2020-21 Indiana Athletics thread

[Sollozzo]

*with our offensive players.

Our offense produced top 5 amount of open 3's in the country I think this season.

But how much of that is because teams let IU have the open 3?

If I'm playing IU, I'm swarming multiple players at TJD all day long and daring the rest of the team to shoot as many wide open 3's as they want.

I do have faith in us to execute with better players, but I'd take that stat with a grain of salt because I certainly don't think many teams were losing sleep about IU getting open 3's.

[BobbyMac]

Better days are coming!

[Sollozzo]

Of course....another run by Houston to remind us yet again how screwed we were.

Sampson should instead be closing in on a near 20 year tenure at IU with major successes.

[Bball]

The fact that Sampson is the lightning rod for where IU finds itself these days is totally misplaced IMO.
The toxic situation that Knight created, and the administration allowed to continue even as Knight lost his edge, is where the troubles really began. It was inevitable he was going to be fired because you can't be a "classic bully" and not expect to be fired once the winning starts to fade and the baggage adds up. And Knight was never going to quit because he thought he was bigger than the college. Even when it became obvious to many that Knight detractors were gaining leverage, and Knight's 'ways' were getting harder to defend, Knight's ego wouldn't allow him to change nor just move on.

But instead of firing him in a timely fashion and IU being in the driver's seat, it was allowed to fester into a total mess of a situation and he was fired without a backup plan heading into the season.
It all snowballed from there.

[Bball]

But how much of that is because teams let IU have the open 3?

If I'm playing IU, I'm swarming multiple players at TJD all day long and daring the rest of the team to shoot as many wide open 3's as they want.

I do have faith in us to execute with better players, but I'd take that stat with a grain of salt because I certainly don't think many teams were losing sleep about IU getting open 3's.

This kind of reminds me of the Colts' "solid" pass defense stats during the Manning era when teams figured out the Colts couldn't stop the run, and of course running the ball ate up the clock and kept Manning on the sidelines.

So, rather than the Colts' offense causing other teams to go into shootout mode where the Colts felt their offense could beat anyone in a shootout, they had to sit on the sidelines and watch teams run the ball down their throats. 3rd and 10 was a successful running play for many teams against the Colts once teams quit chasing points.

But yeah, statistically, in that case, teams didn't put up big numbers against the Colts thru the air. Because they didn't try...

I could see the same with IU: Until IU can show they can hit the 3, not much use in worrying about the 3 point line beyond some tacit or token defense. I could also see playing IU tighter outside for 10 mins or so of the game, letting TJD get his, while then changing things up for the rest of the game to tighten the defense inside but with IU's shooters now without any confidence in taking those open 3's. Either tactic seems like a solid plan for playing against IU until they prove they can counter those.

[Trader Joe]

But how much of that is because teams let IU have the open 3?

If I'm playing IU, I'm swarming multiple players at TJD all day long and daring the rest of the team to shoot as many wide open 3's as they want.

I do have faith in us to execute with better players, but I'd take that stat with a grain of salt because I certainly don't think many teams were losing sleep about IU getting open 3's.

I'm not necessarily saying we'll be top 3 every yea rin that stat but I don't think it's al lbecause of TJD either

[clownskull]

But how much of that is because teams let IU have the open 3?

If I'm playing IU, I'm swarming multiple players at TJD all day long and daring the rest of the team to shoot as many wide open 3's as they want.

I do have faith in us to execute with better players, but I'd take that stat with a grain of salt because I certainly don't think many teams were losing sleep about IU getting open 3's.

yep, if i'm the opposing coach, i'm telling the guys to swarm tjd and dare them to punish us from 15 feet on out. the odds are then in your favor they cannot.
although now, tjd is almost certainly gone and we are looking at a season where i'm not sure where our scoring is going to come from. i think thompson has another year left if he wishes to come back but, he can't put up numbers like trayce.
until we get at least a couple of guys who can be reliable shooters from the perimeter, this team will struggle for points and wins.
edit: i'm gpnna take back the likelihood of trayce leaving since he isn't projected as a 1st rounder. nonetheless, if we can't get better perimeter guys, expect a similar season next year.

[Bball]

Sooooo Woodson sh-t-canned Fife???

My questions about Woodson are only increasing with this move.

[clownskull]

Sooooo Woodson sh-t-canned Fife???

My questions about Woodson are only increasing with this move.

yeh, this is quite bizarre. i just saw this.
i wonder what caused this?

