You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
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Myself first here we go that's better welcome back to Crimson
cast most. Of the only five years pal
Caulfield joining you as. We get the dance mix open.
You like that? Yeah.
And the dance mix. Yeah, people, people have said
that the Crimson cast theme is a banger.
So royalty free on iTunes 17 years ago, open for anybody.
It was wild. I wonder whatever happened.
I don't even remember the guy's name, but yeah, it's.
It's like, it's like when Scorsese got, you know, Clapton
Layla for Goodfellas, like that song had been sitting there.
I was listening to the rewatchables with Wayne's World,
like Bohemian Rhapsody have been there.
Like this song was out there on iTunes for any, you know, call
her Daddy could have had this as their as their song.
Yeah, yeah, I bet they're, they're probably torn up about
that right now. But we're back, We're good.
We're talking last day of February, believe it or not.
Beautiful day down here in Bloomington.
The grapes are growing in in Scotts backyard vineyard up
there. Did you get some golf in this
morning, Scott? Everybody wants to know.
It's so funny. I was actually talking.
I, I, I wanted to the, the close the, the course nearby woodwind
opened up. It's, it's walking only, but
they don't play, don't open till noon 'cause I was trying to see
can I get 9 in, but it's walking.
I was like, I'm doing a podcast at 2:00.
No, literally that was a discussion this morning about
playing some golf. I'm going on a guys golf trip
next weekend to Tampa. Me and four of my high school
buddies. I'm very excited.
Everybody wants to know where the next.
Polo Sesh is for you though. Some of my neighbors actually
gone to the Westfield Polo and they feel like it's kind of fun.
You guys should go. This is I know these are jokes,
but they're cutting real. Close man.
As we've said, Scott, is the other half OK like it.
This is this is it's a fascinating spot to be.
But now it's I'm glad you're having such leisure.
This is wonderful. I'm I'm I particularly for those
who are not watching, Scott wore his Ascot today.
It was, it was really a nice touch so.
If I wasn't an IU basketball fan, life would just be amazing,
like everything else would just be winning on all all of their
accounts. Perhaps sunshine is just over
the horizon with IU basketball. We'll see.
A lot of things have not happened over the last week
since we last talked. But you know, next week.
We're moving into March. I'll be surprised if we get out
of March without a new basketball coach.
Oh really? I'll be, I'll be.
I won't be shocked. OK, because I I picked April
2nd. I have AI have a bet with some
friends. We bet, we bet who's going to be
the coach and we bet the date I I picked April 2nd.
I kind of like this. We need we maybe we should
organize a Crimson cast version of this.
This is it's kind of like the Jerome, but for IU basketball
coaching searches. Oh.
Yeah, no, on one other part I got to talk through.
I know we're limited on time. This one.
I have a three of my buddies. We have a draft where we just we
did a snake draft of candidates for the job.
We did it last time with the Woodson higher.
Nobody got we did 5 rounds, nobody picked Woodson.
Just a heads up, and this year the joke was this year is my
buddy Robert and Ben, we're doing a keeper league.
So just in case there's future hires.
And so we, we like, I pick like Drew Valentine with my last pick
just because like, I don't know, man, maybe in five years we'll
be at this again. But at some point I, I will talk
through all the picks that were made.
But we also added a a pick for the date and I went April 2nd
because I'm just like, there's no way they can announce it on
April. 1st So that's my that's that is official sister of of
Crimson cast Olivia Clavio's birthday, April 2nd and famously
our our father had to instruct her in the womb not to be born
on March 30th April of 1981 because that was the national
championship game and she was very nice and waited the extra
two days. So not only was the game played,
but there was some time for celebration afterwards before
they had to go to the hospital. There you go.
Anyway, let's move on. We are brought to you by Home
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I haven't done the tally in a while, but I think it's probably
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They have more racing stuff coming too.
It's got the e-mail. They have like a Dale Earnhardt
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financially support the podcast, keep the lights on and what have
you. So Scott, before we dive into
the coaching candidates Part 3, let's talk a little bit about
the game Indiana played a couple of nights ago.
I was in the building, Indiana, Penn State.
It was a predictably closer game than I think perhaps outside
forces might have anticipated. Indiana, again, struggled quite
a bit defensively in this game. And it was a game that was in
doubt until about the last 6 minutes.
And then Indiana figured out a way to make the plays and come
away with the victory. And Scott, I mean, it's largely
because Mike Woodson is just not playing certain players very
much right now. He's really coalesced around
this core of Trey Galloway, who's really picked it up lately
and I think deserves a ton of credit for, you know, coming
back from what was a disappointing first part of the
season alongside Anthony Leal, who's been getting a ton of
minutes lately. Luke Goody, who's been a Dynamo
offensively for this team. Miles Rice, who while he's had a
very uneven year, he's really kind of picked himself up and
made himself a guy you have to have on the floor, especially
defensively. And then either Malik Renew or
Umar Balo, it was Balo this time because Malik had what I've
heard was some kind of allergic reaction that that kept him out
of that game. Balo played amazing in that game
was really a key element. And that's really all that
they've been playing, though they've gotten a little bit out
of out of out of Canon Carlisle. He didn't have a very good game
against Purdue, but he did have a pretty good game against Penn
State. Five points all in a row and two
rebounds and really kind of gave Indiana a shot in the arm when
they needed it. I don't know if this is
sustainable. You know, this is a really short
line up. It's basically 6 1/2 players.
