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All right. We're going to go ahead and get
to our guest for this episode, Zach Osterman from the Indy
Star. We talked with Zach at length
about a variety of things. I don't know if we necessarily
settled on anything definitive, but some good comments, I think
about both the micro and macro issues regarding IU basketball.
We also talked a little IU football at the end.
So here we go. And joining us on the show is
Zach Osterman, IU Insider for the Indy Star.
It's been a while since we had you on Zach.
Good to see you again. How you doing?
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I can. I can handle.
I can handle it. I can handle at home field
apparel on Twitter. I really.
Do appreciate the concern. Thank you.
So anyway, let's talk. We're going to talk to some IU
basketball, might touch a little bit on some football
developments as well, but it's been a rough season for Indiana
in some ways. Indiana coming off that loss at
Wisconsin? That didn't really make anybody
particularly happy. Coming off the loss to Purdue,
which definitely didn't make anybody happy.
And facing a week off for everybody to talk about those
things before they travel to a revitalized Illinois program
which probably won't make people happy either.
You I'm. Not sure I'd use that exact word
describing what's going on in Illinois, but we'll leave that.
Well, I wasn't even referring to that 'cause they were playing
pretty well without Tara Chan Junior.
But your point is well taken. No, it's it's certainly a a
curious situation over there. But no, Indiana looks like a
team that is a few notches below the actual tournament caliber
teams in the conference. So we wanted to talk a little
bit about where that leaves everything because you had a
piece in the Star last week in the aftermath of the Purdue lost
that talked about, you know, what are fair expectations for
this particular team? There's a lot of cultural items
that fall into this in terms of what Indiana basketball hasn't
done over the course of the last 25 to 30 years that certainly
filter into it. So let's just start there.
I mean, your take on how people are reacting to this Indiana
basketball program right now. And as we sit on the precipice
of a remaining January and February that might not go that
great for this program, how do you see that atmosphere kind of
playing out? Yeah, I mean I've seen it
before. You have two it, you know it, it
can get. I think toxic is a fair word.
I don't think, I don't think that's an unfair word.
It's difficult because there's there's the micro and there's
the macro in this and and in both I think you have some real
tension. So in the micro on the one hand
you have a team that has some undeniably talented players.
You know Kalel Ware is probably going to be a first round draft
pick. Malik Renew I would say is
trending toward maybe second team all big 10 kind of you know
status if if we're talking about just where he falls in the
firmament of the league. McKenzie and Bako I think is is
starting to hit that ceiling a little bit more and and there's
you know it's it's not perfect but I mean you look at it, the
only two games he hasn't scored in double figures since
Thanksgiving are Nebraska and Ohio State.
And then that Nebraska game if remember he serves part of that
was a little bit of foul trouble.
He's shooting the ball a lot better.
He's looking more and more like an offensive mismatch.
It's just taking him longer to get there than we expected.
And then if you even look at you know for example at Trey
Galloway probably playing some of the best basketball of his
career certainly at least at the offensive end of the floor the
shot coming around a little bit he's assisting a lot better
etcetera. But on the other hand the
results are not going well And and I think it is worth saying
and I heard you say this and I I'm.
I know you heard me say this in the preseason that this was
always a possible outcome for this team that that you know a
lot of teams. You know very few teams get
better for losing what Indiana lost after last season
particularly all at once, that much production, that much
experience that much institutional knowledge.
I've gotten some weird blowback at times for saying Indiana's a
young team, they're 220th on Ken Palm and Division One experience
under 200 and 63rd and minutes continuity that that qualifies
as young. And I think we always knew that
there there was the capacity for this team to be something like
this, a team that wasn't very good away from home, a team that
wasn't very connected defensively.
There have been some things that have been surprising or or at
least you know, probably from Indiana's perspective,
disappointing. And I'm, I'm confident we'll get
into some of those. But in the micro, you kind of
have this push and pull of a team that when you look at it on
the floor, you say there is a lot of individual talent here
and yet it cannot sew itself into something cohesive and
productive and successful consistently.
And there's no arguing that. I mean you know, they've lost
four of six since the turn of the year.
They have one true Rd. win all season or just one.
What I mean I guess two wins away from home.
If we're talking about, I know Gambridge Field House it's
technically a neutral site. Kim Pom categorizes it semi home
because it's basically a homecourt advantage for Indiana,
especially in a game like Harvard.
The only team they've beaten away from homeless seasons.
Michigan, Michigan's terrible just to be quite frank.
They, you know I mean if you want to talk about teams that
that have managed to kind of fall further below you know
maybe preseason expectations in Indiana and Michigan's were
probably lower than Indiana's. But the two and five in the
conference there's 7:00 and 11:00 that they don't look good
at all. And so there's the micro push
and pull of this team where you you watch it and you think I
just think there's more talent than what this team is
performing at the moment. And I I, I said this to our good
friend Mike Glass got on his radio show last week.