[Bball]

Lander to the portal. Not surprised at all.
Allegedly Bates is staying but I can't imagine why he wouldn't hit the portal considering the sporadic and inconsistent way he was used.

[Bball]

yeh, this is quite bizarre. i just saw this.
i wonder what caused this?

I'm hearing lots of stuff with no verification... Like Fife hasn't been quiet in saying he is (was) at IU to take over for Woodson sooner rather than later... That Fife hasn't kept politics to himself and likes sharing rightwing politics with players and has been told to not bring that stuff to the program. Fife being against the NIL thing, while Woodson and the university are for it (this is what allows players to earn some money by doing commercials without violating NCAA rules)...
Allegedly, Fife has posted or made a public comment/statement about his thoughts on NIL that have ran counter to Woodson or the university's position. Has anyone seen anything like this? I haven't seen anything from anyone at IU speaking about this.

[Bball]

So, listening to the JMV / Rabjohns interview... Sounds like NIL stuff definitely has legs (IU trying to be one of the leaders in it, and Fife posting on Twitter negatively about it... and having to delete his posts). Also sounds like Woodson didn't like hearing speculation that Fife was the coach in waiting, but nobody said any of it came from Fife. They did mention one article that (paraphrased) "almost sounded like a leak", but that it was a speculation article about Fife being the coach in waiting, but not something Woodson was cool with even if it was speculation.
Fife didn't have Woodson's ear.
Randy Wittman is a paid consultant for IU and had more input and dialogue/sounding board for Woodson than did Fife.

Maybe some knocks about Fife's recruiting prowess were in there too.

Also, toward the end of the interview, the question of what Thad Matta does came up. How much input he has or how much does Woodson lean on him for advice. It sounded like "none" was the basic answer.

I got the impression that Fife and Matta were Dolson hires and not really some great pool of experience that Woodson wanted to be surrounded by to navigate these waters as a first year 63 year old college basketball coach.

JMV said he'd been hearing rumors for a while that there was an issue (or issues) between Woodson and Fife... and then this happens (and Rabjohns confirmed it was a firing). JMV more than once said it sounded like a soap opera. Rabjohns basically intimated there's more to the story but said it's not for him to say and that if Woodson or Fife wants to say more they can speak for themselves. He thought more would leak out, but also said he was sure some of the things we'd hear would be wrong.

I didn't hear JMV ask about the political angle, and I didn't hear Rabjohns bring it up either.

As for the NIL stuff, Rabjohns confirmed Fife had Tweeted negatively about it and that Rabjohns himself had spoken to Fife about it and questioned the wisdom of Tweeting comments putting him on the opposite side of the issue as IU. And then he said a while later he heard from Fife he told him he was correct and he'd gotten a call telling him to delete those Tweets.

It doesn't sound to me like that 6th banner is happening anytime soon.

[D-BONE]

So, listening to the JMV / Rabjohns interview... Sounds like NIL stuff definitely has legs (IU trying to be one of the leaders in it, and Fife posting on Twitter negatively about it... and having to delete his posts). Also sounds like Woodson didn't like hearing speculation that Fife was the coach in waiting, but nobody said any of it came from Fife. They did mention one article that (paraphrased) "almost sounded like a leak", but that it was a speculation article about Fife being the coach in waiting, but not something Woodson was cool with even if it was speculation.
Fife didn't have Woodson's ear.
Randy Wittman is a paid consultant for IU and had more input and dialogue/sounding board for Woodson than did Fife.

Maybe some knocks about Fife's recruiting prowess were in there too.

Also, toward the end of the interview, the question of what Thad Matta does came up. How much input he has or how much does Woodson lean on him for advice. It sounded like "none" was the basic answer.

I got the impression that Fife and Matta were Dolson hires and not really some great pool of experience that Woodson wanted to be surrounded by to navigate these waters as a first year 63 year old college basketball coach.

JMV said he'd been hearing rumors for a while that there was an issue (or issues) between Woodson and Fife... and then this happens (and Rabjohns confirmed it was a firing). JMV more than once said it sounded like a soap opera. Rabjohns basically intimated there's more to the story but said it's not for him to say and that if Woodson or Fife wants to say more they can speak for themselves. He thought more would leak out, but also said he was sure some of the things we'd hear would be wrong.

I didn't hear JMV ask about the political angle, and I didn't hear Rabjohns bring it up either.

As for the NIL stuff, Rabjohns confirmed Fife had Tweeted negatively about it and that Rabjohns himself had spoken to Fife about it and questioned the wisdom of Tweeting comments putting him on the opposite side of the issue as IU. And then he said a while later he heard from Fife he told him he was correct and he'd gotten a call telling him to delete those Tweets.

