You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast,
GAIL and Clavio Scott Caulfield joining you.
It is Friday, January 17th, game day morning for Indiana men's
basketballs. They travel this evening to Ohio
State, take on the Buckeyes. What?
V Ohio, Sorry. No, I not not doing that with
these people at this point. Sorry.
You. Yeah.
Let's restart. I hate that I did that.
Newton. Let's start.
Over. Nope, Nope.
We can't restart. We gotta just keep going
through. This is what happens when you
record on video. So.
But no, here we are, Indiana at 13 and five and four and three
on the season, the conference. And certainly, Scott, the last
time we talked, which was Sunday, we were very curious to
see what was going to be happening with Indiana this
week. And boy, did we find some stuff
out on Tuesday night as Indiana loses by 25 points at home to
Illinois in a game that wasn't that close.
So we're going to talk about that.
I was there, you were not, and we're gonna talk about the stuff
that's happened since then is. Is that me winning?
Yeah, I mean, someone made a good choice about not going to
that game. I I went to the Pacers.
Game it was, it was a little bit better, but.
For many reasons, I wish I had also not gone to that game.
But anyway, that's another story.
So we're talking about that. But first, just a reminder we're
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I'm like, oh, you guys stepping on home fields turf and I look
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I was going to record one last night about this basketball
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I didn't like how either of them came across and so I didn't
release them. So VI PS know in spirit, I put
out AVIP episode, but I didn't actually, I'm sure that's going
to resonate very well with you. But we'll have a little
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We hit a big mark this week, Scott.
We are over 7000 subscribers now on the Back Home Network YouTube
channel and we are so thrilled to have all you folks watching
along with this it it really is great to have you in the
audience. So we're looking forward to
continuing to get those numbers up, continuing to do more, more
video based items and we'll. For me, Google, am I an
influencer? You're not.
No. Sorry.
I I, I'm sorry, Scott. Someday.
You know you.
Start doing the dancing the you do.
Yeah, get the whole family involved like that definitely
seems like I'm. I'm actually shocked you guys
don't do like choreographed family dances, get waffles
involved, you know, when you're doing, you know, like wine
trivia night or we did. Trivia night last night, there
was no dancing, but we did, we, we did pretty well.
Our, our, our four, the four young boys of the neighborhood
all had a team. The, the, they named themselves
the Quizzlers. And it was great because like,
they were just, you know, missing stuff left and right.
And then one of the questions was like, you know, this, this,
you know, James Bonderman or whatever, like is better known
by his YouTube name. They're all like, it's like Mr.
Beast. It's like they just, they're
like, ah, we know when we know when we know it.
They ran up there. It's amazing.
Anyway, let's go ahead and dive into things.
Indiana losing 94 to 69 to Illinois on Tuesday.
And boy, it really wasn't even that close.
Indiana allows 60 points at home in the first half on route to, I
think what was the the widest margin of victory that they'd
had in regulation of the assembly hole or maybe the most
points an opponent had scored an assembly hole.
We were in the stands trying to figure out like, what is the
record for most points scored against IU in Assembly hole at
which I I had honestly forgotten, you know, what that
might have been. And, you know, of course I think
Iowa was involved somehow. But yeah, it's it was bad.
And I think what was worse about it for Indiana in this game was
not just the loss, but how completely disconnected Indiana
as a basketball team looked from any level of competitiveness.
And, you know, this was an Illinois team that had just lost
at home to the same you USC team that Indiana beat at home last
week. And a lot of people looked at
that and said, wow, Indiana might actually be really good.
They've won five games in a row. And they beat this USC team that
was able to go into champagne and beat a a top 15 Illinois
team. Surely that's a sign that
Indiana's actually of of quality as an opponent.
And that was proven to be not true, both in the Iowa game that
happened over the weekend and also this one.
Scott, I, you know, there's really not that much to break
down during, you know, about the game itself.
It was it was one of those games where Illinois did whatever they
wanted offensively. Didn't really, it wasn't even a
situation where there was something outlandish going on.
Like, you know, Illinois hitting like 20 threes and 1/2 or
something like that. Like it was just an old
fashioned butt kicking by the Illini.
And, you know, Indiana showed a little bit of fight in the
second-half. Mike Petrie, a long time Crimson
Cast contributor, noted over text that that was almost
insulting to see as an IU fan. That's like, well, now coming
out of halftime down 30, now you're going to show some fight.
But it was just, it was an unfortunate set of circumstances
all the way around. And it ended ugly with Omar Balo
getting into a fracas. And you know, the, IT was just
one of those things where kind of everything went wrong and you
got to talk about the booze. You got booze coming down from
the stands as the team's coming off the floor.
You got there was a Fire Mike Woodson chant which I didn't
hear, but I take on on faith that that was indeed what
occurred 'cause several people noted it.
And it was just one of those ugly scenes.
Not as ugly as it could have been, but still pretty ugly.
I think the crowd was more shell shocked for most of the first
half than angry. And then the most people started
drifting out, you know, starting at halftime and and leading into
about the 8 minute mark in the second-half during that period.
So it is it the end of the season from a well, there are
still games to be played and there's still a chance to do
something in the tournament. Of course not.
There's still games to be played.
Indiana still technically above 500, but that felt like an
absolute turning point in the narrative of this season and the
way that the relationship between IU basketball and its
fans, for this season at least, was going to play out.
