You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to.
Crimson cast Galen Clavio joining you here solo March
10th, Monday Championship week, the best time of the year.
Looking forward to watching all of the basketball, including
tonight. We've had some great games
already, had a few people, teams already clinched their spot, and
hopefully the week will conclude with IU getting back into the
NCAA tournament. All signs point to that being a
likelihood. We're going to talk about the
bracket as it currently stands. I'm also going to talk a little
bit about the coaching search and I think there'll be some
things here that hopefully will tide you folks over until the
next update, which I think is probably going to come
Wednesday. I think Scott and I will be back
to preview the Indiana Oregon game at that point.
But, you know, I wanted to tackle a few items that I
thought were noteworthy on the bracket front.
Many of you watched the live podcast that I did on Sunday
morning. There was a big problem with the
recording of that so it wouldn't download properly, which is why
it didn't get released on the feed.
So if you are and this isn't, I promise you this is not an
effort for me to get you to go. To the YouTube.
Channel, I can't get the thing to publish on Spotify and Apple
Music the way that it is right now.
And so I'm redoing parts of that podcast and I also have a reset
of the bracket that I did later on, on Saturday, on Sunday,
which I think actually gives a more accurate picture of where I
believe things to be right now. So we're going to start with
that. We're going to talk about the
bracket. I'll be using some video stuff.
So if you're on Spotify or if you're listening on Apple and
you want to go and tune over onto the YouTube channel or to
Spotify, you can see the video on those venues.
Otherwise, I will do my best to describe as I always do, and I
appreciate you folks being along for the ride as we talk about
Indiana's prospects for the tournament and some of the
things they need to look about, look at and think about over the
course of these next few days. There's already some hurdles
that have been cleared, which is a good thing.
There's a few more to clear, but I do think Indiana's going to be
in good shape by the end of the week if things stand the way
that we think that they're going to.
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All right, let's dive in first and foremost to where the
bracket currently sits and where IU is, at least in my opinion,
in terms of that bracket. So I'm going to call up my handy
dandy spreadsheet here that many of you have gotten used to and
we'll kind of walk through what things look like.
So let me start off with a couple of things.
First of all, I have Indiana, like I said in the field, I have
them as the first team out of the buys or out of the the the
last four in. So the first four buys,
Indiana's essentially 5th into the field right now.
My line up, the four, the last four teams in.
I'm gonna zoom in on this a little bit.
We have Xavier is the last team in.
We have North Carolina as a second to last team in which I
seem to be alone on North Carolina getting into the
tournament island. I just have a hard time
believing a team with North Carolina's metrics, even without
any high level wins, is gonna get left out of the tournament
field. I would love to be proven wrong.
I really have no great love for the North Carolina case this
year, given how bereft they are of top level wins and how bad
the ACC was. But I do think they're going to
get in ahead of like an Ohio State or a Boise State or a
Colorado State or a or AUC Irvine.
Which is a shame 'cause I'd I'd probably like to see all of
those teams instead of North Carolina.
But it's a business. So San Diego State also in the
play in games, they've dropped quite a bit lately, largely
because of a lack of high level quality wins.
And then Oklahoma as the best of the four play in game teams.
And then I've got Indiana, Arkansas, and technically the
next group would be Utah State and Vanderbilt would be the next
4 at larges because even though I've got UC San Diego, VCU, both
above Arkansas and Indiana, they're both automatic bids at
this point. This is going to be one of the
things that's going to be interesting to watch.
What does the tournament committee do with that
particular cluster of smaller conference teams?
And really we're talking about New Mexico, who I have his ten
seed, Drake, who is A10 seed but is an automatic qualifier, Utah
State, VCU and UC San Diego. What, what do they do with this
'cause if you look at their profiles, most of them I think
have better overall profiles than the big conference teams
ahead of them or in ahead of them in a lot of people's
brackets. And the committee has
historically liked to reward teams like Drake who win 2829
thirty games if they win their conference tournament with a bid
that also has a seat attached to it that's higher than like a 12
seat. The thing with Drake is they've
got a couple of wins against power conference teams to beat
Vanderbilt. They won at Kansas State.
Kansas State was not very good this year, so I think that might
propel them even higher And and honestly VC us got a pretty good
resume. UC San Diego's got a really good
resume, although they don't have a lot of top level wins and Utah
State has a pretty good resume as well.
So I wouldn't be shocked to see all of those teams in the 1011
range. Indiana, if they if, let's put
it this way, I think the Indiana could fall from my perspective
anywhere on a spectrum between the 10 seed, the 11 seed and the
12 seed slash play in games, depending on what happens with
that group of four to five teams that I just mentioned.
If they deem Drake and VCU and UC San Diego as significantly
worse than the power conference teams, then we'll know a couple
of things. A, they're really valuing quad
one and quad two wins, which Indiana has a bunch of, Arkansas
has a bunch of, and B, that they don't care that much about some
of the other power metrics. This is always a bit of a
complicated scenario because ultimately it changes from year
to year. We've talked about a lot about
this a lot with the the way that the tournament committee
composition tends to sway from game to gay or game to game,
game year to year, because the composition of the committee
changes, the committee votes change and the field is
different every year. Like, you know, this year
everybody complaints about how bad the bubble is every year.
