You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Gas,
Galen Clavio, Scott Caulfield joining you.
Happy 4th of February to Sunday and Indiana lost yesterday, but
that wasn't the headline from the day.
We got a chance to see all of our beautiful friends out of the
upstairs pub and elsewhere in Bloomington and it was a lot of
fun. Got the team team up with our
back home network folks, some we call doing the work podcast.
We had the Ex's and Joes out. The Amanda Foster was there with
the women's basketball pocket. It was great all the way around.
Scott was awesome hanging out with you yesterday and the game
didn't go the way we hoped it would, but we had minimal
exposure because of the three times we went on the microphone.
We had hope for two of them. It was only in the post game,
which we didn't talk very long in that it's like, wow, that was
really bad. I'm sorry that that happened.
How are you doing? It was good to see you
yesterday. Hope and great to see you, man.
Yeah, hope and change. Those events are always a a ton
of fun. It's great to see people.
It's it. The community is really what's
what's fun about this? It's good to you know, there are
moments not to get to like behind inside baseball or behind
the curtain. But there are moments you know
as a 45 year old guy who's been doing this for you know 15 plus
years where you're like man what what am I still doing?
Like why am I firing up a machine on Sunday morning?
I have kids. I can spend time with them.
You know, like why am I talking. They're really happy that you're
in the other room. They're probably like, that is
my dog. Just my dog came in.
It wouldn't be a crimson's cast that a dog.
But it's like, you know, then you go to these events, it's
like, Oh yeah, it's really great to see people in the community
and people who want to hear. And I know, like I'm not, you
know, I'm not only a remember, I'm also a user.
You know, like, I know when you know when IU things happen and I
know that like you're podcasting.
I'm excited to hear that even though I'm not doing it.
So I totally get it. It's great to meet everybody.
It is. It is one of the the really cool
benefits of of having done this for so long.
And I, you know, big credit to Jared and you know Ryan, Coach
and Andy and everyone at Assembly call because they
really did a great job of kind of pushing the community forward
and creating these events. And so it's awesome.
It's just we got to start picking either got to start
winning some weekend games or picking better weekend games.
To come to It's funny, one of Your all's favorite podcast
guests is of course Zach Singer, who occasionally pops on.
We were actually talking with with one of our listeners last
night who noted that every time he's feeling down, he puts the
podcast that I did with Zach on immediately after Purdue lost to
Fairly Dickinson and that you haven't.
If you haven't, go back and listen to that because it's it's
tremendous content. But I was texting with Zach this
morning because he was expressing concern for me as a
human being after Indiana surrendered 48 points to Penn
State in the second-half yesterday.
And I told him we'd do in the live show at, you know, during
this game. And he's like every live show
you do goes bad. You should pick a game you
expect to go badly. And I had to be honest with him
and respond well. I kind of expect every game to
go badly at this point. So I'm not even sure what game
we would choose. Certainly nobody could have
thought at the beginning of the year, you know what, We're going
to struggle at home against a Penn State team that lost the
heart of their team last year and.
Started sending the emails out to us, you know, kind of was
like, man, that that's like there wasn't a deal.
They have a lot of logistical things.
They want to do a weekend. But like, man, that kind of
sucks. Like we're just going to have
not, you know, just talk about a blowout.
Like, well, we did, realizing that it was like we did.
It's just the wrong way around. It's like, so I guess this is
humorous on all of our parts. I don't know what we did to get
this much punishment, but I guess, you know, it's like I'm,
I'm looking forward to Yukon 30 years.
We're now really paying penance for all their titles.
But like, we, yeah, we're on Galen, 'cause we won three and
then, you know, 300 night and then it's just like now we're
penance for 50 years, I guess. I don't know what it is.
It is wild. I I have a theory on that later.
Before we get to that, just a quick reminder folks, we are
brought to you by Home Field apparel, your place to go for
the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest
designs. They've got some new stuff
coming out. I'm going to be dropping some
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it. It's it's it's looking good.
An IU refresh a bunch of other refreshes that have popped up
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a couple of you out in the crowd, I'm you know who you are.
They've got new Duke stuff, they've got new North Carolina
stuff, There's this awesome Wisconsin bomber jacket that's
floating around. So you know if you got an itch
you want to scratch outside of of IU, which reminds me of
something Scott said yesterday comes up to me in the middle of
the of the this part where Penn State's outscoring IU 48 to 30.
He's like, you know you and I, we're both still relatively
young. It's not too late to find
another team to podcast about He he was kidding kind of.
Yeah. But first option is like this
home field sell their apparel and if they do then like maybe
we're free agents. Like maybe we'll go.
I'm thinking it's kind of like it's it to me.
Obviously we'll never give up podcasting about IU, but from a
fandom perspective, you know a lot of times if if you're like a
Detroit Tigers, you know supporter or you know a a a
Bengals supporter, you may like, pick just a second team that you
can root for and occasionally feel good about yourself.
Maybe we may even be thinking about that.