I think you you hit a lot of stuff right on the head.
I was at the Pacers game and I was going to come home and watch
the IU Illinois game. And then I just I saw a
notification. I should have just swiped it,
but it just caught my eye. It's like Indiana fans leaving
at halftime, fans chanting Boo woods.
So I'm like, what what is going on?
Like what I text you? I'm like, what is going like I
just want to know what what the hell is happening?
And then like I couldn't I couldn't turn away from kind of
digging into it. You you kind of mentioned what
it was like there. You know, here's here's
everything you laid out true. Here's what I've been thinking
about that I haven't really heard talked about is that, you
know, you you can discuss whether you should, you know,
Boo players or not. You can discuss whether people
should be chanting this or not. But here's the thing.
It's like it happened. And once that Rubicon has
passed, so to speak, you don't come back from that or you have
to really change something. You know, this is something I've
talked about for years and this has been a problem with IU
basketball for years, is you do the status quo or you do
slightly worse than expectations.
The idea of just coming back and then just meeting expectations
isn't enough. You then have to go above
expectations at some point. If you're AC student and you get
AD minus, AD minus, AD minus, you can't just get AC and then
say hey, we're all good. It's like, no, you need to get
an A+. You IU football was a prime
example of that in all the respects for years.
They were just barely trying to get by and then not meet the
expectations. And but you have to do something
out of the ordinary to really wake people up.
They did that this year. Like that was way out of the
ordinary. That was not just a six win
season. That was insane.
What I'm concerned about Galen, is this is, you know, you're on
January 17th, you have a lot of home games left.
And once you've kind of broken this seal, it doesn't get put
back. And you can talk about whether
it's right, whether it's wrong, but it's like it's it's
happening. And even if you just you know,
you lose at Ohio State, you win at Northwestern, that's not good
enough. Like that's not good enough for
people to not be pissed. And I will also say this, like,
I mean, unfortunately, a lot of this anger and angst is based on
years and years of not meeting expectations.
That goes before Woodson, that goes before Archie.
I mean, there's there's a lot of pent up baggage just being
pushed up here. That has to be like dealt with.
And you can't just say, hey, we want it Northwestern, like we're
all good. Let's let's bring it back and
let's cheer for the team like did.
This is what I'm most concerned about is this could degenerate
to a point where we look back at the crowd reaction in this game
and be like, man, that was nice when we were just chanting and
booing. You know, there's still, as I
view it, 123-4566 home games. And some of them, I mean, you,
you play at Purdue, at Wisconsin and you're home to Michigan, at
Michigan State, home to UCLA. You could be on A5 game losing
streak, four of them being ass kickings going into that UCLA
game. How are the fans going to be
there? And that that's what I'm most
concerned about is everybody has a right to be angry or angsty.
I should say I'll change my word angsty, but I'm just worried
that if, and again, I'm not calling for anything, but like
if just nothing is done, if just we just continue to do the same
thing, this is going to degenerate and get very, very
ugly. And it's funny.
Then I'll stop talking. Like we talked about this at the
end of the Archie era, like when they started booing the team,
but that wasn't Conseco or Banker's life.
Like that was the end of the season.
It's like, man, this could get ugly for the last two games.
This could get really ugly for like 2 1/2 months with six or
seven different games. I'm not.
There's only nothing you can do. But it's like you can't just do
nothing. And I don't think you know, my,
it's like you can't just go and like, beat Northwestern.
Like, all right, well, we've fixed everything.
Like you, you have crossed a level where you have to do
something really out of the ordinary.
And I'm just not sure this team's able to do it.
I don't know what the answers are.
And that's what I'm most concerned about.
Is this just getting really kind of ugly and frustrating for 2
1/2 months? No, you're right.
And it's a weird set up. And I think you hit a bunch of
interesting points. Indiana's in some ways lucky
that four out of their next 5 games are on the road.
Yes. And you're, you're at Ohio State
tonight if you're listening to this on Friday, you're at
Northwestern on Wednesday. You've got Maryland in a noon
home game. That's on a Sunday.
That's going to be a, a, a, a great one that's really set up
to be positive. And you got to go to, you got to
go to Purdue the following Friday, and then you've got to
go to Wisconsin, which of course is where Indiana plays really
well. Historically, one of the many
places now that we've added to the list of that we play well.
Yeah. And and then you're back and
you've got, you know, favorite son Dusty May, who's coaching
Michigan, bringing the Wolverines into Bloomington on a
Saturday. It's it doesn't set up well for
this particular circumstance. And I think you bring up
probably the key point, which is that it's one thing for this
kind of thing to occur. And we've unfortunately been
here on a variety of occasions. I mean, I'll go back to Davis's
last year. People forget, many of you are
too young to even remember that. But you remember, you know,
they, they end up they lose that game to Connecticut.
They go on the road, they get destroyed by Wisconsin.
They come back and you have that infamous Iowa game at home where
Davis doesn't show up to work. You know, he's allegedly I'll
and and fortunately Davis didn't coach another game in Assembly
Hall under a cloud because it was right after that Penn State
game that happened in the middle of the week that they had the
press conference saying that he was going to be leaving his
position at the end of the year. You know, Crean's last year, it
that that fell well apart. Like you had that, that the,
the, what was it? The, the Josh Newkirk three
overtime like layup game against Penn State.
And then they went on a run where they lost their next 5,
including home games against Purdue and Michigan.