I think the bubble's fairly clear cut this year.
Like there just aren't a lot of teams in competition.
But I think you can make a good case.
Like I don't feel unclean for putting Xavier in North
Carolina. I don't like the fact that North
Carolina's in the field, but I don't feel bad about it.
I understand the case. There's been years where I've
been like, I have no interest whatsoever in putting any of
these teams in the field. Last year was kind of like that.
But you know, this year I don't feel like it's, it's like that.
And it kind of illustrates the conundrum that the committee
often has where you can't necessarily make an apples to
apples comparison for what you're going to value as
criteria because you just don't know.
What the criteria is going to be in a given year because the
field will look different. And we talked about this, I
think on a previous episode. But if you compare the like, let
me call this up for those of you that are following along at
home, I think I've got like North Carolina, their resume and
I'm going to call Indiana resume or Indiana's resume up as well
since we're all familiar with that.
And you know, you can make the argument that like North
Carolina, they have, they have fewer quad one wins, they've
only got 1 quad one win, but they've got 8 quad 1 + 2 wins.
Indiana's got 4 quad one wins, but only 9 quad one plus quad 2.
So not a whole lot of difference there.
If you're going to expand it out to that level, the strength of
schedule's about the same between the two.
Indiana's won five rodent neutral games, North Carolina's
won eight. That does matter to the
committee. Indiana's resume rating is about
7 spots better on average than North Carolina's.
But North Carolina's predictives, their Ken Palm and
BPI and and Torvik ranks are about 15 spots higher than
Indiana. You know, North Carolina's got
one bad loss in quotes. It was a home loss to Stanford,
who's 82nd in the country and net.
It's not like they're a terrible team and they lost by a point.
Indiana's got no bad losses, but they've got 12 losses.
North Carolina's won 20 games. When I look at that like they're
two very different resumes in as much as one team has big, you
know, higher level wins. And I think Indiana's, you know,
Indiana's got three wins on there, Michigan State, Purdue
and at Ohio State that are better wins than anything North
Carolina's got. But I look at all that and I say
it's hard to compare the two because there's other metrics
that North Carolina comes in that are that are just better
than Indiana. Mostly the predictives cause
North Carolina's been a lot more impressive in their wins and
they have lost some games they probably shouldn't have lost.
They took Michigan State to overtime on a neutral floor.
This is, trust me, this is not me stumping for North Carolina.
I just said I didn't want to put them in.
But they just, they played better against a lot of their
competition. They lost by three at Kansas.
You know, they lost by one point at Wake Forest.
So that's why their predictives look better.
And the question every year is like, what is the committee
going to value and what will they devalue?
And ultimately, I think both of these teams will get in.
It's just the order that they go in.
So like I mentioned, Drake. So if you punch Drake into the
mix, you know Drake's got five wins total against Tier 1 and
Tier 2, and their predictives are worse than Indiana's.
Indiana averages out to about A50 in the predictives.
Drake averages out to about a 65.7.
Their strength of schedule's a lot worse than Indiana, but
their resume numbers are better than Indiana.
Not like tremendously, but a decent amount better.
But the committee also loves to look at teams that win 272829
games and and reward them if they win their conference
tournament. Which is why I just get the
sensation Drake's gonna end up as like a ten seed and
everybody's like they watch the Missouri Valley title game and
they were immediately like, oh, that's going to be my upset pick
for the first draft. I would pump the brakes on that
a little bit and then I'll tell you why when I start talking
about the coaching search, 'cause they are connected.
You could kind of put things. Together about what I'm going to
talk about there. But anyway, that's that's where
I just want to make sure everybody's on the on the same
page now before I get into looking at what the, my bracket
right now looks like as of Monday at 8:23 in the evening.
I've had a lot of people say, well, Indiana really needs to
win at least one game in the Big 10 tournament to be sure that
they're going to get in. And I've said this before, I'm
going to say it again. The, the conference tournaments
matter a lot less on average year, year over year to the
committee than people think that they do.
Media notice this, fans who pay attention notice this.
I've heard coaches mention it. They a lot of times the
committee will very lightly take the tournament so the the
conference tournament's into account when it comes to things
like seeding or being in or out of the field.
We talked you heard me the other day.
I think talk about the example from 2122 where Indiana wins two
games, almost beats Iowa in the semi final and then still ends
up in the play in game despite everybody thinking they were
going to be clear into the field before the tournament even
started. So I look at that and I don't
say, well, gosh, they they were out and they barely played their
way in. I look at that and say, well,
they were in as the play in and they didn't do that much.
That was that exemplary. That made the tournament
selection committee say, you know what, we're going to move
Indiana out of the play in game and put somebody else there.
So I think Indiana by beating Ohio State, sweeping that
series, getting to 19 wins, getting to 10 and 10 in
conference, picking up a a quad two win, which was an important
one. I really do think they put
themselves in a position where even if they lose to Oregon on
when on Thursday, I think they'll be fine.
And you can disagree with you want, but right now I'd say
they're going to be about 11 seed maybe, maybe in the play in
game, depending on what happens with some of the others.