I don't know. But anyway.
All that said, home field apparel, if you interrupt you,
it's like it would be funny for us to just like we still do IU
basketball, but it's like we just every game.
It's like, you know, Galen, that game against Penn State
yesterday really, really reminded me against about the
Auburn, Mississippi State. And then we just talk about that
for 30 minutes. No, but anyway, if you're
interested in Auburn gear or Mississippi State gear or
Indiana gear, go to homefieldapparel.com, use the
code home 23 and take 15% off your first order.
Also a reminder, we're on sub stack crimsoncast.substack.com.
We've got VIP videos. I've actually got one already
recorded that will be coming out with this podcast, and if you
subscribe it's it's 50 bucks a year, $5.00 a month.
Check it out. Some good insights that we don't
put on the regular podcast 'cause that would be too much
content. You know, we I we realized that
we can't just put all of our thoughts out there all the time.
This is a way to get some extra thoughts though, and it's a
great way to help support the podcast in the community.
So thank you all. Anyway, let's get to, well,
Scott, you had something you want to talk about before we got
into this though, right? I'm gonna say as you thought,
I'm gonna say for the VIP, so there you.
Go. There you go.
Even better. So let's talk then about this
situation. I mean, we can talk about the
game a little bit. Indiana, we said at halftime in
our live show at upstairs, when Indiana was only up by 4:00, we
talked about how the problem with this Indiana team all
season has been. They just don't seem to be able
to put anybody away. Now, that was under the idea
that Indiana had played better, by and large, in that first
half. You'd gotten a great first half
out of Kalio Ware. You gotten some good
contributions from almost all of the folks in the starting line,
if you hadn't really gotten much off the bench.
But it felt like, OK, Indiana's going to seize control of this
down the stretch. Penn State's not very good.
They're, you know, they're missing Kanye Clary, who's been
their leading scorer this year. It's like this feels like
something that Indiana will do well with.
And then Penn State comes out and goes on a 14 to two run.
And then after a short break when Indiana scores a couple of
buckets, Penn State goes on a 10 nothing run and all of a sudden
the game is essentially out of hand.
It's it's it's 61 to 48 with 11 minutes to play.
And I don't think Indiana got closer than but 11 the rest of
the way they might, they might have gotten it to 9 at one
point. Scott, it went from we're
concerned that again IU is kind of playing down to its level of
competition to wow, Penn State played down to their level of
competition in the first half. Like, it's that that, you know
this was one of those through the looking glass games where
your entire perspective of what the team actually is changes.
And instead of, well, gosh, they lost some hard games against
really good competition in Wisconsin, Illinois and Purdue.
But they've more or less done what we expected them to do
otherwise, losing at home by 14 to Penn State and giving up
almost 50 points and a half to Penn State without the guy
that's done a lot of their scoring.
It it's like how bad is this team?
Like we've we've joked about, well they're, you know they're
not going to they're at least they're going to avoid Wednesday
in the Big 10 tournament. Maybe.
But they might not be one of the the top 12 teams in the
conference at this point or the whatever it is, the top 11 teams
in the conference. And that is both dispiriting and
just kind of like it almost feels like it came out of
nowhere. And yet it's not surprising in
the least. All at the same time.
That's a great way to put it. It came out of nowhere.
But it's not surprised. I mean, I would kind of say
thank God it's not next year because we'd be like, are we
going to be in the Big 10 tournament?
Because there's the bottom what four teams don't make it, but
that? Given our history in the Big 10
tournament, that sounds like a blessing.
But anyway, go ahead. That's great.
Like we just advocate the Big 10.
We might just say, hey, no, we're good.
We're out. Like even just we want, we want
Washington to feel at home. We don't want them to feel
excluded to start things off with.
You know, Huskies, go ahead and take it.
It's fine. Just just you take the bid.
It's like how they they don't get, they don't get a full
revenue share. We're not going to take a full
Big 10 tournament chair, dude, it's it's tough.
It really is tough because like you you go back to feel like I
feel like Tom Korean when he took the job like it's Penn
State. It's Penn State.
Like this is not one of the elite teams in the Big 10.
It is one of the, you know, statistically worst teams in the
Big 10. And and this game, you know, I
you you said it well, it's like it's not.
It didn't come out of nowhere, but it also kind of hit you and
I don't and I don't even know, like I'll just kind of go with a
couple of thoughts here. Like, you know, we mentioned
this at halftime at upstairs, just the lack of bench
production. You look at it at the end of the
game, you know, Anthony Walker plays 5 minutes, CJ Gunn plays
11 and I'm not knocking these just didn't provide much.
You know, Anthony Leo came back to earth, had 14 minutes, no
point. So you're basically relying on
your starting line up, all four of those guys, you know you've
always this season mentioned on defense, so you give let Penn
State, you know get 1.37 points per possession.
We've always talked about 3 point shooting, which again I
think that's just this is the feature of the Mike Woodson era.