And you could just feel like things were coming to a rapid
close there. You had a similar thing with the
Archie thing. And the Archie thing was weird
'cause you're, you know, you're, you're still in COVID
restrictions and I think everybody's a little bit awkward
about things. But as you mentioned, that
situation at Banker's Life Fieldhouse was was not good and
and IU was like, we got to take action.
This one is like specific or or especially bothersome for a
couple of reasons. One, it's happened earlier than
any of those. Sorry about that, like earlier
than any of those. Absolutely it.
And, you know, I think the, the best case scenario for IU from a
program perspective or from a an athletic department perspective
was that IU was going to hold it together, get through January,
remain competitive and then do their normal fall apart in
February thing. And then there would be a
natural finish maybe if things hadn't worked out.
And I think the five game-winning streak kind of gave
everybody hope that maybe things would be all right for a little
bit, But 225 point losses in a row.
And you, it's not just that, as you mentioned, it's the backdrop
of last year and the not just the disappointment, but the
adversarial relationship that got created.
And I'm not saying one side or the other was right or wrong,
but the fans in Woodson, there was clearly a, a break there.
And for all but the most die hard fans or the people who feel
like, you know, Indiana's at fault all the time for
everything as opposed to the coaches, people were very much
in a well, you'll have to show me that you can do XY or Z
approach with Woodson. And what we've seen now is like
Indiana's played five top 50 Ken Palm opponents.
Sorry, they've say played six of them.
They've lost five of those games and the only one that they won
was the game versus Penn State. So you've got a situation now
where Indiana's demonstrated that they're not competitive
against better competition and. We have something better
competition ahead. We have, it was essentially,
yes. And you've also got the
unfortunate scenario where there really is not much of an
emotional connection between the fan base and the coach, between
the fan base and the team. And it's a product of, well,
there's not a lot of recruiting that's gone on here.
It's a bunch of pieces that got brought in from elsewhere.
And I think a lot of IU fans view that as being a huge part
of the problem. And again, they look back at
Woodson and the lack of recruiting that's come out of
the coaching staff, particularly at the guard position over the
last few years. And they say, well, this is the
core of the issue. And so I really, you know, I, I
know this like I know IU athletics, any athletic
department, not just IU, but certainly IU.
It's one thing for coaches to get yelled at or for people to
to say awful things on social media.
I'm not, I'm not condoning it, but it happens and I've engaged
in it myself in the past and I regret doing that.
It's another when it starts to spill over onto players and I
know that you that's one of the last things you want to see as
an athletic department. You don't ever want to see your
fans pitting off against your players or media members going
after players, players getting into the fray and and punching
back in social media. We saw that a little bit this
week. This was a really dumb week from
a social media perspective when it came to IU basketball.
We've had many dumb weeks. This was maybe the dumbest so
far. And you can, you can point
fingers and you can blame people for things, but at the end of
it, it's a situation that has to be addressed.
And I guess what concerns me is that I don't know what happens
here. Like, I, I don't know that
there's the political will within the athletic department
or the university to fire Mike Woodson.
And when I say political will, what I mean by that is not like
politics like Republican versus Democrat, but like hiring a the
men's basketball coach in Indiana is probably the most
important and fraught process that you go through as an
administrator. There's a lot of people with a
lot of skin in the game. We know that Mike Woodson has a
lot of people who view him as part of the the IU basketball
family because of having played here.
We know there's a lot of of people that, you know, are
trying to protect Mike Woodson from the the circumstances in
the situation. We also know though, that
there's a lot of basketball left to be played this season.
You know you've got 2 full months of games from this point
forward. You've got, as you mentioned,
six of those games at home. You've got an increasingly toxic
situation. You also have a coach who
whether or not he should be thinking this way, this does not
appear to be a coach that is inclined to think that he's
doing anything so wrong that it should result in him resigning
from his role. You know, and, and I'm not
again, not saying he should feel that way, but one of the things
that sometimes you'll see, and we actually saw it with Mike
Davis in 2006, was the coach saying, all right, I'm going to
step away from this because it's not working.
I don't sense that with Woodson. I didn't sense that in the post
game comments. We've seen very little follow up
from that Illinois game in terms of of how that got addressed.
And it just feels like all of these pieces have come together
and could lead to a very, very ugly couple of months because
fans at this point feel disregarded.
You know, fans at this point feel like the basketball program
that they shell out huge amounts of money to go see and to
travel, you know, as it basically been allowed to to
operate as the, you know, without a lot of oversight and
without a lot of of particular care.
Like, OK, it's Mike Woodson's ship.
He can steer it. And it's clearly been steered in
a direction that isn't leading to a lot of success.
And so you have this pent up reservoir of a lot of really
angry people who are increasingly getting angrier
because what they're seeing that, you know, going out on the
floor regularly looks inadequate for what they were promised,
especially with this season. And so I don't, I, I'm really
disturbed by where this could end up because it's just going
to make everybody look bad. And I don't see at this stage, a
particularly easy resolution playing out for anybody.
And that's a real shame. Yeah.
That's true. I mean, a couple of things.
You know it for those on the outside, of which I'm assuming
anybody listening to this is a big IU fan, but you know, you're
talking to somebody who's on the outside.
It's like you, you have to put into context what happened at
last year's Senior Day. Like, that was just for a lot of
people, that was jarring because we're a program that obviously
had, you know, had ties with Bob Knight.