It doesn't sound to me like that 6th banner is happening anytime soon.

Sounds like a **** show in the shadows. Except if you're in the program, it's right in your face. In certain ways, I get it. Woodson's the HC and has as much or more coaching cred (although not in college ranks) than any of the Fife, Matta guys. Yet he's got to put up with real or perceived question to his authority. But, is it really real, and if so, is it internal? If it's not, then he's maybe being too defensive.

From another angle, Fife sounds like he didn't do himself a lot of favors, particularly positioning himself openly against the university's stance on NIL. It's interesting because Woodson and Fife are both Knight guys and IU guys, but from totally different eras. Interesting the interview characterizing Wittman, who overlapped with Woodson at IU, as seemingly having more input than Fife, an actual coach on staff. Maybe that was more the result of the tension itself. But maybe it was like that from the get go and pissed Fife off.

All of it (wherever the truth lies) - especially the NIL part - would seem to put to bed any chance of Fife becoming head coach down the road. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing in light of all this.

[Bball]

Some more context here. No real answers though. It does explain where some of the leaks have come from that have now permeated social media discussions about this and how some of the early spin favored Fife and later spin is now favoring Woodson in this fiasco.
About the only thing contradicted here versus the Rabjohn interview that I see is this says Woodson did have input on Fife's hiring.
But if we back it up a notch, both views could be correct. Knowing Woodson met with Fife before he was hired (which is what Brew appears to be basing that statement on) doesn't mean that Dolson didn't strongly suggest he be hired, or that Woodson wasn't or didn't feel pressured into accepting the Fife hire by Dolson.

https://www.si.com/college/indiana/basketball/my-two-cents-tom-brew-who-is-to-blame-in-ugly-split-between-mike-woodson-and-dane-fife?fbclid=IwAR2XZN5kLFtpfKGXmjJ2qgNhLEdJ-MVFXPIthgkceYjbkcLI1uC7toTKjW0

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — It all sounded good at first. While new Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson was busy sweeping away all the stench from the Archie Miller debacle and all that had preceded it, he kept talking about how important it was to rebuild the Indiana basketball family with Indiana basketball people.

That's why he talked to Mike Woodson and Keith Smart and Dane Fife, all former Indiana legends from slightly different generations, during his quick search for a new head coach. Woodson was always his first choice, and Dolson got the deal done swiftly with Woodson, who is still the No. 5 all-time leading scorer in school history and a Bob Knight favorite.

And then it got even better.

Not long after Woodson was hired, he yanked Fife away from Michigan State, where he had been a fiercely loyal — and very successful — assistant to Tom Izzo for 10 years. First Woodson was coming home, and now Fife was, too.

Two of the most favorite shiny apples from the Bob Knight tree, sitting side by side.

But Fife didn't even last a year working for Woodson. Hired on April 5 a year ago, Fife was fired by Woodson on Wednesday. Indiana's news release didn't use that word "fired,'' just saying that Fife ''would not return.''

But let's be clear about this: Woodson, once reaching the conclusion that he couldn't work with Fife for a variety of reasons — and that list is pretty long, according to some reports — fired him.

"Would not return?'' Come on.

If it's not a firing and Indiana wanted to save some face, they simply would have remained mum and told Fife to go find another job first before anything was released. That happens all the time. They could have let this modern-day Hoosier hero leave with some dignity.

It did NOT happen here.

Fife won't have a hard time finding a job, because his resume is solid. We all know that. That's why we were so glad he came back to Bloomington in the first place, with wife and young kids in tow. And that's why it's hard when things don't work out with your own legends.

It is a generational thing, after all. If you're an Indiana fan in your 60s, for many of you, Mike Woodson is your all-time favorite Indiana player. In your 40s, that same phrase might be used for Fife, the 2002 Defensive Player of the year who made it to a national championship game.

Fife was also that last bridge to Bob Knight, which means a hell of a lot to this fan base. Probably too much, to be honest. But that's what is fact. And, facts are facts.

Indiana fans love Mike Woodson, and they love Dane Fife, too. And Wednesday's news of Fife's firing — I'm going to continue to call it that — forced a lot of people to take sides.

First reactions to the news favored Fife, with many wondering if the old man Woodson, who turned 64 years old on Wednesday, had lost it. This was supposed to be a marriage made in Hoosier heaven. Woodson was supposed to turn around the IU program and then hand over the reins to Fife three or four years down the road.