I think this team is closer than maybe the general perception
thinks it is to realizing some of that potential.
I'm also pretty convinced it never will and so that like so
it's kind of like again this is that that weird push and pull
where I think they're because I think part of the issue is and
again this is the micro and then I I I do want to get to the
macro because the both of these color the discussion.
I think the issue is that it's it's like the team.
It's like the the problem is this team is like 5 to 10% away
on like 8 different things rather than 25% away on one
thing or 15 to 20% away on two things where it's like, hey
these are big time flaws. But if we can spend an intensive
short period just drilling down into either how to fix this or
how to mitigate it, it'll be OK. Like 3 point shooting.
Not so much last year but a couple years ago where Indiana
district figured OK what we do is we just build an offense
route not taking them and then we just defend for our lives and
that will get us over the line. And it did barely, but it did.
I think this team, the problem with this team is there's too
many shortcomings, not all of which maybe are as far away from
sort of an adequate level as they need to be.
But the problem is if you have too many things to fix, it just
kind of becomes overwhelming for a group that is young, that is
is younger. When you consider, I mean again,
you talk about their their their lower ranked nationally and
minutes continuity than the Art of Vision One experience.
So they're not, they're not just young, they're young together.
Obviously there's questions about leadership and it just
feels like, you know, midstream this stuff just isn't going to
get fixed. Then there is the macro, which
is kind of the, the thing that maybe I find a little bit more
fascinating as somebody who did not grow up with IU basketball
but has certainly observed it lived in this ecosystem in the
the the IU sphere for a very long time.
And and as a very sort of engaged observer, obviously,
which is sort of the the surprise, for example, that Mike
Woodson has not earned more benefit of the doubt because of
what he did over his first two years.
From what I perceive anyway to be at least the more vocal, the
more engaged sections of the fan base.
Especially in a season where I think everyone would have
recognized in let's say May or June when nobody's blood is up
about Purdue being ranked #2 in the country and coming into
Assembly Hall and everyone's just looking at things in a very
sort of 10,000 foot way and agreed, yeah, it, it might be a
a bit of a rebuild year a bit of a re like a starting of a new
cycle. So there's in the macro, I'm I'm
surprised that there's not more sort of, hey, this is the this
is trending to be a tough season.
But there's still been some good work done and maybe given time
that foundation can support further, you know, building
upward against what I completely understand, which is the fan
base. People always say to me, people
out, people in the Big 10, people in the national media.
They say that Indiana fans expect too much, that Indiana
fans are too demanding or too entitled and that's where like
their perception is that that's where what they see as sometimes
unrealistic or unreasonable expectations come from.
I say I don't think that. I think Indiana fans fear that
if they don't try to hold those expectations up, eventually
they'll slip and eventually the program will get to a place
where maybe it can't get back to that place that Indiana fans
fear. And this doesn't always manifest
itself healthily. I understand that.
But Indiana fans fear that if they don't constantly sort of
remind everyone that this should be the expectation at Indiana,
then at some point because of how long it's been since those
expectations were consistently met, maybe the expectations will
slip and then that suddenly calcifies and then the floor is
lower. And so I understand you know
sometimes the more existential concerns I guess if that if
that's if that makes sense and that's the macro push and pull
of like where the where the program is in like a long term
direction versus what I under where I understand the angst and
the anxiety comes from in a fan base that has had to adure a lot
more of this than history says it should have over the last 25
years. Yeah, I mean, I think there's
there's some. Good thoughts in all of that.
I mean, I'll start with the macro and kind of work back to
the micro. I I think on the macro front,
each of these vintages of IU basketball over the course of
the last maybe 15 to 20 years where the disappointments have
come in, it's kind of been for different reasons.
You know, I think people, people were very patient at the
beginning of the Korean era. They had this sudden rush of
success and then it kind of went away and there wasn't really a
good explanation as to why it went away.
And you know, when you talk about like you're surprised
Woodson hasn't gotten more of a reservoir of patience.
I think part of the issue is that's a great example of a
situation where people were patient, there were some initial
dividends and then success just was very fleeting.
And that I think has people paranoid about as much as
anything else. Because if if a team and a
program look I can have the head of steam that that 1213 season
era seem to have under creen. If all of that could disappear
relatively quickly, then it kind of feels like everything is
temporal, you know, under Archie, I think a lot of people
were expecting there to be greater heights reached
gradually and again. I think even with the early
losses and the embarrassing losses, people were patient
until it just became very clear that things weren't.
Going in the right direction that the the recruiting was
never going to be good enough, that the on court play wasn't
going to be good enough and then things cratered and it's like
well now we have to start over with Woodson.