We haven't seen Bryson Tucker in a while.
McKenzie and Baco has contributed a little bit in
early stages of games, but now, like, you know, even though he
played 28 minutes against Penn State, I was shocked when I saw
that he had played that many minutes because he was basically
not on the floor for the second part of the second-half.
Only played nine against Purdue, only played 13 in that game at
Michigan State, largely, I think because of a lack of defensive
effort more than anything else. I give Woodson credit for
coalescing around this lineup because I think it's it's been a
big reason why Indiana has won three out of their last four.
It's probably not sustainable for that much longer, especially
as we get into periods where Indiana's playing games in a
tighter cluster. But I it now really makes me
wonder, you know, if if this had been the approach earlier and if
you had more buy in and you had this was really, you know, how
Indiana had committed to playing from the beginning.
Are we even sitting here talking about a coaching change or, you
know, is the season good enough that we're moving forward?
It's just a it's a real interesting thing to think
about. It it is, that's a great
question. I'm, I'm not sure if it's just
the playing time, but I mean, you're right, it is.
Woodson is kind of down to like we're playing 6 1/2 guys every
game and Imbacco just took the renew minutes in this Penn State
game. I, I would say that, you know,
it's, it's easy to do when you're coming off in nine days
between UCLA and Purdue and then you have back-to-back home games
with a three day gap. It's going to be interesting to,
I think we're going to start to stress test this.
I mean, we're going to hear the end of the season really quick.
But you, you have two games, you know, in three days, a lot of
flying, going to Washington and then Oregon and then you come
back four days later to play a game against Ohio State.
And then you play the big 10 tournament, which I'm not even
sure I've seen the bracket like I'm, I'm, but I'm assuming it's
just, you know, you make it on Tuesday or Wednesday and then
you just play every single day. And then if you make any kind of
tournament you're, you're doing, you know, a game every two days
and then going to a new site. So all that said, it's going to
be interesting to see how how this plays out, but I think
we're going to find out really quick.
The thing that I found funny again with the Penn State game
is the game is definitely in the balance.
And then Indiana goes on a 12/2 run with about 5 minutes to go.
Again, another game where we get the little run icon in the Ken
Palm score chart, like just that that has to happen in an IU
game. We also gave up A10 O run to
Penn State in the middle of the first half.
So again, this is a team of runs.
It's just a matter of when's the runs going to happen and can we
have the bigger run and can we have more than more runs than
the other team gets runs on us. Yeah, it was.
And it and it look, it was a weird vibe in there.
It was a weird game. It was, you know, the Purdue
game was such a a cool experience for so many of the
people that were in there because it was a really like
vibrant atmosphere. Indiana played really hard.
I mean, it was a lot of like, uncomfortable, oh boy, here we
go again kind of feeling in the crowd until Indiana went on that
12O run. I mean, at that point it was
6760. Five there were. 8 minutes left
in the game, it really looked like this was going to be one
that got away from IU and it was going to really hurt their
tournament hopes. And then they really took
control from there. And even though Penn State got
back into it a little bit at the end, you know, I think the
closest Penn State ever got was 5 the rest of the way.
And that I, you know, I really take my hat off to the guys that
played and especially Trey Galloway, who hit those clutch
threes down the stretch, Luke Goody, who had some great free
throws. I mean, there were just a lot of
guys who made good individual plays.
Omar Balo had a great rebound that kept that last big, like,
high leverage possession alive. But yeah, I mean, the runs, it's
just who this team is. This team's got the talent to go
on, you know, 1010 point run, 12 point run or 28 to three run as
we saw against Purdue. But it's also unless it's
focused and really drilled and. You know, doing what it needs to
do. It's also able to give up A10 O
run like they did earlier in the game against Penn State.
So the the thing I would say with the the shorter lineups is
as this has been happening, Woodson have been able to keep.
I'm just focusing on Balo just because for a while there he was
running some really high minute totals.
He was able to do that while keeping Balo at kind of a 22 to
26 minute a game against Penn State.
Balo has 36 minutes and we've seen, you know, there is that
stretch from, you know what the Ohio State home game to the
Purdue Rd. game where Balo was 40 minutes 363935 and then his
play fell off a Cliff for two or three games.
You know, it's it's you can't run him in the 35 plus minutes
for multiple games in a row. So it's that's what I'm going to
be looking for the next couple of games is how is Woodson going
to do of these line UPS, tighter rotations with also basically
one of the guys you got to keep kind of it 22 minutes a game.
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm curious about that as well, especially
with the road trip. Yeah, You know, so you got a
game on Saturday, you got a game on Tuesday, you got a big game
on Saturday and then. A road trip then the the teams
that go to play it seems like everyone either plays UCLA or
USC or you get the Washington Oregon 1 and it seems like the
Washington Oregon teams do a little bit better it's.
It's kind of it's very, it's very, I, I will say it has been
very hit or miss. I mean, if you look at like, for
instance, Minnesota went out and swept LA.