That was not the best exit. And that that created some
tensions within the IU fanbase. The idea of bringing a former
player back was always kind of discussed.
And should we do it? And so this is obviously the
first time we had done it. And then just within, you know,
36 months, that same person is basically like making a, you
know, maginal line. Like here's the line of where
fans are and aren't versus just I love everybody.
You know, you have the other thing that I think is also
concerning for me, I don't know if I'm not sure if the Maginot
line is the metaphor there. Let's keep going.
OK? I want, I'm actually I'm, I'm
looking forward to our listeners breaking that one down from a
psychological perspective anyway.
Go ahead. It's awful.
I was actually a history major at IU, so maybe it's not showing
my my great major. I'm just, I'm just the line.
It's a dividing line the the dividing line.
Sorry, go ahead. All I know is that we have true
Crimson cast fans and we don't and those who are against the
national line know the the other thing that you know, this is
where I I've kind of been saying this also, you know, where
you're in a tough spot if you're Woodson or just the way this
team has been run is, you know, outside.
Even before last night, I was looking ahead like, I don't I
don't know what to look forward to because this team has been,
you know, at up until the last two days, like still kind of
relatively disappointing. Hadn't shown well in Atlantis.
It's like the the team doesn't recruit.
Like there's not there's not an effort to recruit the Midwest,
Indiana or kind of recruit at all.
And as I've said before, last two years they've done pretty
well in the transfer portal. So the idea of like going to the
next season, like we're just going to do better.
Like, I don't know if there is better.
Like, I don't know what the solution would have been this
offseason anyway. This is always a problem.
You know, when in in the pros, you can be like, well, we'll
just tank and get better draft picks.
Like there is no option here. But yeah, I mean, and and this
is where I think you hit it perfectly.
Like fans and I will put myself in there.
We, we feel disregarded because it's kind of like there's this,
this discussion of like, you guys have to follow us like
blind faith and. Yeah, no, I.
And and and the idea of like. I think you're hold on time.
I think you're, and this is part of the problem is there was a
real attitude. Some of it came out directly.
A lot of it was indirect. That's like, I know what I'm
doing and other people don't. And this is how this team's
going to be built and this is how it's going to work.
And whether it's, whether it's the overt statements, whether
it's just the demonstration of, well, we're not going to bother.
I mean, I, I, I don't think that they're not putting effort into
recruiting is accurate. They're not putting enough
effort into recruiting. They're not putting enough.
Like it's, it's clearly not working.
It's clearly not connecting and it, this was clearly a bad
approach from a team building perspective.
And I think what's frustrating for a lot of IU fans is they
knew that ahead of time, they, they, they could see that was
going to be a problem there. There was people all throughout
the summer who were like, I'm not entirely certain that you
can go in full transfer portal and actually put together a
competitive team. And you have people, especially
on social media who went out of their way to attack those people
who were expressing questions like, well, you people don't
know ball. You people don't know what
you're talking about, that you know, the coaching staff knows
what they're doing. You 3 pointers aren't that
important. Like just whole list of things
where it's like, am I being gaslit?
Like what the hell? What is this?
Like what? Like why?
Why is it that a reasonably intelligent group of people when
they highlight things that are that are going wrong with the
program? And when you can point to
examples like Connecticut, like Auburn, like Louisville this
year, like special case, But it's like whether it's the the
program building process that we've seen out of UConn where
they've mixed really intelligently recruits and
transfer portal, You know, whether it's Auburn and, and
what they've done, whether it's Louisville going out and like
demonstrating that you don't need 4 years to get all of your
people in that you can put together a pretty decent team if
you have a good plan. And then you go back to the
offense and all of the talk that we heard about all things are
going to change. Things are different this or
that. You go back and you look at the
numbers and we talked about this last time, Scott, Indiana's back
to 331st in the country and three-point attempt ratio, which
is, you know. Terrible Four in the last two
games each. They're shooting worse from
three percentage wise this year than last year that you know,
there's just there's so many little things statistically
where it's like this is essentially a slightly better
carbon copy of last year. You're, you're about 30 points
better in both offense and defense and Kenpom, but you're
still essentially the 60th placed team in the country, not
the 30th place team, which to me was the bare minimum of
expectations. And so, you know, you take all
of that and you combine it with what has been just kind of a,
you know, a, a standoffish approach that's grown between
the coach and the fan base and the program and the fan base.
I mean I I know it's one thing, but like blowing off Fisher for
the post game, it's like dude, just go talk to Fisher.
Like Fisher's not going to hit, ask hard hitting questions.
Like he's just going to say, man, tough game and you can say
what you want and then you're done.
Like it's even just little things like that, that for me, I
know it's one tiny little thing. It's like that pisses me off.
It just does. It's like, do your job.
Like you lost, you got your butt kicked.
Like as coach, part of your job is to answer questions and part
of it is to answer them. To Don Fisher, who's by the way,
like an institution, he's been there 50 years.
He's going to ask you 2 very softball questions.
You get over it and you move on. Like the fact that you can't
even do that after you lost. And it's like, that's a tough
night. That's your job.
Yeah, I mean, at the end of it all, I think the thing that
bothers a lot of people is it just doesn't feel like there's a
ton of accountability being taken by the coach.
Every time questions, legitimate questions get asked about why
the team underperforms in these games or why they play poorly
against worst teams, it's always, well, I got to get the
guys over the hump and that's it.