You know, it's interesting because I've thought about this
a lot. It's it is not nothing to take
IU to back-to-back NCAA tournaments at this point, which
in and of itself is sad. And I think for a lot of people
it's hard to get their heads wrapped around that from a macro
perspective. So for some folks they're like,
that's great, Mike, thanks for doing that.
That's like the minimum expectation that we feel like we
should have here at IU and that we get told that we should have.
If you're going to talk about banners and championships and
you know being a blue blood which is essentially the entire
marketing effort of of the university surrounding the
basketball program. The idea that this year was
going to be a step back, you know, a retooling, yes, but I
don't think people were prepared for that step back to be.
You may not make the NIT versus, well, you might be like a a
double digit seed you might have to scrap for an at large bid.
And what you've seen I think out of this team over the course of
the season is when they've been on big stages they've mostly
crumbled, The Kansas game probably being the one
exception. They don't look up to the task
at all. They look like they're getting
outplayed by most of the actual good teams that they play and
what is happening on the floor for IU fans who are watching
programs that were in the dumps not too long ago, like UConn,
figure out how to suddenly play modern basketball, how to
recruit the right types of players, how to get them to play
in a system. I think a lot of those people
are just like, why is it so difficult for Indiana basketball
to get to that point? And I don't necessarily think it
matters who the coach would be at this point.
It would be the same reaction regardless and I think to some
degree regardless of what had happened the last couple of
years where and I'll I'll let you talk after this even though
Indiana has it was a four seed last year was a protected seed
was second in the Big 10. That was a season that should
have been celebrated. I think a lot of people forget
or or they forget in this conversation that was a tough
team to watch. A lot of times they kind of
gritted out wins They they were not terribly elegant in the way
they were winning. Trace Jackson Davis was elegant
in the way that he was doing things, but it often times was a
bit of a struggle. I think aesthetically for people
to get their heads wrapped around like this is how we're
winning basketball games. So all of those things I think
kind of fit into the equation. But it is interesting because
it's not just one single factor, certainly.
Yeah. And I guess if we're, if we're
staying on the macro, like my comparison is or not my
comparison, my, my hypothetical is basically where would Archie
Miller be in year three if years one and two had gone like that
because I don't think he would be here now.
I think there are factors that go into that.
I think one of the big ones is, and again this just sort of
speaks to a a, a a much sort of more historical context that
ultimately no one can control until it is sort of arrested or
rebutted or buttressed or whatever.
Which is every coach that fails in Indiana is going to leave a
tougher job for the next coach because the next coach is
probably going to get less time, less, excuse me, less, you know,
patience. Because the again the fear is
going to be that at some point if we just if you just keep sort
of cycling through and and giving everybody the same amount
of time and everybody's saying this and everybody's saying
that, then the standards will slip and at some point you will
be happy to just say hey great, two NCAA tournament appearances
in your first two seasons. That's brilliant.
Here's an 8 year contract. With a a God buyout and there's
nothing to worry about. On the other hand, you know and
I like No2 comparisons are perfect.
Please understand I'm. I'm completely aware of of that.
But like you know the flip side kind of conversation is and I'm
getting on Kim pong while we talk.
You know if you if you hold Jay right to that standard does he
make it this season for Ed Villanova which he is when he
makes his first Sweet 16 much less.
You know how long does he last at Hofstra where he doesn't make
the NCAA tournament until year four.
I think Tony Bennett makes one NCAA tournament in his first
Four Seasons And you want to talk about.
I mean like I have. I have.
I have an old friend who went to Virginia, a high school friend
who like to this day still doesn't love Tony Bennett.
Arguing is basically just and I just don't want to watch that
style of basketball. It's like if you won a national
title and it was great and it's fun to beat Duke.
But like the the the other part of it is it can be a real grind
when it's not winning. And so that's like, I'm not sort
of saying you just have to be patient.
Although I do probably tend to be one of those people just sort
of like like advocate for patience over you know just sort
of like let three and change and three and change and just keep
throwing something at the wall till it works.
But it's it's difficult to sort of say, I mean like for all the
world there was nobody thought Archie Miller was going to fail
in Indiana. And I include me in that.
I was I I talked to people when he was hired.
I was around him. I I watched what he was trying
to do with that team when he was trying to do recruiting.
I thought this is going to work. There's nothing about this that
doesn't tick the boxes in Indiana game four years, and I
would argue three of his four years and his team was worse
than it was the year before. The only year where I would say
they improved was the year that they would have made the NCAA
tournament as a probably a nine or a ten seed in 2020.