They beat USC by three, they beat UCLA by three and then they
turned around and lost at home to Penn State and Northwestern.
This league makes no sense. I will say that.
But you know, you look at the teams that have made the the two
parter road trip and and it's not everybody, but it's been
kind of a mixed bag. I mean, Michigan State went out
and lost the two LA games back-to-back and then has come
back and, and put a tremendous run on, you know, Michigan I
don't think went out there. It's, it's just been very
actually Michigan went to USC and ECOA as well.
So it's, it is a little bit uneven in terms of all of that.
You know, Purdue went out and beat both Washington and Oregon
by a pretty decent margin. I think they beat Washington by
11 and Oregon by 7. So we know it can be done.
It's just going to be interesting to see which IU team
shows up in both of those games. When you look at the bracket
matrix, we're we're popping as an 11 or a twelve seed right
now. So you know, it's it's as as
we've talked about our, our tournament hopes were never
done. It's that that game against Ohio
State, Ohio State's in a very similar spot that we are.
That's going to be a really key game when we get to that point.
Yeah, it's it's going to be really fascinating in terms of
the the way that the the tournament stuff goes in that
right now. I was talking with somebody
about this earlier. It's hard to conceive that
Indiana is going to be in the tournament, but they have more a
better chance to be in the tournament than out of the
tournament right now. And that does not really drive
with the way that we thought about the season up to this
point. And it doesn't make a lot of
sense just when you look at it on paper, except that, you know,
IU is 17 and 11:00. If they can go 2 and one in the
remaining part of the schedule, they'll be 10 and 10.
And you look at their results and, you know, they wanted Ohio
State. That's a really good win.
They wanted Michigan State. Very few teams have a win as
good as that in the whole country.
Yeah, and they beat Purdue at home and and they don't have any
bad losses. I mean, that's the thing.
The worst loss in the office. Yeah.
They're like, yeah, if you want, you want to look up good loss in
the dictionary, you see the little like pitchfork next to
it. The the worst loss Indiana has
all season is at Iowa. And that was a bad loss in terms
of like it was aesthetically ugly.
But they, I mean, Iowa, that's a that's a top 75 team, you know,
so it's not that's not really that damaging.
So the Washington game's really important because that would be
the worst loss of the season and it would be a terrible time to
pick up such a loss. The other two I think they need
to split Oregon and Ohio that. Has the feeling of like
something that could happen, which is what we see in the
team, yeah. But I could also see them losing
at Washington and then sweeping Oregon and Ohio State.
And then it's like, well, now you got a road win against
Oregon and now you got another great win that most teams don't
have. So that this is where it's, who
knows at this point. Just strap in and get ready for
the ride. And keep in mind that, you know,
there's a lot of other teams that also have to win in order
to get into the tournament. And I'm going to do a whole
bracket show next week. I haven't done 1 yet because
it's just been kind of crazy just trying to keep track of
what's going on with all this. But we'll walk through all the
teams that are in competition with Indiana.
We can talk through what exactly it's it's looking like and where
Indiana's results lie with others.
The other thing to keep in mind is like there's going to be bid
Steelers, you know, teams that win conference tournaments that
aren't supposed to, and you hate being in the category where that
affects you. But that's exactly where
Indiana's at right now. And that's going to be a
challenge that we got to just consider as we move forward.
Just a 2 minute question on this because I've had a couple of
friends, I think they're just gaslighting me about this.
But it's like the the question of all right, India makes a
tournament, how, how far do they have to go before you reconsider
bringing back Woodson? I'm just, I'm just curiously,
I'm going to rephrase the question.
If they make the tournament, at what point it of, you know, us
advancing far is is that's a different discussion.
Let's just say pick a round where it suddenly becomes an
awkward discussion about how we're still like they make the
final four. It's going to be an odd like,
wow, we're actually going to to do this.
But where, where would you say that that becomes an odd, an odd
discussion point that we're still going to keep the, which I
think is what you need to do, but.
I was talking with friends of the pod, Mark, Katie and Chris
Williams yesterday and Matt Blaska and and this came up in
conversation. We were discussing it and my
response to them is what I'll say to you, which is at the
beginning of the year when we were talking about this IU team
who was, if you'll recall, picked second to win the Big 10.
We asked at that point, is making a Sweet 16 enough to
consider keeping Mike Woodson back during your way to some
degree into the NCAA tournament and winning a couple of games?
I don't think changes the problems that we've had within
the course of the season overall and the and why a decision was
made so early to move on from Woodson.
I mean, I, I think there's going to be so a lot of conversation
and question about if you, if the IU makes the Sweet 16, for
instance, if they make the NC double, I don't think they're
going to, but what? If they make a Davis style run
like they just the the bracket breaks they they wouldn't they
win a key game in the Sweet 16 and they're in the national
championship game. I mean, I, I, I don't know, I,
I, it's almost impossible to entertain that as a thought
process because I mean, you might as well ask, like, what if
the tournament gets cancelled? Then what?
Like it's, it's, there's, there's all kinds of those
things where it's hard to really put that in.
I look, here's the thing. The one thing I'll the one thing
I'll, the one thing I'll say on this is a lot of people, those
questions first started popping up not when Indiana beat Purdue,
but when Indiana beat Penn State.