So get used to it. But it's like again, they shoot
26%, they shoot more threes, but they did they make a lot less of
them. You know, free throws I guess
are better. We're shooting 84%.
But this is one, you know, we keep pushing the ball into the
paint. It's one of those games where
you know, you look at and it's like all the issues that been
having kind of all came up at once.
You you slightly get better offensive rebounding.
So I guess that's good. But you know the this team's
inability ability to give up big runs comes in again.
So it's like you I don't even quite know where to like focus,
like here's one of the problems because there's like 7 or 8
problems. They're all intertwined, but
they all seem to pop up all the time.
See, and that's where I think trying to diagnose individual
issues misses the point and we've tried to do that some.
We've highlighted, you know, whether it's the defense or the
free throws or whatever. But look, ultimately when I
watch this team, and I'm not the only one that feels this way,
this was expressed actually quite a bit yesterday as well.
This team does not feel like they are on the same page with
each other. They do not look like they have
chemistry with each other and then you add on top of that.
There's not really a coherent plan or idea that is adaptable
throughout the course of games. You know, the thing that stuck
out to me about the game yesterday as much as anything
else is that Penn State in the second-half realized that they
could pressure Indiana pretty well with with full court
pressure, and it completely disrupted everything Indiana
wanted to do. Now, I don't think that Mike
Rhodes deserves any kind of like Mensa award for figuring out
that an Indiana team that doesn't have a ball handler
other than Gabe Cubs is going to struggle against pressure.
But the fact that Indiana seemed to be uncertain about how to
handle it, The fact that Indiana's offense, while it
wasn't bad yesterday, only hit 9 field goals in the entire
second-half. And and you know, to me, the
biggest issue and and where I think the lack of cohesion
really sticks out is that Indiana allowed Penn State for
the game to score 1.37 points per possession.
Yes, Penn State hit some tough shots, but I mean they hit 12
threes. They were 54 percent, 55% from
three. They, you know, they, you know,
Penn State didn't turn the ball over.
They were passing all over Indiana.
Penn State ended up with 17 assists on what, 31 made
baskets. They were so easily able to move
around what Indiana wanted to do, Indiana looked uncertain.
There's a great video breakdown of Gabe Cubs and Malik Renew
blowing a defensive assignment that led to an open 3 pointer.
And it's like it's it's everybody's fault.
But it's it really goes back to this idea that it's hard to
watch this team even when they have played well and not get the
sense that what they're being asked to do is not really
working. And on top of that, they don't
seem to be on the same page with each other as a team.
So it's like, I don't even think you can.
You can certainly point the finger at Mike Woodson and his
staff and they deserve, I think, a lot of criticism.
You can also point the finger at the roster and say this team is
not playing like a coherent unit and it really hasn't all season.
And when you look at what I mean, this is a Penn State team
that lost to Bucknell by 9 at home.
It's a team that lost to Minnesota by 9 at home.
But you look at what Indiana's done on the course of the season
and they, you know, this is, you know, there's nothing surprising
here. They've really not accomplished
anything. Like it's hard to look at any of
the wins on Indiana's schedule and say, well, that was a really
impressive victory. You know, even that Michigan,
you know, the one on the road in Michigan looks less and less
impressive as Michigan keeps dropping games at home to other
teams that are ostensibly worse than Indiana.
So I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that when I
watch this team, they're not really fun to watch.
They're they don't look like they're having fun and it always
feels like Indiana is 1 bad possession away from everything
going South in every single game.
And it's almost, to some degree a surprise that it hasn't gone
the wrong way in some of the other games that they have
barely won. I didn't think we would get to
this point. You know, the early part of
February, but it's hard. It almost feels like it's gotten
slightly worse as opposed to getting better, and this ended
up kind of being the nadir of the season thus far.
It was interesting doing this with a game watch and being
around a lot of other similar minded IU fans, 'cause I can
just say we we had lots of conversations about IU
basketball. You know, the the tone overalls.
Pretty concerned, I would say concerned and turning toward
negative very quickly. And again, this is a small
sampling size of, you know, fans at the upstairs pub who are fans
of podcasts but a lot of concern and and a lot of feeling of that
and you know you you mentioned something that I wanted to hit
from you at your podcast last week with Zach Osterman.
Osterman said something that really struck me that I've I've
thought about a lot with this team.
And honestly, the last couple of probably like last six years,
you know, he was mentioning how he has a friend who's a Virginia
basketball fan and Virginia's had a lot of success.
But the fan, you know, his his buddies, like, I just it's not a
fun, it's not fun to watch. Like it's just like that team is
not a ton of fun to watch. And it kind of crystallized in
my mind like I'm kind of in the same boat with where we're at
now that even when we win, even we're beating Maryland or
beating Michigan like a there's this kind of rate.
You know, Razor's edge, we're kind of walking where it's like,
are are we going to be able to put this away.
You know, the Iowa game that we won, It's like we know they're
going to come back and can we hang on?
But then just the style of play, you know, just for me at least,
it's just not a ton of fun to watch.
