciling in MSU as a loss).

    Archie deserves credit for getting Langford, but getting the big Indiana kids means nothing if you can’t even make the tournament with them. You could almost say that getting Langford has been a bad thing because it’s made IU look bad for future recruits. Do you really want to go to IU when they couldn’t even figure a way out to win with Langford?

    Every game is lost because we give up BRUTAL runs to the other team that we can’t overcome. Most of the time it’s to start the game. Last night was almost even worse because we had a nice lead in the first half. Instead of opening it up and putting a chokehold on the game, we allowed them a huge run at the end of the first half that gave them confidence and got their crowd into it. Even worse, we seemed to lose all of our confidence. The coach deserves blame when it happens every game.

    We’ve bad a horrible month and couldn’t even save face against freaking Rutgers. Just beyond pitiful.

    I agree that we might as well give Archie a chance for a couple of more years. If the past has taught us anything, it’s that the next guy ultimately isn’t able to do much more than the previous guy. If we canned Archie, the next coach would likely be overmatched by the curse that is the IU program. I’m not superstitious, but if I was I would absolutely believe there was a hex on this program. Virtually everything it touches over the last 25 years turns to disappointment and pure agony. To put it bluntly, this program sucks and has overall sucked for a while.

    Meanwhile, Louisville gets totally humiliated with hookers, losing a championship banner, the Bowen scandal, and Pitino getting fired......yet their program IMMMEDIATELY finds a good coach and just keeps winning. IU OTOH has had 20 years of “”well, just give this coach a couple years and it will be fine.”” It’s just a never ending cycle of pure hell.
    Last edited by Sollozzo; 01-31-2019, 10:06 AM.

    Leave a comment:

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