And I just would like to remind everybody that I, I was thrilled
that Indiana beat Penn State. I was thrilled that they've,
they've coalesced around the lineup that's working hard.
Penn State is 17th in the Big 10 right now.
Penn State had won one Rd. game the entire year and it was at
Minnesota 3 days before they played Indiana on the road.
I, I, I'm all for giving IU it's flowers.
I don't think that we need to be having the conversation about,
well, gosh, if we win four games in the NCAA tournament at this
point, since it's not even guaranteed he's going to get in.
So I'm I'm going to I. Think we pushed that off to the
side. For now, and we can revisit.
I, I agree. It's like, it's like paying
taxes on winning the lottery. Like it yeah, that, that, that
theoretically sucks, but you also won the lottery.
Like if we're in the final four, that's I, that's a, that's a
weird conversation I'd be happy to have.
Let's win the Big 10 tournament 1st and then see what happens.
Let's win a game in the Big 10 tournament.
Win a game, let's win one. Game in the Big 10 that would be
ideal all. Right on that.
Let's talk about other coaches. Yeah.
So let's let's get to the other coach discussion.
I'm calling this group, so I know we got to name it, name it.
Well, we don't have to, but I'm naming the groups.
All these guys are, you know, I'm 46, you're 45.
They're they're kind of in our age range growing up, not
millennial. So I'm, I'm calling this the
Friendster group Friendster or Myspace because they're a little
bit before, you know, they, they were around, they're kind of our
age. So we're going This is the
Friendster group, the the Six Degrees.
Group, right? Yeah, You remember, you remember
that one, right, Friendster? God, I that's that's yeah, OK, I
like it. This is a this is a relatively.
There's enough Gen. X DNA in this group that you
know that we maybe we should call them like the singles.
Group or say. Reality bites.
Reality Bites. This says that singles.
Yeah, yeah, this the Reality Bites.
Group. I love it all right.
So we have been trying to cordon off groups of four.
We're going to have more of these.
We've done 8 so far. And if you have missed those
those, go back and listen to those podcasts.
Do you think when we're done with this we will have done our
new coach? Yes, I do.
And in fact, we're going to there's, there's big names we
haven't hit. We're going to hit one that
everybody talks about in this group.
There's big names we haven't touched thus far, right, that we
are planning on doing and we're trying to meter this out because
we've got a long way to go. Obviously still in this coaching
search, probably another month or if you're, if you're Scott,
we've got a month. We got a like 5 weeks instead of
four. Right, right, right.
So let's start with a name. I don't really think is a
serious candidate, but I keep seeing him popping up on job
boards and I don't for the life of me understand why he coaches
in the Big 10. He's he's been in the Big 10 for
longer than you might think. And other than being I guess, a
relatively good looking guy, I really don't understand like why
people keep bringing him up. But it's Chris Collins at
Northwestern. So Chris Collins, he's 51 years,
He's going to be 51 years old at the start of the upcoming
college basketball season, which is younger than I would have
anticipated, but relatively young.
Guy makes $2.8 million a year, does not have a buyout at
Northwestern. At least from all all evidence
that I can find they they got rid of the buyout in his last
contract extension. Maybe Cronin can give him some
of his. Like, here's 2 million of my
buyout. There you go.
Yeah. Yeah, let's let's pool our
buyout. Let's see what happens.
Five O 7 win percentage for his career, which 192 and 187 is his
totals 3 and three in the NCAA tournament was Big 10 Coach of
the Year in 2023. In his time in the Big 10 and
this is the only place he's ever coached as a head coach.
He is 84 and 140 in Big 10 play, which is a .375 win percentage,
which if he did get hired, that would be a great homage to the
history of Indiana football because that's about their
winning percentage. I think overall in conference
play. Chris Collins, his high
watermarks have come somewhat recently, of course.
If you all recall in 2022, they finished tied for second in the
Big 10 with Indiana. Sorry, 2023 tied for tied for
second with Indiana. And you know, if you look at his
history, a lot of the reason why he gets mentioned is because of
the pedigree of him having been a Coach K assistant for many
years. He's obviously got the Duke
connection there. I'm going to call his 10 pom
page up so we can look at it together.
But, you know, he's been coaching in Northwestern since
2014. And Scott, I'm just not seeing a
lot here to really get excited about.
As you know, he's at Northwestern.
Tough place to win. At least we always here.
And yet it feels like every other tough place to win has had
the ability to be more consistent with their winning
than has been at Northwestern. And while there is no argument
that Chris Collins has been the best coach Northwestern's had,
maybe ever, I still don't see a lot there that would make me
think, God, this is a guy I really would like to get as the
head coach of Indiana. I mean, he's been there.
He's only had three seasons in the big 10 with double digit
wins, a a lot of single digit wins.
Here's what I was noticing on the page.
Well, I, I would say, you know, because he's being mentioned for
the job. I would say he's got a great
agent, but he doesn't have a buyouts.
Maybe he doesn't have a good, maybe, maybe he doesn't have a
great agent or he has a great new agent.
I I, I, I don't want to keep harping on this, but I will
bring this up on all the candidates today.