Even when you're winning, it's like it's it's very grinded out.
It's like a land war in Asia. And I I just that's what's
tough. And then when you lose and all
the flaws are laid out, it's like it's even less fun to
watch. And I I do think that is some of
what some of this angst is is coming from is that you know the
losses aren't great but even when you win it's not like a
super fun enjoyable night of basketball.
And I think people are getting a little bit tired of that.
I think the same thing would happen at like Virginia.
Like if they, they be hard hit, hit a swoon, like they're
probably going to, you know, have a quicker turn than like a
maybe a place like Alabama where you know, it's it's a lot, it's
a lot more like fun up tempo, a lot more like contemporary
basketball. So I don't know, I was just
thinking about that, but I heard a lot of similar people talking
about that yesterday in our game Watch.
No, I heard some of those conversations as well and I'll,
I think I forget if it was when I was talking to Zach or if I
was one of the other podcast, but I'll, I'll say this, you can
have success with almost any style that you want to play as a
coach. The style, if you're going to
play like this is going to be very dependent on people having
something to look forward to when they're watching your team
play. What I mean by that is I guess
the success of the style in the eyes of people is, is going to
be dependent on how how successful is the team.
So like, yes, a Virginia or you know, some of these other teams
that that play this very unique structured style of play.
Wisconsin historically has been an example of this.
If you're winning, you're willing to accept almost
anything. If you're not winning, you're
going to be pretty upset when things aren't going well.
I think the problem here is that Indiana, it's not a fun style of
basketball on the offensive side.
It's not a fun approach on the defensive side because it just
gives up so many open shots. There really isn't an argument
being made about why this is a good style of play and we don't
get that from Mike Woodson in the post game press conferences
or in his media availabilities. I mean, Mike Woodson just kind
of does what and says what Mike Woodson feels at the time.
And I don't think that he's done a great job of being an
ambassador for the way that his team's playing.
You know, and we heard the first couple of years essentially
allusions to the idea that, well, we have to play this way
because we have this particular type of player and we have to
structure the offense a particular way.
And it's like, well now we've got a whole other like, I know
almost an entire season of results after that that say no,
this just seems to be the way that you want to play
basketball. Very post centric kind of a it
it it's not even a glacial pace in terms of possessions but
everything feels slow and cumbersome on offense and that
just does that. You know, it isn't good and I
think the problem is that it makes players look bad in the
system by and large. You know, we were had a lot of
conversations yesterday where we were talking about, you know,
Braden Smith and we were talking about players on other teams and
this idea and we've talked about this before you, it's easy to
say, well, we just need better players.
We got to recruit better this or that, and yet we've seen players
leave Indiana and play well elsewhere.
In some cases. We've also seen players come to
Indiana and play nothing like you would expect them to play.
It just feels like the way that Indiana chooses to play ends up
having a negative impact on how everybody looks and that's a
real bad spot to be in. So it's it's really frustrating
for fans. It's frustrating for us because.
The, the team is not like categorically awful, but they
they're both not fun to watch and they're not particularly
competitive and that's the the statistics show that.
You know what Scott, I was going to say you mentioned earlier
like Penn State being statistically you know one of
the worst or the worst team in the conference.
And I'll note that this morning on Ken Palm, Penn State's ahead
of Indiana and Ken Palm. Now Penn State is 93rd.
Indiana dropped from 89th to 100th.
The only other team in the Big 10 that is worse than Indiana
and Ken Palm right now is Michigan.
And they're only one spot worse. They're 101st and Indiana is
100th. And whereas at least Michigan's
offense works occasionally, they're 56th in the country and
offensive efficiency and 189th in defensive efficiency.
Indiana's like the only team that is equally bad on both
sides of the ball as of this morning, Indiana's 102nd and
offensive efficiency nationwide and 101st in defensive
efficiency. They may be actually be playing
like the worst team in the conference at this point and
that's pretty inexcusable. I want to go back to your Braden
Smith point because I was talking about this a lot
yesterday with a bunch of different people and you know it
it still kind of irks me because I'm, I'm in Westfield.
My wife's a teacher at Westfield.
My wife had Braden Smith in class like he's he was like,
man, that would have been really cool.
Like that would have been cool to just, you know, from just a a
kid who I saw play here in high school.
But anyway and who's you know found a spot there but you know
I think that the corollary is very apartment because you know
if he comes to IU, the question really is does Braden Smith
become what he is now. And I think you have a perfect
example of you know you've got to we have Gabe Cups.
We recruited Gabe Cups. Recruiting rankings aren't
everything but Gabe Cups is a four-star recruit, right, rated
90. You know Braden Smith is a three
star recruit, 88. So I mean they are similar.
If anything Gabe Cups was a higher level recruit.
He's come here and he doesn't really have a system that that
that benefits what he does well kind of almost highlights
everything that he can't do and and it makes you wonder like if
we had gotten Braden's OK Braden Smith comes to IU does Braden
Smith start playing like Gabe Cubs because he doesn't have a
system to go into. And the even scarier part is
like if Gabe Cubs goes to Purdue, does he just become
Braden Smith because they have a system and they can plug him
into a system and they understand how you know how how
to utilize things to best effective.