That's like the extent of what you'll get in terms of tangible
answers, which just makes it seem like, OK, I'm going to say
these nothing words that placate people, and then we're just
going to move on and OK, you can do that.
But then what ends up being the? Exemplar of your work is what
happens on the floor, right. Well, then it all just comes
down to wins and losses. Like that's the same thing.
And you spend all offseason kind of fighting everybody on all of
these things. Like, like you were saying that
it's like, OK, like then you then now there's no connection
to like the play. It just show me in Atlantis.
Yeah, like. And that's because you built
this system where you fighting everybody and it's like the only
thing that we can now discuss are the wins and losses.
And so we went to Atlantis and we got our ass kicked twice.
And it's like, now what do you want to say?
Like now, now, how is it not my fault?
And like, again, a win against Winthrop does not make up for
two of those beatings. And even the next week, you win
it, you know, Ohio State or you win it Northwestern.
Again, not good enough. Like you're at a point now you
want to turn this around, go in nine in a row.
That sounds crazy. Like yes, you need to do
something completely out of the norm.
Yeah, I mean, or that and that's that's not a fair some something
to ask of the team that we see on the court right now.
Yeah, no, I look, I'm that's that's essentially the answer.
I mean, we've we've talked about projections for this team and
when we talked about this over the weekend, it was really like,
well, you know, they'll probably be able to beat Washington, They
may be able to beat Northwestern.
And then you got a bunch of teams that just according to the
statistical profile, Indiana's going to struggle to beat.
And it's hard to argue that at this point.
And you know, the, the, the biggest red flag to me with that
Illinois game was just how little competitive fire the team
showed, how little they, the, the, the defense was, was very
bad. I mean, ever again, we focus on
the offense, but the defense continues to be disappointing.
And it just felt like Illinois had their way with whatever they
wanted in that game. And despite at the end of it not
having that great of a statistical profile, all things
considered, other than the fact that they just abused Indiana on
the offensive glass, it's 16 offensive rebounds in that game.
So I look at it and I say to myself, when we get past the
fights over who should be like, like where the program's going
and whether or not Indiana is like, is it the, is it the
program's fault? I keep coming back to this like,
every time a coach does badly at Indiana, there's a bunch of
people who for every reason point the finger at Indiana.
It must be Indiana's fault. And it must be the the program
must just not be a good program anymore.
And that's still happening now. And I still see like, you know,
I don't know why. I don't know what the defense
for Woodson is at this point. Like this is this is his team.
It's his players. He went out and handpicked the
players that are playing out there right now.
It's his system, which a lot of people have said this is not a
great system to run in college, but he's decided he's going to
run at least now in 2025. But that's what he's running.
This is him. And and you know, when you've
got the example again of Kurt Signetti coming in and making a
huge change in a short period of time, like everybody would have
said, well, IU as a program, that's not possible in football.
And yet you make the right hire, you give them a structure to do
things in and it ends up working out.
You mentioned Louisville and you know, and Louisville's had a a
little bit of an inconsistent season, but there's clearly
better than they were last year. They're on what, a A7 or 8
game-winning streak, 7 game-winning streak gave to
their last nine. They've they've beaten, they've
won on the road at Pitt, they've beat Clemson.
You know, I'll be that team had to start from scratch.
Almost always, almost always, it's the coach's fault when
things aren't going well because the coach has such an immense
amount of control over what's going on.
And you know that, that's where when I look at the this result,
the result against Iowa, the lack of fire, the lack of
effort, it's not just the system, It's not just the
players. There just doesn't appear to be
a real coherent sense of identity like that's, and that's
really what you have to have as a coach.
Like if you're going to build a program, if you're going to talk
about winning Big 10 titles and winning national titles, which
Woodson went out of his way to say on Hoosier hysteria, well,
that doesn't come from having good players.
It comes from having a great culture.
And I think if there's one big thing that I would point at and
say This is why the Woodson era is failing or has failed, I
mean, it maybe, maybe it's failed at this point for good.
It's his inability to build a culture that was able to survive
the the exit of Trace Jackson Davis because Trace Jackson
Davis, you know, seemed to have some kind, I don't know how much
he was involved in it or whatever, but you can't look at
the results and the way that the team played in the first two
seasons. And they weren't great that
first season at Woodson was here, but they had a they had a
defensive identity. There was there.
There seemed to be some level of pride.
It's hard to reconcile that and the year after with what we've
seen the last season and a half and I and when you look at that
Illinois game and getting blown out by 25 at home, look,
Indiana's gotten blown out at home before.
It's not the first time we've, you know, I've, I've sat through
several blowouts at IU, but that one felt different because that
first half just felt like a capitulation.
It felt like we're not, we don't care enough to try.
And as much as you want to point the finger at players on that,
ultimately coaches get paid huge amounts of money in this
business because they get credit when teams do play hard.
Like when we look at at all the Auburns and the Alabamas and the
Uconns and all of these these teams and the way that those
teams are able to play with a sense of pride.
Iowa State's another one. Like, why is Iowa State doing so
well that that's a team with no natural recruiting advantages,
but they they have a coherent identity and they've plugged
players into it. Mike Woodson chose to go grab
players without having a coherent identity to plug them
into. And I believe going into every
season, we're going to give it a chance to play out.
We're going to see how it works. What we've seen out there the
last two games just doesn't warrant that.