And I always go back on the Ken Palm looking at the rank in
adjusted offense and adjusted defense because we continue to
say, you know, normally if you have a team that's in the top 25
in both of those categories, you have a team that has the
hallmarks of a team that could go to the final four.
I was looking at it and this is an another weird marker point,
but he's never had a team in the top 10 of adjusted offense or
adjusted defense ever in his career.
And then I started looking just through his Ken Pom page.
Has he been in the top ten in the country in anything?
And he has. There's little pockets of like
one year they were top in turnover percentage.
They were in the top 7:00 or 8:00.
But my point is you go back and look at, you know, and I didn't
do a deep, deep dive, but you look at Tom Crean when he was at
Marquette two years, he had an offense that was in the top ten
in the country. Like coaches that are going to
be taking a job like Indiana. I would hope that at some point,
maybe if you don't have tournament success, you have a
team that is just elite at something or you've shown over
the course of this long in one place.
You know what we call before, like, you know, hot green or
like a green streak, like something that just shows like
you have figured out something for Chris Collins.
Maybe it's offensive turnover percentage.
They're they're very high and not turning the ball over on
offense. That's it's just not there's not
enough. There's nothing that says like
he is great and making his team's elite at this.
Yeah, no, I mean, his teams don't shoot the ball well.
His teams, you know, they've had times when they've defended
well, but it's generally been at the expense of their offense.
There's just, there's not a lot there that sticks out
statistically and the. Good news is in when his
tournament results, he's never really lost to a he's never had
like a, a loss where he's, he's losing to a lower seed.
That's because he's always been a 7-8 or a nine seed where in
the second round you get shellacked by the one or the
two, which you know, that's, that was a year in mine college
experience with the IU Hoosiers with Bob Dias, you're always
stuck in that 8-9 game, which which sucks.
So I, I don't, I don't know why he's being mentioned.
I know. Well, he got mentioned.
He got mentioned in 2017 because if you'll recall, like that was
the first time he'd taken Northwestern of the tournament.
He'd been there for years. It's like, wow, there's a great
upward trajectory. And you know, that was famously
like Julia Louis Dreyfus, like kid or nephew was on the team
and you know, they, they won their first game and then they
proceeded to have 5, four straight losing seasons overall
and five straight losing seasons in the conference.
And you know, you go back and look at the articles from like
March of 2022 and it's like, well, they're bringing Chris
Collins back mostly because they can't afford to fire him.
Like that was literally the rationale in the articles and
had nothing to do with what we really believe in the Chris
Collins experiment. Now, to his credit, they have
been better. They were better in 23.
They were better in 24. And it's hard to judge this
season particularly strongly because they lose Brooks
Barnheiser, you know, in the in the middle of the season, they
lose. They got kind of snake bit by
injuries. They're still 6:00 and 11:00 in
the conference. But man, it's just like if if
this is another one of those candidates where it's like if
this is who they end up with, either someone like really,
really wanted a Coach K assistant as the head coach at
IU or Indiana got turned down by all of the other.
Good candidates. And so they've settled for this.
You know, the only good, the only good thing he could bring
is the the fireworks that go off behind the basket while other
teams are still shooting that can make the ball go out.
That would be fun. Or or bring the officials that
refuse to call push offs on on his own team when they're
playing Indiana. Like if we could import that,
like if we get the whatever Boo Boo E magic they had in terms of
official calls, I would I would consider.
It at least or or can we also just take away the like
Northwestern's no longer Chicago's Big 10 team, just
Indiana becomes Chicago's Big 10 team.
I have been advocating that for years.
We have a far greater. Claim to that than they do
anyway. Anyway, I don't.
Think my my my number would be like I'd be in the 30s.
I'd be like a 32 just because I Indiana has in the last 10
years, Indiana has made three tournaments.
Chris Collins has made three tournaments in 10 years.
Like this is this is, I don't know what you're doing.
And it would kind of, it would look like everybody turned you
down. I would be at AI would be at a
20 like I I would be more excited for Brad Brownell.
Which K? Yeah, You did coach K today.
Yeah, I would much. I would much rather have Brad
Brownell than have Chris Collins.
Yeah. Even if Collins is going to
bring K back as an assistant, I'd be more interested.
So what if it? What if he brought Johnny
Dawkins too? And Steve Wojciechowski like
just getting the whole band back.
And Jay Beilis takes over Fisher's job just.
There you go. Let's move to our second
candidate, also a private school coach, younger, much younger,
Mark Byington, whose name has gotten bandied about.
There was what appears to be a very erroneous story that was
floated on social media that somehow Kurt Signetti having
worked with Byington when Byington was the head coach at
James Madison, that he was like advocating to Dolson that he
needed to hire him. And then of course, hilariously,
Signetti got on Twitter was like, Nope, that's not accurate.
It's I, I love that. That's great.
Signetti is so awesome. But when I look at Byington,
he's an interesting case. One thing I did here yesterday,
I was, I was listening to Field of 68 with Jeff Goodman and with
Robbie Hummel and Goodman mentioned that Byington's buyout
is pretty, pretty large, like $12 million.
He just got there. You look at his stats, he's 49.
He's going to be 49 at the start of the upcoming season, 237 and
142 overall, 625 win percentage. Just had kind of a, an
interesting pathway through his career.