And that when I start talking about those things, that's where
I get really, really sad. Because that's a massive
structural issue that just bringing more dudes in isn't
really going to solve. Because at some point you do
need to have a structure where you can take players and utilize
things to their best ability. And that means either you have a
your Wisconsin where you recruit guys specifically for your
system or you have a coach where he changes his system based on
the players that he has year over year.
It it feels like we're kind of in no man's land.
Like we're not in the deep water.
We're not in the beach. We're right in the middle
getting slammed by the by the Breakers.
And it's like we we have kind of a pretty inflexible system, but
we're and the system doesn't quite work well enough and we're
recruiting some guys who fit it, some guys who don't and like it.
Just it feels like we're in the middle on everything and it's.
It's frustrating, yeah. I mean, I I just keep going back
to this idea that Indiana can thrive under the right
conditions with the right recruits.
But again, it's like Jalen Ujafina was able to come in and
be successful last year. But that's a very special
talent. And I just, I do worry, and I
think it's it's a valid thing to point out that for whatever
reason, you plug a bunch of players who are talented players
into Indiana's system and they just seem to struggle to do the
things you need to do throughout the 40 minutes of a basketball
game on both sides of the floor. And that is something that has
been consistent. And again, it's not just a Mike
Woodson thing, It also happened with Archie Miller.
I don't understand the reasoning why other than both coaches seem
to be or seemed to be attached to particular styles of doing
things that either just didn't work manifestly in Archie
Miller's way or in Mike Woodson's case just seemed to be
out of step the most out of those players.
And that is it. It's a tricky proposition and it
can change. You know, I mean you look at
I'll, I'll use North Carolina as an example.
You know North Carolina looked kind of dead in the water last
year as a program. They they were 20 and 13 but
they lost pretty much every game against a good team.
They just weren't impressive. They missed the NCAA tournament.
They missed the niti think or maybe they turn NIT bid down and
a lot of people were like, well, Hubert Davis can't coach.
There's real problems and you know, they look real good this
year. They just beat Duke.
They're ten and one in the ACC. They have really, really high
level talent and and they've been able to take advantage of
that. The excuse on the Indiana front
has been, well, Indiana doesn't have the talent to do XY or Z or
it's been, you know, it's a rebuilding year.
It is a rebuilding year, but it's one of those years where
there's no reason why Indiana has to look this bad.
We see teams do rebuilding years.
Even North Carolina, who again didn't look good last year, they
were 43rd and Kenpump, they were around 50th in both offensive
and defensive efficiency nationwide, they were not.
This Indiana team, which has, you know, Mike Woodson, was
saying in the press conference yesterday that nobody had noted
that they haven't been full strength since, you know,
December, beginning of December. And that that the implication
there seemed to be that that was an explanation for why Indiana
was struggling. And it's like, I don't think
that that's really a a reasonable argument that
injuries are the reason Indiana's playing this badly.
You know, the part of its roster construction and the injuries
have certainly hurt what was already poor roster
construction. But the idea that if you're not
at full strength, you're just not going to be able to compete,
I mean that's never worked at a place like Indiana, that is that
has never been a reasonable excuse as far as people are
concerned. And I don't think it should
start being that now because it feels like the problems are just
a lot more fundamental right now with this team.
And many of them are as as much focused on inspiration as they
are on schematic. Well, and I I.
Two things to hit here, like the the the thing that makes me
nervous about moving forward and you talked about this I think in
your podcast with Jared last week about like just you know,
how do we fix this moving forward based on how you
construct the roster and you know.
You get a lot of talk and I. Heard it yesterday, but you
know, nil. We have nil money.
Like, you know, the portal. Like we can hit that.
And like, I look back like, let's not forget.
And I was very positive of how we did last offseason.
You were too. A lot of us were like last
offseason going into this year, like we hit what I would
consider a home run in the offseason.
Portal You signed Khalil Ware, who's one of the top 4?
Four or five? Recruits in the portal like he
was one of the top guys. You got a five star in Mackenzie
Embaco to recommit to IU. So you got the top three recruit
in you know in Portal you got a five star recruit to recommit
and then you got Peyton Sparks who well not a five star like
that's a very solid player from a mid major conference.
Like to me that's a that's a home run that's a great
offseason. It turned into this you know
season of games to just be like hey we're going to do better
after less success. We are now going to do better
than that. Like I just don't know if that's
possible. Like last offseason was kind of
a home run win to get the the a five star recruit to get the
best nil transfer and to get a good Mac player like that's
great To just do better than that is is to me it's like
that's you're asking for things that are not logical to to get
that again and again. Yeah, I mean.
You can do that, but I don't think Indiana has demonstrated
an ability to recruit consistently at that level.