I mean it. I don't know what argument you
could make to say, well, there's a light at the end of the
tunnel. It feels like the light at the
end of the tunnel right now is a train.
Yeah. Well, and you know, the the
blowout against Illinois, it's in context of just getting blown
out by Iowa. Like that's the thing too, is
like it's not just teams can get blown out, but having
back-to-back blowouts like coming out and looking lethargic
after you did it four days before is tough.
You know, when you when you look ahead, I don't, I mean, you can,
I don't really want to get into like what what do we do and what
decisions need to be made. But the thing that's rattling
around in my mind that I would always say the last job that I
had was I'd say this to my managers like, because he was
very indecisive at times. And I would say, you know, not
making a decision is a decision and it has its own consequences.
Like you, just like we'd be picking between three different
marketing strategies. And it's like he just like I, I,
he wouldn't make a decision. I'm like you're, you're picking
the 4th door. Like just not making a decision
is making a decision. And that that's what I wonder
about here is if you know, and again, I don't know, there's
things you could do, but just not doing anything is like, I
just, I, I hope that they understand that is also a
decision that has its own repercussions and ramifications.
And I, you know, I, I'm not as concerned about like basketball
apathy because at the end of the season, you know, getting a new
coach is the NBA equivalent of, you know, tanking like that.
Suddenly everything gets refreshed and renewed and the
people will come back. You're almost at a point now
where like you, you want fan apathy, but you just want people
to check out because you don't want them to come in for six
games booing and, you know, calling for firings and doing
that like it's going to get really ugly.
And I do think I've been a lot of my friends and people that we
know like they're just checked out, like they are already
checked out. And I can see, you know, poor
crowds. And in a way to me, that's
probably the best outcome for here is everyone just checks out
and we checked back in in, you know, the end of March.
But I just that that's the thing in my head is that, you know, if
you're IU, there's no good decisions here but not doing
anything. Is it just hoping that?
You can win a bunch of games like that's, that's a decision
that does have its own, you know, repercussions.
And maybe that's the best decision here is to do nothing
until the end of the season. Well, it's funny, 'cause I, I
was thinking about that. You do I, I think you're right.
You, you do almost hope that people get apathetic.
You hope that people just stop getting attention.
But I again, it's Indiana, you're not going to get that to
happen. People are very passionate about
this program. And I'm, I'm frankly tired of
that being held against the fans.
I agree. I'm, I'm frankly tired of.
And it's not, I'm not saying the athletic department holds it
against the fans, but I do think a lot of self-proclaimed thought
leaders on social media hold the passion of the fan base against
them. Yeah.
You know, the fan, Look, fans are generally inarticulate about
how to express this because they expect to go spend a lot of
money on tickets, go sit in the stands and cheer.
Or they expect to spend a ton of money going to Atlantis or going
to Vegas or going to Atlanta to go cheer the team on.
And, you know, they're doing that and they're seeing Indiana
get blown out by 25 at home to Illinois, or they're going and
seeing Indiana getting blown out in the Bahamas, or they're going
and seeing Indiana get blown out in Vegas or in New York or in
Atlanta. It it's really so so people get
frustrated by that, but then they're told, well, you, you
shouldn't express your frustration because you should
just sit there and be happy with whatever you've got and you
don't know what you're talking about anyway.
And and I do think that that gets that that really does leave
fans in a no win situation because everybody, everybody it
felt like that I talked to this offseason was like, I don't
think this is going to work with Woodson, but we'll see.
There were a lot of people that were less optimistic than that.
They were like, he shouldn't have been back.
I don't know that there was AI don't know that you were ever
going to get a scenario given the particular situation at play
with this role and the person involved and some of the other
people involved. I don't think there was ever
going to be a scenario where Woodson wasn't coaching this
year at IU. But what's frustrating is that
this was always a likely scenario that it wasn't going to
work out and that this was going to be where we were sitting
halfway through January. And I am frustrated that it's
been allowed to get to this point again, because, you know,
you, you a subpar product keeps being put on the floor.
And there's no real reason for it other than a lack of
understanding of the relationship that seems to exist
between the fans and the program and a lack of understanding
about how you have to try to navigate that.
And whoever the coach is has to navigate it.
I mean it. This is where, you know, Archie
Miller had a lot of flaws. And one of his biggest flaws,
maybe the biggest flaw, was that he clearly didn't know how to
communicate to the fan base. You know, one of Tom Crean's
biggest strengths at the beginning was he knew how to
communicate to the fan base. And you can mark almost exactly
the time when things turned. It was when Crean stopped
communicating with the fan base. Now you can say while the fan
base is, you know, is, is not good to deal with.
But I don't think that's true. Like most fans just want to
hear, hey, we're there are flaws here.
We've got to try to figure out a way to work on them.
I Yeah. A.
Prime example of that is like the Pacers this year, you know,
they start like I'm a Pacers fan, like they started out slow.
Halliburton wasn't looking good and in all the post games, it
wasn't like they they were saying, man, you know, fans just
got to shut up or you just got to get used to like they were
all saying, you know, and again, what are you going to say?