He, he started off a a while ago, like, you know, even for
having, for being close to 50, he's been in the game for quite
a while. He was at Georgia Southern and
LED them from the Socon to the Sunbelt, was there for like 7
seasons, then moved to James Madison, LED them out of the
Colonial and into the Sunbelt. He's like a Sunbelt.
I don't know if that means Indiana would go in the Sunbelt
or if that's where Vanderbilt might be headed there.
I'm not totally sure. But you know, he's he's he's had
some success and and certainly he got hired at Vanderbilt
largely because he took James Madison from in the post COVID
year, a 15 and 14 record in a 227 mark.
And Ken Palm all the way up to not just being a tournament
invite in a 12 seed as a sunbelt team, but a team that won the
first game in the tournament, won 32 games that year.
He's he's an interesting candidate.
But again, Scott, when we talk about him, he's done really well
at Vanderbilt. He's in his first season.
It's an interesting idea, but he's he's pretty far behind a
lot of the other candidates that would be in the mix.
Just just looking at what he's done overall, you know, there's,
there's, there's a little bit of a footprint there, but only one
NCAA tournament appearance throughout the course of his
career as a head coach. Yeah, you got to be able to make
the tournament once or twice at a school, or it has to be
something where you make it and the team is so good.
Like that team at James Madison went 32 and 4.
They were 72nd in offense and 74th on defense ranking wise.
Like it, That's a team that is good but is not.
Like, again, not doing anything special.
This is the one where you look around, there's only one year,
one year they ever did anything that was in the top ten in the
country. And that was last year's James
Madison team. They were fifth in the country
at 3 point defensive a defense on three-point shots.
You figure all right, we're going to bring this to
Vanderbilt and we're going to take you we're going to move
this over. Nope and Vanderbilt, they are
the worst team in the country damn near 344th giving up 37%
from 3 point line sounds like something we're we're really
good at here at IU. We we could we could definitely
do that. It it looks I, you know, I don't
want to harp on this one too much, but it, it looks like
somebody who's OK and having some, you know, mid level
success. But but there's no, no evidence
in the numbers in the records in the tournament success that this
is somebody who can take a team and really do something elite at
some facet of the basketball game.
It looks like somebody who's able to kind of be an average
coach, and it seems like a great coach for a place like
Vanderbilt. Well, and, and maybe he'll grow
into something more than that and I am impressed.
His offense this year is far better than any offense he's
coached so far this year. They're 21st in the country and
adjusted offensive efficiency. And going seven and eight at
Vanderbilt in this year's SEC. Is nothing just.
To sneeze? No.
No, I mean, they've had a good
year. I mean, you look, you look down
the list of what they've done, they they beat Tennessee, they
beat Kentucky, they beat Texas, they beat Texas A&M on the road
the other day. That's that's a big win.
I mean, there's a bunch of a bunch of really good results
and, and it's not, I'm not throwing shade at Mark Byington
by any means. I will say though, that other
than playing fast and doing a pretty good job of limiting
turnovers, there's not a lot, as you said, that really sticks out
on his resume as being important and meaningful in terms of, hey,
this is clearly the next candidate for the IU job.
We're just, I don't see that in in what's out there.
So, you know, again, I think this is one of those names that
gets tossed around because he's having a good season.
He's got a loose, very loose tie to IU in that he was at James
Madison same time Kurt Signetti was.
But beyond that, there's not really a good argument to be
made here. And especially if he's got $12
million buyout, yeah. 12 million is a lot to pay for that.
Those results lot lot to Cronin's like what, 15?
But he's like just tournament, tournament, tournament.
Right, No, that's the thing. I mean, Cronin's at a
significantly higher level. So that's that's what I would
say there. I I, you know, I would be
intrigued if they decided this is the guy we wanted.
Like there would have to be something behind the scenes or
it'd be like, whoa, baby, but I'd be like, OK, you need to
show me what that is like real fast to get excited in this.
I mean, I'd be about the same level as Brownell in terms of
excitement, so I'd be around like the 25 to 30 range, but
again, it would feel like settling more than anything.
Else agree with all that. I'd be in the 32 to 35 range.
But the only thing that would make me happy is if it came out
it's like, well, as part of Signetti's extension, he
demanded that we hire the James Madison basketball coach.
Like, OK, Like, I I would if it makes Signetti happy.
And that's what kept him on football.
Like, sure, this, this looks great.
I love those 10 palm numbers. Yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of
it's there's certain things you'll allow, you know, as a
payment for, you know, hey, you got us to, you know, 11 and one
in football. Yes, we'll let you hire the
basketball coach. That's not happening here,
though. And and that's, that's funny.
Before we go on, we were asked by one of our Twitter followers.
This question. Love this question.
We've been doing this zero to 100 scale in terms of of our
excitement on hires. One of us, probably you, Scott,
you have a little more free time than me.
You just go back and actually write down what our actual
answers were so that we can have that moving forward.
But they asked us what would have been our zero to 100
excitement ratings on all the coaches since night that got
hired. I'm going to let you go first on
this. So we've got Davis, we've got
Samson, we've got Tom Crean, we've got Archie Miller, and we
got Mike Woodson's. We have 5, five people.