But I've seen other projections where they're in the play in
games. I think Joe Leonardi, who is not
the most accurate of of bracketologist, but you know,
he's also not the worst. He had moved Indiana out of the
play in games and into a standalone 11 seed game.
That's pretty much what I did over the weekend as well.
And I've seen a lot of people doing that.
Most people have Indiana in the 11 range.
Couple people have still got them as a 12, some people have
them as a 10. So I think that's the range
you're talking about. And even if Indiana were to beat
Oregon and beat Michigan State, I don't think it really improves
their seating that much. And if they lose to Oregon, I
don't think it knocks them out of the tournament.
That's just and and that's hard for you to get their heads
wrapped around, but. The way the the selection
committee is generally gone about these things is by the
time the power conference tournaments really start to go,
they've already got a decent idea of what teams are going to
be in and more or less what order they're in.
And that's based upon a 30 to 3233 game sample size.
One or two games in a tournament where people aren't necessarily
going to care that much one way or the other.
Some teams just don't care. I mean, Michigan State,
ironically, potentially Indiana's Friday opponent, is a
team that notoriously does not really care that much about the
Big 10 tournament. They've had a couple of seasons
where they want it, but a lot of times they're out in the first
game that they play. So that's why there's a little
bit of skepticism built in as far as rapidly moving teams up
and down in the in the seating or putting a team in the field
or taking a team out of the field.
Baseball, what happens in a conference tournament that not
everybody's taking with the same level of seriousness?
It's kind of like, I think I used the metaphor the last time
it was like bowl season where you know, every SEC fan when
their team loses in a bowl, they're like, well, we weren't
trying. And when they win, they're like,
see, we were the best. It it's it's if you're smart,
you're just not really looking at those as being a, a, a pure
arbiter of the strength of both teams, unless it's like the
College Football Playoff where you know that it's a playoff and
there's a different categorization of that.
So anyway, with all that said, my advice is to go into the
Oregon game and enjoy it. Get up if you live in Indiana
or, or within a couple hour drive, buy tickets, go cheer on
Indiana. You know, it'd be great to watch
Indiana win that Oregon game and then go on a little bit of a
run. It it.
It just weirdly feels like the tournament bracket kind of set
up really well for Indiana because they get Oregon in the
first game. And we're going to preview this
more deeply on Wednesday. So I'll spoil that a little bit
now by saying I think Indiana's going to win the game.
The reason why is you've got an Oregon team that in a similar
vein to Indiana, is not going to really benefit from doing
anything in this conference tournament.
Oregon is likely going to be in the 567 seed range.
They've got fourteen wins against Tier 1 opponents.
They have a great strength of schedule.
They their predictives are good, their resumes awesome.
They've got some awesome wins. They beat Alabama on a neutral
floor. You know, they, they have a
bunch of Rd. wins. Nothing they do is going to
really affect their tournament seating or placement.
They're also going to be flying from the West Coast.
They're going to be playing that game at 9:00 AM body clock time
the same week that daylight savings happens.
So it's really still going to be 8:00 AM body clock time for
Oregon in that game. And they're going to be playing
in Indiana. Team that's played really well
has something to prove. It's going to be in front of a,
a relatively home crowd. And I think a, a, a team that
really does seem like they're focused on trying to send Mike
Woodson out on a positive note. And also a team that's kind of
pissed at how terribly officiated that game in Eugene
was. And by the way, Oregon is not
going to be bringing those officials with them, at least I
don't think so. All of those things put
together, I like Indiana's chances.
I don't think it's going to matter that much.
But I think it's it's a really good opportunity for Indiana to
win that game. And then you look down the
pathway and you get, well, Michigan State, who might care,
they might not. And then you've got UCLA or
Wisconsin in the next round. You Wisconsin has not been
playing great lately and UCLA is beatable.
And who knows after that. So I it's a really fascinating
scenario for the Big 10 tournament.
I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with it.
You know, as an IU fan, I'm never quite looking forward to
the Big 10 tournament because why would you as an IU fan, what
what, what past evidence of, of like enjoyability has there been
with the Big 10 Tournament for IU fans?
But as I was reminding somebody on Twitter yesterday, you have
to kind of get yourself out of the mindset of thinking IU is
going to suck or not try. Because outside of the one game
last year against Nebraska, IU has been competitive in every
Big 10 tournament game they've played under Mike Woodson.
They've won at least one game every year under Mike Woodson in
the Big 10 Tournament. I would expect that streak to
continue this year as well. So looking at the bracket
overall, but before we split up, so So again, these change and
this is just my pick of where I think things are gonna fall.
But looking at the I'm gonna call the bracket back up here
and and share it with everybody. And it's a little hard to see
'cause it's tiny print, but I have Indiana in the South region
as the 11 seed taking on Saint Mary's in the first round Which.
But they're doing it in Providence, not in Portland.
And in this case, Indiana would not be repeating the scenario
from 2022 of winning a game on Tuesday in Dayton and then
having. Travel issues, let's put it
kindly, that leave them getting to Portland late and then
getting boat raced by Saint Mary's.