And even Even so, even last year with the roster Indiana had was
a pretty up and down year in terms of, you know, it took
until around this time of year for that team to really hit its
stride. And at the end of the day, they
didn't even make the Sweet 16, didn't make the Big 10 title
game, didn't win a regular season title.
I mean, it was, it was a good season.
But you can't look at that and say that's the model, 'cause
that's not a repeatable model. And so look, ultimately, I, you
know, it's funny. I mean, there's a lot of
discourse right now about the direction of the program.
And I think that's natural. After losing 4 out of your last
five, five out of your last seven, losing at home by 14 to
Penn State for the first time in a decade, you know you lose to
Penn State and now you're staring down the barrel of Rd.
games at Ohio State and Purdue, home games against Nebraska and
Northwestern, both of whom are, you know, squarely in tournament
contention. You got to go back and go to the
same Penn State team on the road that suddenly doesn't look like
a win. And then you got to come home
and play Wisconsin. I mean, that is, that is a
brutal stretch of six games Indiana's got coming up.
And you know, I don't, I'd be surprised if they lost all of
them, but I wouldn't be shocked because the way that they're
playing right now and those particular teams, like all of
them, have in common a core element, which is that they all
seem to have a system that the players have bought into.
They all seem to be squads that their teams, you know, work well
together on. So I do worry about how this
looks long term. And I think as I talked about
with Zach, there's just not a lot right now on the horizon to
make IU fans excited about the future.
Yes, Liam Mcneely, that's an exciting recruit.
That's the only guy signed, you know, and you know, perhaps
these things can be addressed in the Portal in terms of you get
guards in the portal, you're going to have to at this point.
But that doesn't get around the fundamental problem of the
system that Indiana is choosing to play does not seem to be
compatible with winning at a high level consistently.
It's hard to say for sure whether the problem with this
year's team is more chemistry based or more system based.
The concern is right now it's both.
Are both going to be able to get fixed in the offseason?
Are you going to be able to do a culture transplant off of what
you've got this year? I mean historically that
generally doesn't happen. So it's concerning.
It really is and I I don't know what the answer to it is, but
it's an interesting thing to look at right now is you've
still got quite a bit of the season left.
Again, I I. Say, like, I don't know if you
can get more talent than you got this offseason.
But I also think, like, Woodson has shown, he's not like we all
kind of went into the season like, all right, now that you
don't have Trace Jackson Davis, maybe they're going to, you
know, revamp their offense. They did.
Like, he is not shown in his time here.
He's really willing to change his systems and his ideal.
So the idea that he's just going to trash everything and
completely come up with a new system next year is really going
against his entire life. Like everything he's done is.
It doesn't show that. The thing about this, you know,
I I like to kind of look back to things that now are a little
more hardened in our mind. And you know, for the most part,
everybody would say no one's going to come out and be like,
hey, you know what, The Archie era was awesome.
Like, nobody comes back. We look at that era as like that
just didn't work. They were stuck in the mud.
Nobody like looks back glowingly on the Archie era when you look
at his four teams. The Ken Palm ratings for those
teams are 715234 and 50. Looking at offense and defense
just year to year 92658232 652674.
His last year the team was ranked 50th and Kenpom 70th and
offense 43rd and defense metrics aren't everything, but they
really do get a good snapshot of where a team is.
This year's Indiana team is, as you mentioned, their 100th and
Kenpom 102nd in offensive efficiency and 101st in
defensive efficiency. This is off the radar bad
compared to the Archie's. All of Archie's teams were
better than this. You know numerically the the the
two worst teams you have to go back to Crean's first and second
year when we are digging out of a hole and and this is where
again like I look at you know looking back to what we said
going into this season. I remember doing a podcast with
Alec Bozich and it's like we have more five star talent on
this roster then we've that was my that was my thought of how we
were going to get back is like we we have more talent on this
roster. I think we've had in years we
have 5 star talent, we're bringing more five stars.
And this is how you get it up to that.
And yes, you can have step backs.
You could have a year, you know, where we were kind of already
baking in a step back by being like if we get the, you know,
10-9 seed in the NCAA tournament, that's not great,
but that's a step back. The idea of not only you're not
even making the NIT, but you're going to be historically bad,
like a team that had that you haven't been this bad in 1314
years. Like there's really no reason.
And you can talk about injuries. It's like, OK, you lost Xavier
Johnson. Like Xavier Johnson was also not
a big part of the last year's team because of injury.
Like you didn't lose two of your core players.
You didn't lose any of those guys you got in the Transport
Portal. It's offseason.
Like yes, it should affect your team.
Like it affected the team last year.
Maybe that team could have, you know been a 3C in the NCAA
tournament could have been a step or two higher in the Big
10. They didn't just fall off the
face of the earth And so that this is what really concerns me
and for people who just yeah, you know it's a rough year like
rough years or one thing off years or another.
This is like just horrifically bad.