We need a zero to 100 number of what you would have been at the
time, not not knowing what happens, but at the time, how
excited would you have been for that hire given what we knew
about those candidates at the time?
What when are we when is when is the Davis hire because he was
interim and then like so? Let's say when he got hired full
time, so may or not May March of 2001 after after that four seed
year that he had for the interim.
Yeah, God. I was still so young and dumb at
that point, but my dad and I, I mean, imagine you were imagine
now flew to that game to watch us lose to Kent's.
It was just it, it was wild. We flew TWA the the teams were
facing and we're in the back like facing, you have the table
in the middle. I don't know what was going on.
We stopped in Saint Louis, flew TWA.
We get there and then it's like it's like a Thursday or Friday
game. It was obviously the first game,
but we had hotels till through Sunday and then it's just we get
our smoked by Kent State. I, I would, I was probably like
a 73 with Davis just because I was, I think I was buying into
the narrative of like, all right, you know, this guy's part
of the, you know, was an assistant, like he's part of the
lineage. I was more bummed after we lost
that that Kent State game, but that that four seed was the
highest seed line we had gotten in like 8 or 9 years at that
point. It had been a while since we
were a protected seed and then you know, it, it quickly
changed. The next year I probably would
have been like an 84 because I'm like took him to the title game.
Like like he felt like it was a, a breath of fresh air.
I wasn't thinking about how much we were giving up by not having
a real search at that point. So if I was doing it now, I'd
probably be like a 64. I think at the time I was like
in the probably the mid 70s. Yeah, I was not terribly excited
about the higher. I felt it was settling it.
It felt at that point, keep in mind that like there was not a
real commitment to winning on the part of the IU
administration. So I would have been probably
closer to about 45. The season was fine.
I mean, there was some great moments that season, but it it
just didn't feel like an inspired hire, especially with
some of the names that were thrown around at the time.
Remember Rick Pitino's name was getting mentioned.
This was pre baggage. Steve Alford, you know, it was
before Pierre Pierce and all of that, you know, so he was still
considered to be somebody that, you know, was it was in demand
and everybody kind of assumed he was going to get the job.
There were other name, Bobby Cremen's name I remember being
mentioned during that time period.
So to just be like, yeah, we're going to go with the interim guy
who didn't have any other prior experience.
So I would have been around a 45, I think.
Let's go. Calvin Sampson.
What would have been your reaction for that one?
It's. Are are we like now if the hire
happened now or like I'm saying at the time, at the time, at the
time, what was your level of excitement?
I was pretty excited. I mean, he had taken a team to a
final four. It, you know, it, it's really
tough to parse now knowing how quickly he just did the same
show of cost stuff that he was doing.
Then it felt like everyone said all the right things.
Like he he's done. He knows what he did wrong.
He's not going to do that here. We, we, we have a great plan in
place. And, and then very quickly he
got a team together and, and put it together.
I, I was, I, I would say like mid to high seventies, like
probably like a 76 or 77 because it felt like an interesting hire
and somebody who had a really good pedigree.
I was really mixed on this one. I was about a 55 or 60.
I remember having a conversation with my dad about this because,
you know, I I was still watching IU basketball, but I was also
watching Texas Tech. I was really interested with the
Bob Knight experiment down there.
I was going on. So I saw a ton of Big 12 games,
saw a bunch of of Oklahoma, always admired the way they
played. But I knew all the problems that
they were having at Oklahoma. And the fact that he was, yeah,
he was, he'd applied for the Arizona State job and then all
of a sudden he ends up with the Indiana job.
And it's like, well, they were chasing this guy out of Norman,
why are we hiring him? And that was not knowing all of
the back story at that point about how the hire had gone.
And So what, what was also for me is like I, I, that was a time
that I thought Alford made sense.
It, it just like that was what, you know, coming off a 25 and 9
year at Iowa, I think 2006 or 2007, like he was, he was still
doing well at Iowa. It, it felt like to me that was
the time I was like, I, I, I think I was disappointed they
didn't go with Alford because it felt like that would have been a
cool hire at that point. Let's go to Tom Crean only two
years later. So Crean gets.
I heard of the podcast like this is about the time you and I
start. We probably go back and listen
to the archives. I given everything that had
happened in the way that we self flatulated ourselves.
I was I would say I was in like the mid the low 80s, like 8283
only because this is a guy who had final four experience had
take, you know, had one of the. Most important players, the NBA
in his pedigree, seem like a young, energetic coach who
wanted to be there. And, you know, for those who
don't remember, that was a really dark period where there
was a lot like, why would anybody want this job?
You know, And there was a lot of discussion of like, maybe no one
would take that job. Looking back, there was a lot of
people who would have taken the job.
And it probably wasn't as we felt, but that that was a moment
where it did feel really dire. There was a moment where it's
like, are we getting Dan Dokic as our coach?
Like he's really advocating for it.
So I I would be high because it it, it, it all it felt really
good and ending and after the press conference.
Kareen won that press conference.
You're like, damn, this guy really wants to be here.
So yeah, it's like 8384. Yeah.