Different kind of game. I think Saint Mary's would still
be favored and rightfully so, but I think Indiana would have a
punch his chance in that one with a potential second round
matchup because Kentucky, assuming they can get by
Jacksonville State in my projected bracket.
So that would be quite a quite an experience if Indiana managed
to to have that situation play out in that.
I've got the four one seeds, Auburn, Florida as my fourth
number one. I'm really back and forth on
them in Alabama and then Houston and Duke is the other ones and
then in this bracket. You've got Creighton and Baylor
in the first round up in the 8-9 game, Ole Miss and Mcnees
fascinating game for a number of reasons.
Arizona high point, Marquette Drake in the 710 game and then
Michigan State thousand in the 215.
So you know these will change somewhat.
As you know, we get some tweaks to the upper level of of the
bracket, but I think Indiana fairly safely in that eleven
seed range right now. And I've been wrong before on
these, but I've also been right quite a bit.
So you know, I I just feel like Indiana getting to 19 wins is
good enough, especially the 10 and 10 season.
Is it good enough for Indiana? No.
Is it good enough to get into the field this year?
I believe it is. So we'll see what happens with
that. But a lot of great basketball
remaining. We got a couple more automatic
bids being punched tonight and then obviously things will pick
up. I think the ACC tournament may
actually start tomorrow, Tuesday.
So Big 10 tournament starts Wednesday, IU plays Thursday.
It's gonna be a fun week of basketball.
So get out and enjoy it. Get out on a patio somewhere and
drink some some beverages and watch the games.
I think you'll enjoy yourself. So before I finish up, I did
want to touch on some coaching search items and a bunch of
things going on right now in terms of like rumors flying
online and supposedly this coach or that coach has said no to
Indiana and now they're moving down their list.
So there's a bunch of things I just want to say in in a row and
we've we've talked a lot about the coaching search.
We've got another coaching candidates.
Cool. We're going to be bringing you
later on this week. I think you'll enjoy it.
But I would really be careful in general about believing anything
that you see right now that's being put out in any media area
that claims that a coach has turned Indiana down or is not
coming to Indiana because AI can assure you nobody actually
knows. Most of what you're seeing out
there right now is things being pushed by agents, being pushed
by coaches themselves or people who don't actually know things,
claiming that they know things or maybe thinking legitimately
that they know things but not actually knowing things.
And getting too wrapped up in that, as I've seen a lot of
people doing on Twitter, on the message boards, you know, I, we,
we've seen it in the back home network discord, some not, not
nearly as much because we've been trying to, you know, help
keep people a little calm. But you, you can't take these
reports seriously. Like when you know, the the one
that got everybody started was was the the Jeff Goodman tweet
about, well, you know, no, no Brad Stevens, no Dusty May, no
Scott Drew, no, no TJ Otzelberger as I expected, which
don't get me started on that. But that that all may be true
today or yesterday. And I have no doubt that that
those coaches or their agents were, were contacted and they
said they're not taking the Indiana job.
That doesn't necessarily mean that any of them isn't taking
the Indiana job. But who's going to talk about it
right now? It's still the seasons, the
middle of the season for pretty much everybody involved.
IU still playing basketball. I I really have, Yeah.
Having watched this for a long time, there's a there's a,
there's a trajectory to these things that does not abide by
the idea that you can definitively rule anybody.
Out at any point and. Certainly right up to the point
where you take a job, you can claim you don't have interest in
it. And I'm not saying any of those
4 is necessarily going to take the job.
But I'm also telling you there's a chance any of those four could
still take the job even if they have said over the weekend that
they're not interested in the job.
You know, there's just, there's so many rumors floating around
because this has been such a long process.
And what I'd like everybody to think of is like a coaching
search, especially one with this time.
Period where the. Opening got announced at the
beginning of February and the season isn't going to end now
until at least not this upcoming weekend, but the weekend after.
It's not like cooking a steak. It's like cooking a brisket.
It's like smoking a brisket. You know, cooking a steak the,
you know, you got to get the coals real hot.
You throw the steak on the grill.
You're not the steak's not there for very long.
I mean, there's methods where you could go a long time, but
we're not going to. That's a culinary podcast, not a
basketball podcast. Brisket doesn't work that way.
More briskets have been ruined by people thinking that you cook
them like steak and they're not steak.
Like what makes a steak great is that it doesn't have a lot of
tough, fibrous muscle in it. You know, steak is cut from the
parts of the cow that when you cook them over high heat for a
short period of time, they're very tender.
They're very flavorful that way. Brisket might have the greatest
flavor of of any part of the cow, but it's made-up of a type
of muscle that if you cook it quickly, is inedible.
Essentially, you have to cook it for a long period of time at a
very low temperature because that breaks down the collagen.
And that's what makes brisket fall apart.
That's what makes it tender. That's what gives it that great
flavor. It's it's the breakdown of
things over time. At low temperature, you heat
things up too quickly, you're not going to get a very good
piece of meat. The pork shoulder works the same
way. Like big difference between a
pork chop and a pork shoulder. And I think, you know, we as
human beings are very impatient and we're very prone to believe
things that are placed in front of us and we want things to get
done quickly. We, we want things to happen in
a, in a very rapid order. But realistically speaking, with
a coaching search, even a regular sized coaching search,
like a two week long coaching search, stuff doesn't happen
overnight. Stuff doesn't happen quickly.