So it's like it's a hard conversation to have, but it is
at very least to me, at minimum. It's sort of reflective of kind
of this idea, this, this reality that settles in around a program
where I do think that every coach is, is basically, for lack
of a better way of putting this, a more artful way of putting
this. Every coach is, is not only
having to sort of solve their own problems, but they're also
kind of having to carry more of the baggage of the previous
coaching tenure. Each one that does that makes
like each one that failed. And obviously Tom Crean was the
big example. There were NCAA tournament
sanctions, but I think Archie Miller had to shoulder some of
Tom Crean's failure. And I think Mike Woodson has had
the shoulder even more of Archie Miller's.
And I think if Woodson goes without success, the next, the
next coach will have to do the same thing because it does
become, I think, sort of a negative cycle.
I think it can be I. Can be.
And look, I think there's some, there's probably some truth to
that among certain aspects of the fan base.
I do wonder with Woodson, I think part of the angst that
you're seeing this year and part of the negative reactions and
some of the over to the top stuff is less tied into that
baggage and more to the perception, fair or unfair, that
Woodson doesn't really have a direction for this roster and
the and and the recruiting in the program.
And yes, you know, they've pulled in a higher caliber of
top level recruit over the course of the three years he's
been here. Or you know, you throw some
portal people in there as well then in generally what Archie
Miller was pulling in generally. But it hasn't really solved the
problems that people are seeing on the floor.
You know, they they lose the boogie flamed recruitment, you
know, around the same time that they get the Liam Mcneely
recruitment. And this comes on the heels of
IU not bringing in a guard in the portal, even though that was
a perceived area where they didn't have depth.
They don't get the development among guards that they needed in
order to be more competitive this year.
People are now looking at the roster and saying I'm really
concerned about the direction this is going because it seems
to be centered around this style of basketball That, to go back
to your friend's comment about Virginia isn't that attractive
to watch. Doesn't seem to be having the
type of effect that's elevating IU into the top 25 regularly.
And if you're looking at a Khalil Ware likely leaving for
the NBA almost certainly after this season, if you're looking
at a Malik Renew who might be on the borderline, it's like what
is, what is the plan? You know, I I think people were
generally predisposed to be patient with Woodson and would
generally even be willing to be patient through this stretch of
of losses to superior competition.
But there is a real kind of foreboding atmosphere around the
program right now that what's being done to address the issues
isn't really sufficient. Now there's rumors that, you
know, another recruitment that people thought was going well
may not actually happen. You know, I mean there's
there's, there's the kinds of things that create additional
dread around what's already there.
And so I'm having a hard time parsing how much of it is the
past and how much of it is a real concern about the.
Future based upon what people are seeing in the present.
And I don't think all of that is unfair.
Although the one thing about like the Derrick Queen
recruitment is you can't complain about like this sort of
slow, too big court spacing style of play and then also get
mad. When no, no, no, your.
Front court might be. It's not there.
It's that there doesn't seem to be another plan right now on the
recruiting trail. I I I understand that to to a
certain extent and it's it is a lot harder.
And this is just like a a a general observation like
conversations about roster building are so much harder than
they used to be because like it's it just it doesn't.
And even to the level I had someone make this point to me,
you know because obviously Tamar Bates has been playing pretty
well lately. Now that that hasn't necessarily
followed wins if not followed in Missouri.
But Bates has looked more in the last month or so like the player
that a lot of us who you know when he committed when he
signed. Certainly I mean anybody who was
in the Bahamas. Yeah with with Indiana and the
media like travelling party everyone was.
I mean every he was talk kind of the team on that trip, it was
like whoa, like this kid looks real and he never really found
that in Indiana. He seems to be finding it at
Missouri. So like there's kind of this
conversation too between like like somebody made this and this
is a bit of a tangent but it's it's a separate example of I
think the same general sort of conversation of Indiana made a
conscious choice to bring back Miller Cop for a fifth season
and start Miller Cop when it could have started.
Tamar Bates Let him play, let him work through some kinks and
maybe find that level that we thought he had when he signed at
Indiana rather than transferring to Missouri.
But then the flip side is we're sitting here talking about a
team, one of whose greatest weaknesses is probably its
experience. And Miller Cop was what, you
know, whatever anybody thought about, you know, maybe some of
the the times, some of the stuff he was asked to do defensively
at times or whatever. Miller Cop played 1000 Big 10
games. He was that team's most
effective 3 point shooter by I mean, you know, at times by some
distance. And so like this is like the.
And then the other part of this too is there were people who
after the 2122 season, I mean, I can remember this being part of
like the discourse on social media and probably in message
boards. I don't really go on those
anymore. But you know, like, does Indiana
really want Race Thompson back for a sixth year or would
Indiana be better off elevating Jordan Geronimo?
Well, Jordan Geronimo's gone somewhere where he's getting
regular minutes this year. Indiana didn't do that.
They took Race Thompson back. You know, he came back.
He was more or less probably the same player, broadly speaking,
last season that he was two seasons ago.
Jordan Geronimo never really got that opportunity in Indiana.