Like just everything is bad and I I that's where I'm very
concerned for that. And again like I'm not sure how
it gets better. I'm sure it hopefully it will
but I just don't know. But I just, I think people need
to take a moment and realize this isn't just like ah we
missed the mark a little bit like you are.
This is way off the mark. This is more in line with the
2010 season than any other season in the last 15 years.
Really the the biggest analogue, right?
Now from a statistical perspective, is the 2004 season
where Indiana was 94th and Ken Palm their, their offense was
120th. Their defense was actually
slightly better compared to the rest of the country that year at
72nd than it is this year. When we're talking about that
season as a comp, that's a system's failure.
Like that's something that has to be addressed.
And so I am at this point, you know, and a lot of people have
expressed this like it kind of feels like the season's done,
you know, and it's because it's not just the results.
It's also like Alec Lasley had a tweet earlier today, and you've
brought this stat up as well. Indiana has.
They've lost their games by an average of 14.7 points per game
this year. Seven of the 9 losses Indiana's
had so far this season have come by double figures, you know?
So when they have won, it's generally been close.
When they've lost, it's generally been blowouts and it
feels like Indiana is losing momentum, not gaining it.
I I mean, I said yesterday Indiana, and it's true, Indiana
has shown some improvements defensively, but they gave
almost all of that improvement up yesterday.
Like statistically speaking, they submarine what improvements
they had made. And again, it feels like one,
you know, something leaks on one side of the boat and they plug
it and then something else leaks on the other side of the boat.
It is. It is bizarre watching this team
struggle the way that they're struggling and hopefully it it
needs to get fixed. I mean, I'll say this like I'm
the the, you know, the the whole idea at this stage that somehow
this isn't or can't be addressed is not acceptable.
And I'll keep going back to this.
The whole idea of Indiana basketball being something
special and they're needing to be a higher standard.
I mean that is ultimately what we get a lot from Mike Woodson,
from the program as a whole. And that's fine.
And I think we all think IU basketball is special.
But this is the latest and probably the most stinging of
these seasons that just come, like, significantly short of
expectations. Because yes, this was supposed
to be a year where the deck got reshuffled a bit.
This is not reshuffling the deck like this is opening the deck
and finding out that a bunch of cards are missing and not
knowing how to fix them. I don't know what the plan is.
Like, what do you, what do you tell people that are coming
here? What are you showing them to
say, Well, this is actually an outlier.
Here's how we want to play and here's why you would want to
come to Bloomington because you mentioned something earlier.
It's not just about nil money. Like, Indiana's got tons of nil
money. Indiana's got tons of resources
available. Players want to be sold on a
vision. They want to say, oh, I see
myself succeeding in that role. And that's the thing with the
guards. If, like, it wasn't that IU
didn't look for guards in the portal.
It's like guards, I think, looked at Indiana and said there
are better options elsewhere. This season has done nothing to
make that look better. In fact, a lot of ways I think
it's made it look worse. That's a real concern going into
this next year, unless you can sell a different vision from
what's currently out there right now.
And so that's going to be the thing to watch.
I mean, you know, the season's not over.
Indiana can turn it around. Maybe this game ends up being a
kick in the ass as opposed to an indicator of how they're going
to play the rest of the year. What worries me is this is kind
of this feels like this game is always a possibility when this
team takes the floor this season.
And I think it's more likely that it is how they're going to
play the rest of the year than be the outlier and and be the,
you know, be the the down cycle of of what is otherwise a good
rest of the season. Yeah, I mean the the thing.
That concerns me is you look at that, you know that they beat
Morehead State, North Alabama, Kennesaw State like awesome.
But you go back and look like the the last you know multiple
game-winning streak against Semi.
You know the good teams was Louisville, Harvard, Maryland
and Michigan. And you look at the rest of
this, the schedule ahead of us and you know I, I I like you, I
don't know where the wins are going to come from.
I don't see them losing out. But I think it's going to be
really hard. You know, you mentioned momentum
and this team losing momentum. I I see it really hard for this
team to win two games in a row or three games in a row and kind
of right the ship, like I can see them winning one and then
going back. And it is kind of a bummer to
look at a season and be like all right after December 29th,
you're not going to win two games in a row the rest of the
season like that. That's that's really tough.
That's just really tough and that's you lose momentum of a
fan base of a program of a team like everything just kind of
that was the Archie problem is everything just got stuck in the
mud and was kind of like this cart is not moving and that that
is what is really concerning. But I think we can leave it
there. But more to talk about as we go
into February. Yeah, it doesn't feel.
Like things are going to change anytime soon.
There was 1 stat I can't find. I can't because they don't.
Like, they don't. Like Woodson hasn't changed.
Like he's not coming out and saying they're going to change.
They're not yelling at you. But it's like that's the
frustrating part is like we said, well hopefully things will
change. Like there's there's no evidence
in his coaching history at IU or his coaching history at all like
that they're going to change. He just doesn't.
There's no history of him coming in and being like, all right now
we're going to run this. Like the big change is he ran
2-3 zone against Louisville for for 12 minutes.