And when you see things or hear things or things are placed in
front of you about what's supposedly happening, especially
the place like Indiana where they run among the tightest
ships in terms of of not actually letting what's going on
get out. You can pretty much be assured
that what you're seeing and hearing is not what's actually
going on. Now you'll, you know, this is
where it gets tricky because you know, people have to, you know,
they, they, they'll, their job might be to report what they're
hearing or report rumors or whatever.
But as fans, you've just got to understand that there's
sometimes just not a lot to talk about.
And the things that are out there may not actually be valid
things to be following along with and probably aren't.
And I think especially in a place like Indiana, as much as
we want to engage in hearing what the rumors are and getting
hyped up because a candidate we happen to like is in a rumor,
there's a lot of wish casting that goes on with that.
There's a lot of, oh, I really want that guy.
And there's this rumor that says that he's really interested in
the job and they've got a contract already set.
I mean, your, your mind immediately leads to that.
What's been funny about this coaching search has been there's
some candidates that a lot of people don't like, but other
people really do like. Obviously Chris Beard being one
of them. We've talked about, you know,
Brad Stevens was one that, you know, everybody, not most
people, not everybody, but most people were excited about.
But you end up with these factions and you're reacting to
essentially nothing. You're reacting to rumors that
don't have names attached to them that aren't necessarily
substantive. And it's, it's a, it's a good
way to keep people focused on the search, but it's not
actually a good way to have them interpret information in any
sort of positive manner. And at least people getting
upset and it leads to people saying dumb things.
And you know, it. Like one of the big dumb things
that I keep seeing is, well, this must not be a very
attractive job because all these people are turning Indiana down.
You don't know that anybody's turned Indiana down.
And the people who are, are saying that XY or Z have turned
Indiana down, they're, if they are getting that information,
they're getting it from one side of the information, which might
have a vested interest in having that be what's out there for a
variety of reasons. And actually, if you haven't
listened to the X's and Joe's podcast, the the episode they
did with Ryan Phillips, he does a good job of, of delving into
that where it's there are coaches and agents whose their
role is to go out and get themselves an extension or get
themselves into the the discourse around a coaching
search without it necessarily being a thing that's actually
happening. There are smokescreens that
happen from the school side. I mean, there's a bunch of
different things that go on. But with this particular search,
as it was with the IU football search, I think your best bet is
to assume you don't know anything.
And the people who are claiming that they know things probably
don't know anything either. I'm not saying they haven't
heard things, but what they're hearing is not necessarily
reliable information. Getting emotionally wrapped up
in rumor is a bad way to go about things because it makes
you either very frustrated with the school and the school's done
nothing wrong. The school's doing its due
diligence. The athletic department is, is
handling this the way that it should be handled and they're
keeping it close to the vest and they're working on.
And who knows, they may already have somebody, They may not have
somebody yet, but they know who they're going to go after as
soon as their seasons open. I mean, there's a bunch of
different scenarios. Don't automatically opt for the
scenario that I use getting turned down left and right by
people because I can almost guarantee you that's not what's
actually happening. Even if that's what people would
like you to think, that's probably not what's actually
happening. So I just say that as a a
reminder. Many of you already knew all of
that, but there's no point in getting mad at IU right now for
something you don't know. That's based on rumors that are
being published based upon the information of people who won't
put their names to the information.
So be cautious. Would be my message to you.
As far as some of the items other the other items I've seen
regarding this coaching search that I think are important to
keep in mind. A I've seen increasingly a lot
of interest in Ben McCollum that Drake and I made my feelings on
Ben McCollum. I thought somewhat clear when we
talked about McCollum as one of the candidates a few weeks ago.
But I've also seen those comments kind of misconstrued a
bit. And I, I, I just want to clarify
a couple of things about McCollum in particular.
So you know, Mccollum's Drake team is 30 and three.
They're they're, they're actually 28 and three, because
two of those wins are against non Division One teams.
They beat York, Nebraska, and they beat St.
Ambrose. If you can, dude, you can tell
me where St. Ambrose is without looking it
up. I will shout you out on the next
podcast. But you know, a very a very
impressive season in terms of anytime you win 30 games, 28
games, somewhere in that range, you're clearly doing a lot,
right. I do think it's important to
note a few things about Drake IA.
Lot of my complaints in the initial podcast had to do with
the pace that Drake is playing at, which is the slowest in
Division One and it is significantly slower than the
second slowest, like a standard deviation lower than the second
slowest team. It's a very much on purpose.
Now since then, I've had a lot of people say, oh, but it's not
about the pace. Ben Mccollum's teams are just
super efficient offensively. Sounds great.
Except then you look at Ben Mccollum's team and in Kenpom
and they're 81st in the country in offensive efficiency.
I mean, that's that's. Fine, that's a top.
I don't know. That's a top 30% offensive
efficiency, top 25%. But I mean, last year when
Darian Devries was the head coach at Drake, they were 40th
in the country in offensive efficiency.