He's since moved on somewhere. He's getting that opportunity
and I'm not trying to pick on him.
Please understand. But it's it's it's clear that
just getting Jordan Geronimo more minutes has not sort of
allowed him to blossom into some substantially better basketball
player. So like there are all of these
new sort of like ripples in the current when it comes to roster
construction and and and not just construction but like
development over the course of several seasons of you know do
you take a freshman and develop him here.
Do you try to solve that problem in the portal?
What do you what do you want your identity to be?
Do you want to be a more experienced team?
Do you want to just try and be more of a, you know, a a portal
heavy team? We've seen some teams that have
had success with that, you know, fairly consistently since the
portal kind of became a mainstream thing.
You know, I think history's generally told us that trying to
use the portal as a quick fix doesn't work great, but it can
provide you key pieces, you can provide you guys the start guys
that change your dynamic etcetera.
It it's, you know, sort of this. The last piece of it is I guess
and I was the one who was hammering this in the summer
because I thought it was fascinating and and I don't,
it's hard to tell if like it's something Woodson's really tried
because you know, on a grand scale not a lot has worked
consistently for this team. And maybe this is a maybe that's
a symptom of this, maybe that it's just, you know, a weird
collision of things. But there was also kind of this
undercurrent of Woodson over the first two years, basically
saying I don't normally play this way.
Just this isn't, you know, this is not the offense that I ran in
the NBA, but I just had an all world right, you know, four or
five hybrid that could do what Trace could do.
So I had to build my team around him.
I wasn't just going to go out there and ask him to be Tyson
Chandler. I had to make him that team's
Carmelo Anthony. But I'm not going to do that
going forward. And yet at times this season it
has felt like Indiana has kind of run back to that.
When when things have gotten when it started to struggle,
it's kind of run back to that sort of like well, we're just
going to, you know, we're going to run floppy actions that
create post up opportunities and just sort of circle the floor
from there. And I don't, I don't disagree
with anyone who says this team needs pieces it doesn't have,
particularly from an offensive perspective, although obviously
they haven't been great defensively.
It is interesting to me. They're still 5th in the Big 10
in league games alone, despite allowing like 1.4 points per
possession at Wisconsin, they're still 5th in league games in in
adjusted defensive efficiency. So the defense hasn't actually
been, I think, as bad at times as is perceived.
The offense though, in eight Big 10 games, 12th in the league in
efficiency. I don't dispute anybody who says
this team doesn't space the floor well enough.
You know, I think they actually make enough threes, but they
don't shoot enough threes like that.
They need to make what they shoot, but they need to shoot
basically at least half again as much as they do, so that they're
making nine to 10 a game rather than five to six a game there.
But like it it is. It all folds into like a
conversation that is is so much messier than it used to be with
regarding how you manage this, especially when if you're Mike
Woodson and I do think this is an important part of his tenure,
you know, wherever it goes. You are also kind of trying to
hammer this idea of making Indiana a place that elite
recruits look at again because frankly history says to get to
where Indiana wants to go. Most programs that are already
there recruit at a level and and develop to the NBA at a level
Indiana just had not had stopped doing for 20 years.
So like it's it's I don't know if the right way to phrase it
does I have some sympathy with Woodson or not but it's it's
more kind of just this idea that like this conversation used to
be a lot clean it it was not clean 10 years ago but it was
much cleaner than it is now and I can see the shortcomings of
this roster and I don't I don't really I won't argue with
anybody who complaints about those.
The wider piece, again micro versus macro is is a is a more
complicated and nuanced discussion.
I think it's reasonable. And look, ultimately nothing's
changing, nor should it. In the immediate future in terms
of, you know, Woodson's job is not in jeopardy.
The program's going to continue on with some kind of trajectory.
But I just think at this point, people are not going to be
comfortable with the trajectory until there's more wins.
Because, I mean even last year, as good as that year was and you
you sweep Purdue. But there were several moments
in that season including the last game of the season where
Indiana got run off the court by a team that had superior
athleticism. They got run off the court at
Kansas. They they mean there were there
were several instances where you're like, well we're we're
better if you're an Indiana fan. But we're not anywhere close to
where we hoped to be. And this season was a nice way
to say, well, OK, we're going to drop the floor a little bit
because we have to because there's not the same level of
talent. The collapse of kind of the the
defensive pressure of the team and and the offense having as
many problems as. I just think it's got a lot of
people very concerned because you had a chance to fix the
roster a bit. You've got the ability to kind
of go back to what you said with how messy it is to make hard
personnel decisions to get people out, to bring different
people in. And you have to do that if
you're going to have a successful program at this
level, especially if you're not building off of a long standing
base of success, which that's part of the macro issue is that
Indiana doesn't have that long standing base of success.
They missed the tournament for so many years in a row.