But like Halliburton was saying like, I I got to figure this
out, Like I got to figure out what's going on, Like I'm going
to work on this. And now if he they continue to
struggle and he kept saying that at some point it's like, all
right, let's figure it out. But you know, we we the Pacers
have now won like six to seven. They played well, like maybe the
competition's slight, but like hearing that throughout the
process, like, well, at least they're saying the right things
like, and and that's, you know, that is part of professional
like at high level sports is like you, you got to say
sometimes the right things and a lot of times it's platitudes,
but you have to say that. You can't just be like, Hey,
there's real Pacers fans. There's not Pacers fans.
Like this is our process. This is the way we're going to
do it. If you think you're, you think
I'm playing bad, you're wrong. It's like that.
You're you're creating animosity.
Doesn't need to be there. And like the Pacers are a prime
example. And now couple wins.
It's like everyone's like, great, you know?
He says. He's to figure it out.
He's figuring it out Well, and there's another element with
college basketball now. And look, I don't agree with
fans when they say this, but I understand where they think
they're coming from, which is, you know, one of the big
refrains I keep hearing is, well, you know, guys are getting
paid now. They don't care.
You know, they're not going to go out and put out effort.
This is you, always you can. You'll know when to disengage
with an IU fan if that comes out of their mouth, if you hear that
from anybody. Because I'll note, like if you
think that again, if you think Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee,
UConn, if you think those guys aren't getting paid, you're a
moron. And if you don't understand that
they're playing really hard, like watch their games.
Like they play really hard. They play really well.
They win a lot of games. It has nothing to do.
Can I say, can I say two more things on that?
Like, yeah, go. Ahead, I would also say if you
think people weren't getting paid before nil, you're a moron.
Like there were people getting paid who played hard.
But but I also like this is I brought this up before it.
It always concerns me in that, you know, there are I I'm not a
fan of booing players at any level, but like there, there is
kind of an agreement like you're a professional athlete.
You play play for the Pacers. First off, you're guaranteed a
salary that is normally higher than most NIL, but you get
health insurance like you're a professional.
It's part of your job. I'm not saying it's right.
I would never Boo anybody, but I'm like, you want to Boo a
professional player, don't cross the, you know, the line, But
like, that's fine. My thing that I think does need
to be always thought of is sure, you know, Balo could be getting,
he's getting money. He's still like 20-3 years old.
Like he's still young. A lot of these kids are 19/20/21
years old. And like, yes, they are getting
some money to play basketball, but like they are by by no
means, it's not a, like they don't have health insurance,
it's not a job, They don't have a pension.
And I'm, I'm just like, there's a dynamic here where we're
treating them as if they are exactly like professional
athletes, but they're not like they are still in college.
They're still in a in a, they're still 20.
I mean, you're still young and you're still learning things.
I'm not saying 24 is any different in the NBA, but it's
like you, you are now a professional.
You've taken a different step to get there.
It's always bother me. And then I just the last thing
I'll say when people then it's like, so I'm going to put my
anger and my vitriol toward the adult who's a professional,
who's getting paid, also getting paid and is, you know, in his
mid 60s, a coach. Why is like, why is that the
wrong thing to do? Like you want to yell at a 19
year old that that's sorry, That's just, it's always
bothered me and it will always bother me.
Like you have to remember these are college kids and think about
where you were in college even if you were getting paid for a
job or not. No, I, I'm I agree and and I get
where I was going with my original statement.
There was was not too different from where you ended up, which
is that the, I don't think the team's been put in a position to
succeed. And I think that that lands
squarely on the shoulders of the coach and the, and the coaching
staff. And I get frustrated when the,
the discourse then trends towards, well, you know, we're
going to talk about players or lack of effort or whatever.
I'm not absolving players. There's clearly some lack of
effort issues, but it's ultimately the coach's job to
get people up and running. And it's one thing it's like if,
if you inherit A-Team or if you just, if you under recruit,
that's one thing. This is a group of talented
players, Yeah. Like, there's a bunch of coaches
across the country who would love to have this particular
roster and see what they get this roster, right.
And and it is. And going back, I guess, to what
you said earlier about decisions and, you know, not like not
making a decision is a decision. It just kind of feels like,
again, Indiana's in a spot where they're not willing to make a
change until the end of the year and Woodson's not going to make
a decision on his own. And I'm not saying either side
is wrong in that, but it's just going to lead to a very ugly
next two months 'cause it's I I just don't see a lot of
scenarios where it gets better. It's a tough conference.
It's a team that has shown a a ton of weaknesses.
They can win any game, any one game on their schedule.
They can win the rest of the way.
They have that level of talent. If their shots are going in and
if they're playing good defense, they can win any single game
that they have left on their schedule.
But that's not what basketball in the team sports setting is
about. It's about winning enough games
to make a tournament. It's about living up to
expectations, as you said earlier.
And the bar for this season was very high.
And it wasn't just fans that were setting that it was it, it
was it was expectations that came from the coaching staff.
It was expectations that came from media that covered the
team. And it's just, it's very
disappointing that it's where it's at.
And given the personalities involved and the circumstances
involved, it just feels like we're going to be involved in a
car crash here for the next two months.
Because it feels like at this stage, I, I, I'm having a hard
time envisioning a scenario where it ends any other way than
that. Because it would require
something that is very unusual out of either party moving
forward for that to change. And it's just, it's unfortunate
because it's going to lead to a lot of negativity, a lot of
toxicity. It's going to lead to Indiana
looking bad as an institution. It's going to lead the fans
looking bad. It's going to lead to the
coaching staff looking bad. It's going to lead to the
players looking bad. No one wins in this scenario and
I'm frustrated that it's gotten to this point when it was very,
very likely and it was easy to predict that this was the point
that it was going to get to. And I just want to say dot dot
dot again, because what, what's frustrating is we, we kind of
went through it, but you know, this is basically another,
another March since you and I have graduated from college
where I just want this to be over and I want to be moving.