Dolson never said that Fife was the heir apparent, but that sure looked like the plan. And now it's blown up in Indiana's face. This is not a good look, and there's no good way to spin it, because someone has to be thrown under the bus for a failure that didn't even last 12 months.

As the night wore on, it was Fife who got thrown under the bus by the folks at 247Sports. It wasn't in their ''stories'' on the Fife dismissal, but on message boards, their lead Indiana basketball writer accused Fife of being disloyal, stabbing Woodson in the back with people outside of the program, failing in his recruiting responsibilities for the program, and talking repeatedly about his NIL and political beliefs that ran counter to the program's policies.

There was always very little interaction between Woodson and Fife on the bench on game nights. Fife was often further down the bench, talking mostly with the players than with Woodson.

That's not really all that uncommon in college benches, to be honest. There is often some good cop/bad cop stuff going on, but that doesn't look like the case here. Now that we know the outcome, it's likely that Woodson simply didn't want to hear anything that Fife wanted to say. He'd rather do things with Kenya Hunter and Yasir Rosemond, his two other assistants.

On a couple of cases during the regular season, I tried to engage Woodson into conversations about what he was learning about the college game from his assistants. After all, Woodson has been in the NBA for four decades, as a long-time player and then coach. The college game was all new to him.

He never really answered those questions with any specifics, always spoke in generalities and never mentioned Fife, Hunter or Rosemond by name.

Woodson also uses ''I'' instead of ''we'' when talking about coaching decisions. This is his program, and he's always very clear about that. That's why you never heard from any of the three assistants in the media all season. They don't talk about what's going on — Woodson does.

And that's the way it goes.

That's an NBA thing, and Woodson certainly has brought that philosophy along with him. That was part of the reason behind my line of questioning during the season, because I remember back from five or six years ago, when I was writing our IU basketball book ''Missing Banners'' with my friend Terry Hutchens.

I was doing the 1980 chapters in the book. I have talked with Woodson about those years many times — we were classmates, both 1980 grads, and I covered his college career for two-plus years. But I wanted a fresh interview. Woodson was an assistant coach to Doc Rivers with the Los Angeles Clippers at the time, and I went through the Clippers to set up an interview.

I was told no, that Rivers doesn't allow his assistants to talk to the media. It didn't matter that I simply wanted to talk about a college basketball season that took place more than 35 years ago.

But those were the rules.

In this case, there is surely plenty of blame to go around. If those rumors about Fife are true — I cannot confirm them, but also have no reason to not believe them — then Fife is certainly to blame for this divorce. This IU ''brotherhood'' truly does go only so far.

Maybe Woodson could have handled the issues better, too, at least along the way. What's very clear by the firing — there's that word again — was that Woodson is true to his convictions in wanting to do this the right way, his way.

If it doesn't work, then fix it. Woodson has said repeatedly that this all isn't about him. It's about the players, he's always saying, and it's about restoring this Indiana program that he loves so much to the glory that we've all seen before.

If Fife was getting in the way of that, then bye-bye.

There were some people on Wednesday who wanted to accuse Dolson of forcing Fife on Woodson, but that wasn't the case. Woodson spent time with Fife before he hired him, had many long conversations and even said he liked the idea of Dane coming home, too.

Hiring Fife was a great idea in April. The fact that it didn't work out now doesn't change that. You don't re-write history. You just make the move, and move on. But it will be interesting to see the role that Dolson played in dealing with this Woodson-Fife dynamic during the year. He is, after all, the boss to BOTH of them.

If he could have fixed this along the way, he would have. But with how things played out on Wednesday, it's clear that fixing this fractured relationship was never an option. It had gone too far beyond fixing.

Woodson and Fife are both Hoosier legends, both massive fan favorites, so this is hard to watch. It's like watching twin brothers brawling in a fistfight. It's just not a good look.

I really thought that Dane Fife would be the head coach at Indiana when Woodson was ready to hang it up, whenever that might be.

There's no way that happens now. None.

So life goes on, and we move forward. It's going to be interesting to see who Woodson hires next. It will be even more interesting to see where Fife lands. He will have plenty of options, to be sure.

I'm on record for being thrilled that Woodson came back home. Same with Fife. I thoroughly enjoyed being around both of them all season.

It's a shame it didn't work.

It's a real shame that is was so bad that it led to this ugly break-up. They are Hoosiers. They are beloved Hoosiers.

And now it's done. Just like that.

And that's too bad.

[Bball]

It's hard to understand how Fife could have these issues and baggage at IU, but coached and lasted on Izzo's bench for 10 years until his alma mater came calling.