So you, you know, But to to take such a step back and to look
bad, doing it in a lot of ways, even taking into account the
individual players getting better, like Embako, like Khalil
Ware, I just think that's got people on edge.
And I don't know that that gets solved anytime soon.
A lot of it depends on how this team finishes out the season.
I mean, at this point, they need to win four games to get
themselves to a guaranteed 500 record.
Can they do that? I I would hope that they could.
But if you're if you trust the metrics, if you trust Ken Palm,
they're going to just barely do that 'cause I think in both Ken
Palm and Torvik, they're only projected to win four more games
all season. No, that's right.
I I would I, I'll turn this back on you for a second too.
And I'll ask you to remove to some extent your background as
an IU alum who grew up in West Lafayette, OK?
Like I I grew up or well, my dad married into an Auburn family
when I was 11 years old. So the Iron Bowl has always kind
of been adjacent to like my like like my dad and my stepmom still
get sling at the end of August and cancel it after the bowl
season. Like that's like that's that's,
you know, they don't watch TV, they don't watch cable, all
that. They get slinged for Auburn
football and then they cancel it.
Either if Auburn doesn't go to a bowl, they cancel it after the
Iron Bowl, or if Auburn does go to a bowl, they cancel it after
Bulls season's over. And I think back to where
Alabama football was in 2003, four, five.
And I think people would look at Alabama football now and Indiana
football now and say how could you possibly make that
comparison? Alabama football spent a lot of
the 25 or so years between Bear Bryant's retirement and Nick
Saban's hiring in the wilderness.
You know that they had God, I can't remember his name.
Thank you. I I would just say Ray Vincent.
I don't know why who's? Ray Perkins.
Mike Dubose. It was Mike Perkins.
And then Bill Curry, who actually did well at Alabama,
but I don't think he ever beat Auburn and he was he didn't do
well enough essentially. Then I think from Curry, they
went to Gene Stallings, who obviously had success and then
it went to Mike Dubose and then Dennis Franchioni and then the
the Mike Riley misadventure and then they took Mike Shula.
And this may not have been the case, but this is what I
remember from Shula. Must have been hired around
2003. I would think it was
thereabouts. Yeah.
What I remember in my mind's eye was almost just kind of this
idea that Shula was a program alum.
They knew some pretty stiff NCAA sanctions were coming, and it
was just kind of like bringing a guy who's going to be a safe
hand at the wheel, who's not going to embarrass us, who's
going to, who's going to conduct himself in the program's
business with a certain level of gravitas and pride.
And we will go, we'll get the other side of the NCAA stuff and
figure it out from there. But by the time all that
happened, Alabama had lost six straight games to Auburn, which,
like those, you know, down there, that's nuts.
That's that's not at all common. And there was an extraordinary
level of pressure on Mal Moore who was the AD at the time, if
I'm not mistaken, and and just the the the hierarchy at Alabama
to get that fixed the the program's direction.
But the Auburn piece of it became so like such an
intensifier that it all it, it made it and it made it an
incredibly tense thing. And then obviously they have,
you know, the the, the fortune that Nick Saban decides to step
away from the NFL. They put on the full court
press. They give him a lot of, you
know, he comes in, you know, the the way the legend goes, he
basically came in was like, this is all the stuff you're doing
wrong. Like, it was almost like he was
interviewing them, not the other way around.
And some people were put off by it and the adults in the room
were like, this is exactly what we need.
Just deal with it, swallow it, because this is exactly what we
need. And of course, history tells us
what happens. My question to you is basically
if Purdue we're not at one of like its all time high tides and
I have, I'm not picking a fight with Dana at all.
I thought. I thought Dana's article about
Indiana and Purdue was a little bit harsh frankly on Purdue
because it sort of treated Purdue like Purdue's.
Never had any golden generations before this one.
But this is undeniably one of the best stretches, at least in
the regular season Purdue has had.
How much do you think that basically colors the discussion?
Like if if Purdue was just middle of the pack in the Big 10
and Indiana was struggling and obviously the, you know, the
rivalry was a bit more back and forth, maybe everybody won at
home all the time for five years or whatever.
Do you think that the angst, the pressure, the tension would be
so great? Or do you think that some of
this is intensified right here and now, not just by losing by
21 points at home to Purdue? I recognize it's the biggest
home loss to produce since 1934 or whatever, but more the wider
idea that Indiana's really struggling to find its feet and
Purdue is maybe the best team in the country.
I'll be honest, I don't think it has as big of an impact as you
might think. I think it certainly doesn't
help. But look, we've been through
this and that. The, the, the Dana O'Neal piece
was funny to me because it's like this could have been
written in 1999, you know, because it was a similar kind of
thing where it seemed like, you know, they all the arguments was
well, Purdue as you know, superseded Indiana as the
premier program in the state and they're winning all these Big 10
titles and so forth. And look, ultimately Purdue's
always had the ability to do that.