And we all kind of know what's going to happen.
It's just we got to basically hunt two months to get there.
And what sucks is so we're doing it this time.
Last Archie's last year, we did it for less time, but you know,
there was still a period of a couple of weeks to a month where
we did it at the end of cream's time.
We're at three. We did the exact same thing, you
know, the, the the Docket Sampson thing.
It's a different situation, but like it still happened.
Like it just it, that was another period where it's like,
all right, I want this to be over and I'm ready for the next
page. That's four.
And then as you mentioned, Davis, that's five.
That's five years, 5 marches. I remember growing up where
March was awesome. March didn't always end in the
final four, but at least it ended up playing a game that I
cared about and we lost the game.
It's like, oh, that sucks, man. We were A10C.
Like what are you going to do? Do better next year.
I never thought that 20% of my life after college would be
spent just like, I cannot wait for it to be April to get the
hell out of this situation. And we're now doing it five
times. And that that's, that's the
frustrating part. And there's different people
involved. There's different like, and I'm
not connecting any of the two. I'm just saying that's where I
get really pissed. I just, I do like I'm, I'm
annoyed that I have to sit through this again.
And we all kind of know we just need to get there.
There's no solution but just time.
But I'm. 46 I'm going to be 50 in four years.
Like I'm running out of time, bro.
Well, I'm really running out of time.
Just punt seasons away. It goes back to something I
forgot. I think it was in the last
podcast we did. I heard from a few people about
it. It's why when you say and you
know, I are the IU basketball should be in the Sweet 16 or,
you know, competing for Big 10 titles, again, this is Indiana
basketball. This is what it's been allowed
to devolve to. OK, we are Minnesota at.
Least they beat Michigan. Well, right.
You know, I mean, what it's, it's, it's there's just,
there's, there's the the fact that again and again, and, and
I, if you've listened to the podcast for any amount of time,
I've made this statement before. This is nothing new.
But again, Indiana made the wrong hire head coach and has
gotten themselves down a rabbit hole that they're going to only
be able to dig out of by firing that coach and trying again with
somebody else. And.
That that could be applied to three different situations over
the last 20 years. It's like, I would be like, who
are you talking? Which one are you talking about?
Surely no, it's 4-5. It's 5I mean you.
You can't make any argument that Davis or Sampson or Miller or
Woodson was the right hire. You could maybe make a limited
argument for Crean. Crean, I think just his shelf
life expired after about 5 or 6 years.
And in Samson, you mean not the coaching, but the the cultural
fit, Right. But again, like that situation,
it's like you're going to hire this coach.
And and at the time, there was nobody controlling anything at
IU. And you know that he's a loose
cannon with rules. Yeah.
And so it's like you got to commit to the bit if you're
going to do that. And just like with this, I mean,
and great point. And I think for Indiana, for
better or for worse, like I always love how it's like
Indiana doesn't support of the coaches.
You know, Indiana doesn't support the coaches that they
hire. It's like Indiana throws their
full faith and support and weight and finances behind every
coach they hire. They've just done a bad job of
hiring coaches. And that's where, you know, I
remember you, you had somebody had asked you once like why
didn't I you hire a signeti type before?
It's like this is I was talking to somebody else about this that
you know, to me that I think this is this, you know, you you
got to put the full effort behind a coach, but then you
have to cut when you know it's wrong.
And sometimes that seems early. But like I go back to the Miller
hire, like Archie Miller and Chris Holtman.
I will die on this hill that year.
Those were the two best coaches in that offseason.
Like they were go back and there was nobody else.
And like, I mean, you could make a case like, oh, maybe you
should have gotten out of oats from buff like that.
What wasn't going to happen like.
At that point in time. NATO's, sorry, Bueno's brothers
even better. No, no.
At that point in time, it was Holtman and it was Miller, and
you picked 1. And, you know, The thing is, why
does, like, this is a question that's always vexed to me is
like, you look at Archie Miller, you look at Holtman, you look at
Nate Oates at Buffalo, There's nothing that you could say like,
well, no question two of those are going to fail.
Like, if anything, Archie Miller had better success at Dayton
than Oates did at Buffalo. Oates is doing really well.
Miller isn't. Like, I don't know if we can
answer why. I think The thing is you just
have to identify it's not working.
We're going to move on quick and look, you have to do that and
you're not, you know, maybe the next tire isn't, maybe you won't
hit it again because I got this is really tough to figure out
who can make that next step and make it successfully.
But if it to me, it's like you've got to just quick
decisions, quick decisions and move on.
I think that's where we failed is that we let things linger and
now again we're lingering again. Not much else to say, so we'll
wrap it up there. Thanks for joining us folks.
Once again as Crimson cast rolls along.
We'll be talking again. We might have something this
weekend for you. We'll see as Indiana takes on
Ohio State on the road this evening for Scott.
I'm Galen, This is a Crimson cast.
Thanks for joining us. As always.
We'll we'll pod through this together.
I promise. We'll catch you folks.
On the flip side. Stay Never daunted, bring back
the vice, and so on everybody.