So that they've, you know, and they, they were a full 2 like
last. This year, Drake's offensive
efficiency is 113. Last year it was 115.1, which is
a pretty significant change. So I don't really buy the idea
that oh his his offense is hyper efficient because we see young
coaches with hyper efficient offenses that that show up in
the stats. So a coach I keep seeing
mentioned and I'm finally digging into him a bit more and
I like what I see is Alan Huss, who coaches at high point.
Alan Huss. Interesting pathway studied
under Greg McDermott. He was an assistant coach at
Creighton. He was the head coach at La
Lumiere, which many of you will remember is where you got Haner,
Mascara, Perea and, and and other recruits from.
Was head coach of Culver Military Academy, played at
Creighton. He's coaching at High Point.
He's in his second season and in the two seasons that he's been
at High Point, he's had the 36th most efficient offense in the
country and now he's got the 26th most efficient offense in
the country. Last year, High Point 127 games.
This year they've won 29 games and they're going to the NCAA.
They they clenched their bid on on Sunday, they beat Winthrop.
So I I have no and and doesn't doesn't play that fast of a
pace. I mean, they play 224, which is
yeah, kind of median, certainly on the slower side of median.
But you know, all the talk about what a miracle Ben Mccollum's
been, I'm like, well, OK, what are we judging that off of?
Most of it's the D2 national championships.
What I just don't think is, is that I mean, it's impressive.
The four national championships at any level is impressive.
But my big concern is let's get a little more background at D1,
even an extra season to say is this a fluke?
Is this just you bringing your guys in 'cause you're not going
to be able to bring your guys with you to the next stop cause
most of them will have graduated by this point?
That's that's the thing. I mean, could McCollum end up
being an amazing coach at the D1 level, at the high D1 level, the
power conference level? Sure, possibly.
But there's other people in that same bracket who we should be
looking at similarly that aren't getting the same level of
attention. And again, I think the more of a
sample size you have, the better.
And it's nothing personally, because Ben McCollum, I've
listened to podcasts like, you know, you've kind of been, if
you follow the IU coaching search, you've kind of dragged
in to following Ben McCollum by people who are insistent that
this is like the, the, the, the, the coaching Messiah or
something like that. Like, you know, I've, I've
heard, I've heard, I've seen now and heard multiple people say,
well, if you can't get Scott Drew and you can't get TJ
Otzelberger, it's a no brainer. You got to get Ben McCollum.
And it's like really, I, I, I, I, I, I just don't think I, you
can take a chance on a guy with that little level of D1
experience yet. So that's something to keep in
mind. Again, nothing against McCollum
personally. Just looking at the profile,
looking at the pace and with that being the only data point
at the D1 level that you can look at just strikes me as an
unnecessary risk. You know, certainly would be
fascinated if that was the choice.
I don't think it's going to be the choice, but it's weird how
that has become the de facto because of the stuff published
over the weekend that claimed that the top, the theoretical
top 4 candidates had all turned Indiana down, which again, we
don't know that that that's actually the case.
So let's put the McCollum stuff on hold for a little bit.
I just, I think that's too big of a leap to go from D2 to
Indiana University in, in essentially a calendar year.
That's a lot. That's, that ain't, you know,
for an Indiana team. And this kind of feeds into my
next. Item which is lot of things.
Being talked about on message boards and on social media and
I've, I've heard this on a couple of podcasts that you know
what, whatever, whatever Coach Indiana goes out and gets.
They're going to have the biggest.
Nil budget, they're going to be able to, they have all these
resources and you know, they, they don't even it doesn't
matter if they haven't proven that they can recruit at a high
level or win at a high level necessarily, because the NIL
budget is going to be the great equalizer.
And I just shake my head when I see things like that.
It's like no one learned a single thing that's writing that
from what's happened over the last eight years or really even
going beyond that. I mean, Indiana, it's not like
Indiana was under resourcing its basketball program.
And you know, these, these coaches were.
Operating in a vacuum. Indiana's had these resources
from the beginning and it didn't uplift Mike Davis's coaching to
the level where he could sustain at a high level.
It didn't. I mean, you know, Tom.
Crane. Got off to a great start and
even with all of the resources and the great start, Crane
couldn't maintain, wasn't signing recruits, you know, was,
you know, missed the tournament 2 out of his last three years.
It didn't help Archie Miller. I mean, I was one of I, I would,
I made those arguments about Archie Miller that well, you
know what I mean. Archie's recruiting three stars
and two stars and his teams have gotten to this level, and with
Indiana's resources and recruiting spread and everything
else, it's going to just catapult him to the top of the
profession because he's going to have that half behind him.
Well, we all saw how that worked out with Mike Woodson.
It was like, well, it doesn't matter if Woodson doesn't
doesn't have experience coaching in college.
He's got this big machinery with IU.
And then halfway through his tenure, it was like, well,
Indiana's got close to the most NIL.
Money. Out there, the whole.
The. Whole conceit of this last
season. Was that?
Woodson was just. Going to go buy the best players
and put together a team that was going to immediately compete.
Indiana is struggling to get into the NCAA tournament.
Indiana went from being picked second in the conference to
being what? 9th in the seeding.
They had to win on the last. Day.
To avoid playing in the first day of the Big 10 tournament.