They've always had the ability at times to.
To put a good group of players together.
To recruit the state better than Indiana, To take chances on
three stars that maybe Indiana feels like they can't or they
don't want to. So I don't know if it's as much
that I think the larger amount of pressure, frankly, is that IU
fans are looking around. They've seen no North Carolina
surpassed them in national titles.
They've seen Duke surpassed them in national titles.
They've seen Yukon tie them in national titles and be the odds
on favorite at this point to surpass them in national titles.
They've seen Purdue certainly have success.
They see Kentucky has picked themselves up.
I mean, honestly, I think all these coaches have actually
benefited at IU from not having a Kentucky series because I
think that that would be the contrast that would be the
starkest and put the most pressure on an IU coach not
losing to Purdue. You sweep Purdue last year, it's
like there's always going to be those opportunities.
So I understand where you're what you're saying.
I really think it's more of a general pressure now because
it's a generation, like literally it's it is, it is 30
years since IU was consistently relevant in the upper echelons
of college basketball. And they've had moments.
They've had 2002. They've had 2013, but they've
been at, they've been blips, they've been afterthoughts.
And I think for a lot of IU fans, they're looking around and
they're saying, and I I say this myself as someone who's who's an
IU alum, whose parents were IU alums, who grew up, as you said,
in West Lafayette as a lone IU fan.
There's a generation of people who, I don't know why they're IU
basketball fans. What are they basing that off
of? What success are they?
Are they? Are they, you know, anchoring
that fandom too? They've been given so little and
so infrequently by this program that I think what you're seeing
now is essentially the culmination of 1/4 century plus
of IU significantly underperforming where it says it
is. And I don't know, you know, to
me, yes, that is unfair to an Archie Miller or a Mike Woodson
in the micro because they're not responsible for what happened
and what mismanagement occurred. But they they've inherited it.
It's their job to fix it. And much like I think you would
see it other programs that have run into similar situations,
there's not going to be an understanding of, well, this
will get fixed eventually because you can only get sold
that so many times. And people don't walk away.
As you know Zach, they don't walk away from their their the
college teams that they love when they have stretches of a
lack of success like you mentioned with Alabama football.
They just get mad and they're like, God damn it, fix this like
this. Shouldn't be that.
Hard way. I feel like it feels like every
every coaching tenure has less of a half life than like, you
know, like like it. Effectively Tom Crane got six
years. You know that the first three
years, whatever your opinion on them turned into basically just
kind of like a total sort of like separate thing.
And then Tom Crane got six years of of normalcy to prove what he
could do. Archie Miller got four.
I know that some of what we're talking about here is, is just
like the natural anger, like when Liverpool loses.
I'm always a lot more angry 30 minutes after the game than I am
the next day. Like the next day I can see with
clear eyes that this happened or that'll be OK or whatever.
Some of this is just that, you know, again, some of the whole
like people who recognized in the summer this could be a
rebuilding year Now, not wanting it to be a rebuilding year, it's
it's it's the it's the practice of not having to live it versus
having to live it. But this idea that there's
suddenly like this in this more intense scrutiny on Mike
Woodson, that didn't feel like it was even necessarily there to
the same level on Archie Miller, who'd achieved less, I think
just. Well.
It that half life grows shorter every time somebody fails and
that's to your point about, you know, Archie Miller and Mike
Woodson are having to do heavier lift.
I also think look. As as uninspiring as the Archie
Miller era was the worst team Archie Miller had in Ken Palm.
At the end of the season, they were 71st in his first year.
They were a team that was like right on the verge of being in
the discussion for the NCAA tournament.
They occasionally were in the discussion they would have made
it obviously in 2020, this year's team under Mike Woodson's
96th and Ken Palm. And that's about where they're
going to stay. That I I think this is different
from being a A-Team that's not living up to expectations to a
team that just doesn't look. Good.
And I think that's having an effect just as much as any of
the other stuff is so. I would only dispute that I do
not think that Archie Miller team was ever seriously in NCAA.
They had lost to Indiana State and Fort Wayne at home by a
combined 41 points. They had a sub 100 loss on the
road in Big 10 play and they lost their last three games of.
The season well and and I think there was a honeymoon period for
the first year I guess would be the the thing I would throw back
in there. So I'm not saying that they were
in contention, but you can't just, you can't avoid the fact
when you look at the numbers, whether it's the net or can palm
or whatever, this team doesn't look good, like this year's
vintage does not in a way that previous years maybe didn't look
quite as bad. So anyway, we'll see what
happens as we move forward with things real quick.
Before I let you go, any any overall thoughts on what we've
seen through this first month and 1/2 or so with Kurt Cignetti
and the overall trajectory of this football program?