The There's I. Can't.
I still can't find the stat, but IU under Woodson, it's something
like they're like 3 and 17 now against.
I think it's like Michigan, Iowa, Rutgers and one other team
like the the the the soft middle of the Big 10 or even though the
lower reaches of the middle. And the problem is ultimately
that that's the teams. It's kind of like when we talk
about football, like when Tom Allen would be like, well, you
know we have to play Michigan and Ohio State every year and
it's like, well, the problem is that you're losing against all
these other teams that you have to win against if you're going
to be competitive and that like to to.
Have. Already lost this year to
Nebraska, Rutgers and Penn State?
That, you know, that's about as easy of a stretch as you will
get in terms of Big 10 play because this, this conference
isn't good. But this conference is also not
awful. And it is really.
Yeah, it is. It is really frustrating because
all of these teams seem to be playing better than Indiana at
this point, except for maybe Michigan.
So anyway, no need to belabor the point further.
And it's like at this point I'm not even.
I mean, I'm. I'm irritated.
I'm not mad because. Yeah.
This just kind of feels like the natural order of things with
Indiana basketball. That might sound fatalistic, but
this is who Indiana is. And man, that has got to change.
And that's probably the biggest disappointment is that I don't
see or feel any kind of fire or intensity either coming off the
podium when the coach is talking or in the way that the players
are reacting on the floor. This team is easy to get down,
you know they're easy. And we've seen this with Indiana
teams in the past. This is not the first Indiana
team that's had this. But it's really frustrating
watching this kind of devolve because it doesn't feel like
anybody's got the will to fix it within the system right now.
And sometimes you get seasons like that.
But the fact that there's still a lot of basketball to play and
it could get significantly worse is a real concern.
And I I do worry about the psyche of the program as a whole
moving forward and the way it affects fans.
I mean, we talked with people after the game.
People were less angry and they were more just kind of
fatalistic. And it was like, well, OK, that
sucked. But that wasn't a surprise.
And man, that is a terrible place for the program to be
right now. Like that is that is that has
been the thing I think that's been the most jarring to me is
how how quickly and understandably IU fans have
settled in to this. This is who we are mentality and
they're not wrong but they that needs to get changed.
It does. And and it also and you might
need to correct me here because you're in Bloomington more like
I'm not in Bloomington as often but the thing that kind of
struck me at the upstairs yesterday is that hey they've
expanded the place is awesome. But that's that's the First off,
but then after. The.
Game. The place flooded with students.
I know you and I. It's like you.
You and I are are are big into sports and we would be bummed
after losses. We'd still go out and have a
good time and so I could be misremembering some of this from
my college days. But it was kind of interesting
to me just how most of the students were just like, all
right, you know, but that the game was like, it was something
like, it's an event, we go to it like and you know, we lost
whatever. Like they just move on like
having a good time and that, yeah, you're making that.
I'm probably reading too much into that.
Here's the thing I. Think you and me and like,
really hardcore sports fans are different?
Yeah, you're probably right. You know, because yes.
And look, I think there are moments where, you know, you've
got college campuses where it's a huge deal if the team does
well or poorly, but at the end of the day, there's a lot more
students for whom it isn't that big of a deal.
And those are a lot of times the people that you're seeing out.
So I, I, I, I live here, I work with students.
I think that you might be reaching a little too much on
that, but it's something that I think a lot of people would look
at and say, why isn't this a bigger deal?
And ultimately, it's not a bigger deal because IU
basketball just hasn't been good.
Like, good good like top of the line good consistently over the
course of the last 25 to 30 years.
It's it's nice when they're doing well and people will get
excited. But it's it's no longer
something people live and die on, especially like college
students. Because if you were, you would
have like, you'd be bounced around like a yo-yo for a while.
Like, yeah, you would, you would be, you would be on the
precipice at this point anyway. So any final thoughts before we
wrap up? No, no, we'll have.
We'll have more to talk about. Want to thank everybody for for
listening. I'm ready for showing up and
let's, let's, we'll stay there. We'll, we'll keep going.
Yeah. No.
We'll yeah, we'll be fine. Well, Indiana, big week this
week, go on the road to Ohio State.
That might be the most winnable game left on the schedule, given
how bad Ohio State is defensively.
And then of course they got to travel to Purdue on the 10th.
So we'll see what happens moving forward.
But Purdue looking really good, they play against Wisconsin
later on today, so we'll see where they're at in the big
scheme of things in Indiana not looking so good 13 and 95 and
six and staring down the barrel of some not nice stuff down the
Pike here in the Big 10 play. So anyway, thanks to all of you
for listening. We'll keep this one relatively
short. Be sure to tune in later on this
week. We'll have more content coming
at you. And if you have any comments or
questions, you can always go to the sub stack, leave a note
there or you can track US down on Twitter.
For Scott, I'm Galen, this is Crimson Cast.
Thanks for joining us once again.
And we will catch you folks On the flip side, bring back the
Bison. So long, everybody.