So my point is this IU isn't going to make a coach.
The coach needs to make IU. If there's one ironclad rule of
Indiana University basketball, it when.
Indiana has a. Top level coach, they are a
amazing program. When Indiana doesn't have a top
level coach, they're not an amazing program.
And I don't know that. That's necessarily that much
different. It's, it's I, I used to always
say like, you know, it feel, it feels like there's three
programs that can sustain a bad coach and still be good.
It's Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas.
I mean, Kansas hasn't had. Many coaches period.
When you think about like the last since 19, what?
198483 They've had three coaches, they've had Larry
Brown, Roy Williams and Bill Self.
You know, Kentucky obviously what what makes them special.
They've been very good under John Calipari, maybe not great
except for 2012 and 2015. Obviously they should get some
credit for that. They were good but not great
under Tubby Smith. They won a national title, but
they were not they were never quite, but they weren't like
average except when they had Billy Gillespie and even then
they weren't awful that year. But they quickly course
corrected on Gillespie. North Carolina not impervious
either. We saw them take a nose dive
under Matt Doherty, but they quickly changed course fired
Doherty. They bring in Roy Williams.
Roy Williams retires, and it's kind of like the same thing's
happening again with Hubert Davis.
They're keeping Hubert Davis, they're having to restructure
everything around him to try to make it work.
But I think everybody knows it's not likely to work.
So Indiana's no different than those programs.
The difference is Indiana just has not had the right coaches in
place. For the last 30 years and.
I include the last five years or so of Bob Knight in that just
because Knight clearly was had sunk down to the level of the
Tubby Smiths, where he was doing fine.
They were top 25 every year. They were winning 20 games most
seasons they were finishing, you know, in a position where they'd
be 6th, 7th, 8th seeds. You know, that's about 6 seeds
are like 21 through 24 in the in the poll.
That's about where Indiana was at for most of those seasons.
So. The idea that nil budgeting is
going to make that big of a difference it certainly.
Helps. And you're going to.
Need that as a coach. To really compete at the highest
levels. But that NIL budget, as we
already saw this year, it doesn't buy you competitiveness.
It doesn't buy you the type of logistical organization,
strategy, overall culture building that you need in a
program to make something sustainable year after year.
You know, you look up at the team that won the Big 10 this
year in Michigan State. I mean, you can talk about
Michigan State having NIL, you can talk about it having had
success, but that success is Izzo.
I mean, Izzo is so much more successful than Judd Heathcote.
His predecessor was. And Judd Heathcote won a
national title. Judd Heathcote had Magic Johnson
on on his 1979 team. But yet you look at Judd
Heathcote like his teams went like, like just roller coaster.
You know, they didn't have years where they were, you know,
contending for the Big 10 title and get to the Sweet 16 or the
Elite 8. They'd have years where they
were like 13 and 17. And that wasn't to say that
Judd. Was a bad coach.
I think Judd was an inconsistent coach, especially in recruiting.
But Tom. Izzo's not.
Tom Izzo is the right coach and and you look across the Big 10,
there's a few programs that I think have a natural ceiling on
them. Even a really good coach who
knows what they're doing is going to hit that ceiling.
Iowa's like that, like Tom Davis kind of took that team as far as
they could go. Although you say that and Lute
Olson. Got to do a final four, so
maybe, maybe he didn't take them quite as far as they could go.
You know Minnesota's. Got a?
Clear ceiling on it. The only time Minnesota's able
to be competitive national is when they're cheating.
And now everybody. Can.
Cheat. So I don't know what Minnesota's
going to do, but but you know, there's other programs where you
have the right coach and you can do great.
Things. Purdue is one of those programs.
Illinois is one of those programs.
You know, Michigan State is clearly one of those programs.
Michigan is one of those programs, and Indiana is one of
those programs. And so, but it doesn't work the
other way like. The NIL budget, the travel
budget, the recruiting budget, all these things that Indiana,
all these resources Indiana pours in is not going to make an
average coach. Good.
Or a good coach, great. And this is the tricky part of
this. And I talked about this with the
football hire. I mean, if you the football hire
is probably the big the best example of this where they hired
the right guy. Finally, it had been 40 years
since they previously hired the right guy, like the absolute
right guy. And that was Bill Mallory.
And, you know, Mallory took a team that had been, yeah, kind
of descended into the lower, the, the far lower reaches of
the Big 10 after clawing about a little bit with with Corso.
And he made them a competitive team.
And then he kind of fell. Off at the end and then.
They made-up succession of hires that that either didn't work out
or had something tragic happened to them.
And it, it, it took that long, but you hire the right guy and
you can turn things around very quickly and you can see, you can
feel it. Anybody that was in Memorial
Stadium or anybody that's watched press conferences or
anybody that that watched IU football on the road, the team.
Suddenly starts. Exuding something, a confidence,
an aura that is only from my experiences.
That's that that that comes from a great coach hire.
That comes from having hired a coach that knows what they're
doing, has a plan, knows how the logistics work, knows what they
need to do to build culture, puts the right people in charge
of the right things. And they themselves operate in a
way that helps to build and then sustain upon that excellence.
And that's what Indiana had with Branch McCracken.