I think the the most overriding thing and listen, you never know
how good a plan is until it's it's time to put it into action.
But probably the the most overarching sort of theme to me
has been that Indiana got what it was looking for, which is
someone that comes in with a proven process and a a track
record or a, you know, kind of a confidence in saying I know what
all the steps are to building a team that can compete and win.
I know what order they need to go in and I know how to cross
each one off as it goes. The efficiency with which you
know the staff was built. The roster, which at one point
I, I, if I'm not mistaken sunk below 50 countable scholarship
players is now they're now actually looking ahead to when
they would add the both the balance of their freshman class.
They are actually now over their limit.
But you always expect some guys are going to move on after
spring. That's just kind of a natural
part of the the evolution of a roster in the Portal era.
The, the, you know, the, the, I would say pretty clear vision
for what and where Indiana is, particularly offensively.
I think defense is, is a little bit more up in the air.
But you know Kurt Cignetti has said many times offense is kind
of hit. That's his thing.
That's always been his corner of the store.
So it's always going to be a little bit different for him
offensively compared to you know defense.
I mean he he hasn't quite sort of said like Kevin Wilson's
always kind of just like, hey, the defensive coordinator gets
to run the defense and Tom Allen always said I'm looking for a
head coach of the offense. Signetti hasn't quite said that
about his defensive coordinator, but he's always been pretty
clear. Like I give Brian Haynes quite a
bit of leash. You know, that's that's his
defense. I trust him.
He's gonna, I know, you know, I know he's gonna do good things
with it. But the offense is that
Signetti's background and I think you can see how quickly
the vision there when you sort of, especially when you overlay
it on on watching, looking at personnel and production and
watching some old JMU, you know, sort of film.
You can see like what he's trying to do there and how a lot
of this fits. And you know, I'm stealing this
from Rick Bozich, but it's a great line and and so Rick
deserves credit for it and Rick deserves to have it used.
Nobody's a basketball school. We've We've used this line
before on the podcast, yes. No, no one.
No one gets to say that basketball is their priority and
if they can figure out football, they can't, you know, fantastic.
They can't wait. They'll keep trying.
You know, we recognize what we are, but we're just everybody
has got to try and punch up because that is where all the
money is. That is where all the power is.
That is where the future is, for better or worse.
And I would make an argument in a lot of ways worse in college
athletics. You know, Indiana's not going to
make the playoff next year. But Indiana wanted to be more
serious in football and when it when it's when it fired Tom
Allen and it set out to find a head coach or a replacement.
Scott Dolson wanted a a head coach with a proven track
record. This is why Jason Candle was in
the room late in the day, proverbially speaking.
This is why Paul Crist had a lot of traction at different points
in the search. Not because he just wanted to
hire something that Tom Allen wasn't in the cycle, that you
can go where you you hire the hot young assistant and then the
proven head coach and then you know whatever.
But because he felt like in this place in time, Indiana just did
not have the capacity to hire a coach that would ever need to be
a passenger or would ever need time to grow into the job.
They needed somebody who could walk in from day one and say
this is my process and this is how I execute it and This is why
it works. And there's nothing that's
happened through obviously, you know, it's it's been closing in
on two months now so let's not get out over our skis.
But nothing has happened that has made me think Kurt Signetti
wasn't prepared for that and and was not the right hire based on
Dolson's desire to put somebody in that he could just kind of
plug into the program and say let me know what you need, I'll
get it for you. Beyond that I'm just going to
trust that you have the capacity to do the right things and and
you know make the right decisions and take the right
steps and build the program towards something competitive
and that's you know in in any, in any by any real measure so
far Kurt Tsugnetti has has managed that.
It's been quite a ride so far. We'll see how things go as we
head into spring practice. Anyway, we'll go ahead and get
you out of here, Zach. As always, thank you.
Appreciate the time. Alright.
MO has. Tape.
Go take care of that. Zach Osman from the Indy Star.
Be sure to check out his work. Thank you, Sir.
And we'll look forward to chat with you again in the future.
Thanks for having me, always good to be on.
All right. My thanks again to Zach
Osterman. Always a pleasure for him.
For us to have him on the show, probably.
I don't know if it may be a pleasure for him to be on the
show. I don't want to presume
anything, but great to have him on board and getting his
thoughts and perspective on things.
An important perspective, someone who's who's not a fan
but is instead employed to cover this team and kind of try to
have some larger perspective, which I do think that I and
others maybe sometimes miss when we talk about IU basketball.
So anyway, thanks to all you folks for tuning in.
We really appreciate it. If you haven't, go ahead and
subscribe to the sub stack. Be sure to go to Home Field
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Anyway, thanks to Zach Osterman from the Indy Star and thanks to
all you folks for listening in. We'll have more podcast coming
up soon here on Crimson Cast and on the Back Home Network.
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