That's what they had with Everett Dean.
That's what they had with Bob Knight for most of his tenure.
Same thing with McCracken. I mean, Mccracken's last six
years, five years weren't great for a lot of times for reasons
that weren't necessarily his fault.
But they didn't have it with Lou Watson, they didn't have it with
Mike Davis. They didn't have it ultimately
with Tom Crean or Archie Miller or Mike Woodson and.
So that's where. You know, I don't envy Scott
Dolson and the and the search committee for what they have to
do because they really have to nail this hire.
But this is where you know from my.
Perspective. If they decided, I'll go back to
the Ben McCollum thing. If they decided after vetting
Ben McCollum that this was the next guy with that DNA strand,
it's like the Da Vinci Code of coaching.
This guy can. Come in and get.
These things done and do it very quickly if they if they really
look at that guy and they say this guy's got all the
intangibles and we think he's going to have the tangibles as
well and that's what they hire great.
I'll need to be sold on it, but. I will.
Feel like they've sent us in the
right direction. But that's a really challenging.
Thing and and again I don't envy the the folks that are in the
mix having to make the decisions on this but I just I think
people need to be cautious about this idea that you can hire like
Brad Brownell who. However.
You want to dress up his career at Clemson?
You know he got to an. Elite 8 last.
Year people, you know, people have said, oh, he has nil money
and now he can bring in the right players.
I mean, look at look at who he's actually brought in.
I mean, do your own research on that, but go look at what
Clemson's done with NIL. It's a lot easier argument to
say, well, Brad Brunel's thriving at a time when there's
no dominant team in the ACC. You know, he's thriving at a
time when, you know, North Carolina's having historical
troubles and Louisville was just sitting flat on their ass for
three years basically. And you know, Wake Forest is
very mid and NC State just fired a coach like the ACC is, is kind
of at the lowest ebb. I've seen it in a while and it's
been that way for a few years now.
The idea that Brad Brownell, well, he's been slightly better
than average at Clemson is going to come in and I use resources.
They're going to suddenly turn him into a a top level coach.
It just, it just, I, I rarely see it work that way.
That doesn't mean that you can't hire a younger guy or a guy that
doesn't have a great deal of, of, of prior high level success.
It's more than just that, you know, and again, we've talked
about a lot of the examples of of people that were hired that
were from lower level programs and we're really on the
ascendancy. But though I guess the. 1.
Big change. The one big difference there
that I would look at between, say, a Ben McCollum and for
instance, like a Nate Oates, who got hired at Alabama after four
years at Buffalo, like go look at his record in those four
years at Buffalo. Like it's, it is remarkable how
good they got over the four years that he was at Buffalo.
And that that matters in terms of the big picture things.
You know that there's a trajectory you can clearly see
because there's evidence for it. Dan Hurley took him a little bit
of time at Rhode Island, but by the time he got done at Rhode
Island, his profile looked really good.
The one thing about? Hurley, that's interesting.
Still, it's like his profile at Rhode Island the last two years
look an awful arc like Archie Miller's profile did, which is
kind of what concerns me about McCollum, because his stats
profile through one year at Drake looks a lot like Archie
Miller's stats profile at Dayton.
That doesn't mean that, I mean, obviously Dan Hurley turned out
to be a lot better than Archie Miller.
Maybe Ben McCollum will as well. But it's more.
Of a dice roll, I think than just saying, well, we'll hire a
guy and as long as he's got the intangibles, the, the, the NIL
and the other items around the job, we'll make him a great
coach. That's just not been the history
with IU. It's the other way around.
IU has been made by its great coaches and the lesser coaches
have been eaten up by the expectations of the job.
That's what a great job does, you know?
A great job is. It's like if you've got a great
pilot, great pilot. 'S going to be able to take.
A plane that's got all the bells and whistles and, and use it to
its maximum capacity, but that same great pilot could probably
take a lesser plane and fly it better than most people can fly
the plane with all the bells and whistles.
So ultimately, I would just say think through as you go through
these processes of the coaching search, as you think about the
various candidates, you know, broaden, broaden the viewpoint a
little bit and don't just assume that this coach or that coach
will work because it's Indiana, because that as as many of you
know, it's just not how it's worked.
I still have, I still have faith.
Indiana's going to get the right coach and you.
Know I I. Think that this search is
different than a lot of the previous.
Searches that Indiana's had, it's a different field
candidates, but I think there's a lot of really good coaches out
there and I think it's a very desirable job and.
Despite a lot of efforts. To try to make it look like a
not desirable job by certain parties.
I think the the truth of the matter is actually pretty well
known throughout the industry and I'm really excited to see
where in the ambulance end up going with all of this.
So with that, I'll go ahead and sign off and I hope that you all
have a good rest of the day or evening and.
Back Wednesday. Where Scott will.
Be joining me, we will talk about what's going on in IU
land. We'll have some extra coaching
candidates to talk about and we'll also preview Indiana,
Oregon. I hope to see some of you folks
up there at Gambridge Field. House later.
On this week, as Indiana takes on the Oregon Ducks, we'll catch
you folks. On the flip side.
Bring back the bison, stay never daunted, So on everybody.