No, I was excited. I mean, it seemed like a good
hire. Like, I mean, there were there
were some questions a little bit about, you know, the, you know,
there were a couple whispers about how effective of a coach
he was going to be at the highest level.
But he was enthusiastic. He'd been to a Final Four within
the previous four years, played in a very tough Big E Seemed
like a really good hire. And so, yeah, I was.
I was right up there in that range.
Archie Miller, I'm going to that.
I'll just, I'll let me go on this one first.
I was very excited about the Archie Miller higher because
again, as we've talked about many times on the show, seemed
like a dynamite higher. Everybody said that was the best
higher in the cycle. There was I, I still can,
clearly. Remember in that 2017 tournament
watching Wichita State and Dayton in the first round and
thinking, God, I'd love either of these coaches look at how
hard their teams play. So, you know, obviously we saw
what happened afterwards and there were a lot of failings as
a result. But on paper, as we've said many
times, it it felt like a great process that led to a great
result that ended up being a terrible result, but it wasn't
because of the process. So yeah, it was.
I'll, I'll say 85 on that. One I'll I'll give you my my my
number with a story. My wife and I started a
scholarship at the School of Education around this time and
it was a fun process. If you haven't done it, I would
venture to do it. It's, it's a fun process.
It's very cool. It's now been funded.
We, we worked at the School of Education.
They were fantastic to work with.
And as part of that, they put, they used us for an
advertisement in the IU Alumni magazine.
And so when we got the IU Alumni magazine, it was the magazine
with the cover of Archie Miller on the cover holding the ball
like Assembly Hall on his back. I got it framed with that cut
out with a picture of us and our scholarship.
So excited. And I thought, this is going to
be effing awesome because now we have our next coach for 20
years. I'm going to put this in the
basement. And what a great cover of IU
alumni to have there. It has since moved to the corner
of the basement. I won't get rid of the frame,
but like I might at some point put a poster with a new face on
it. I was the same thing.
I've said it over and over again.
Part of you was like Holtman was interesting because like there
are so many good guys coming out of Butler over and over again.
But I've said it a bunch of times, I will say it again.
He was, you could argue him or Holtman, but it's it's kind of a
doesn't matter. He was the number one higher
that offseason. He was the best coach available
that offseason. I was probably in 93.
And then finally, Mike Woodson, I was at about A50.
It was very similar to how I felt about the Calvin Sampson
hire for completely opposite reasons.
Like I was like, oh great, an IU guy will understand the program.
But I think everybody was kind of like this.
This is what they landed on. And now of course, we've got
some additional context on that. But I, I was not, I was not sad
that white Woodson got hired. I was more confused, and that is
kind of where we're at with everything still, I think right
now I'm still very confused. How about you?
Yeah, I was probably like in the same boat, maybe a 61.
I I was trying I remember listening to assembly call.
Can't wait to talk to you. Like like what it it definitely
felt like we struck out and it felt like that we did kind of
the easy the easy pick. And again, I will joke.
Me and my buddies, Robert and Ben, we did a I'm looking at the
list right now, a coaching bet. Pick.
For that, I'll be real quick. These, these are the names that
we picked in five rounds of picking.
We for, for when we hired Woodson, our bets were Beeline
Mata, which ended up being there, Chris Beer, Dane Fife,
who also kind of was there, Scott Drew, Brad Stevens, Steve
Alford, Calvert Cheney, Eric Musselman, Dana Altman, Lawrence
Frank, Rick Pitino, Tony Bennett, Bruiser Flint, Bruce
Pearl, a lot of those guys. I'd, I'd be down.
I I'm in for going back and redoing it.
But it's just, I look at that and I'm like, we had 1517 names
and Woodson was never on there. That that isn't awesome.
I really went into it. I had to talk.
Myself into the all right, you know, NBA guy, he knows it, you
know, alumnus and all that. So, yeah, like 6162, all right,
We got to get to the last two candidates.
We don't have a whole lot of time.
Let's go to the youngest name. I think we'll have in this
entire search a guy who's had certainly a checkered experience
with the NCAA. Will Wade, currently the coach
at McNeese, which used to be McNeese State, formerly the
coach at LSU and VCU, ran afoul of NCAA rules violations and got
a show cause penalty and got essentially barred from LSU 699
win percentage. However, two and four in the
NCAA, 2 Coach of the Year awards and a guy who you want to talk
about some green streaks on his Ken Palm page.
There's a ton of them. Will Wade has been back in
coaching since his second year at McNeese.
He made the tournament in his first year.
Now McNeese is not that complicated or hard of a place
to get to the tournament necessarily, but it's still an
accomplishment. He's been in the top 75 at Ken
Palm both years. Now that he's been there, his
teams are entertaining, they're fun.
They play entirely different styles from the way that his LSU
teams played, who played somewhat differently from how
his VCU teams played. Clearly a good basketball mind.
But man, this guy comes with his own compartment full of baggage.
And it's it's a name I don't know that we would normally see
if IU wasn't in such desperate need of a reset from a program.
Perspective. I was reading through his
Wikipedia page that this could again goes to Bob Knight is
underrated like it is now official.
I was reading through his Wikipedia page Will Wade got his
100th win in 2017. I went back and looked like damn
he was 35 years old when he got a hundred wins.
So I was like that was like Knight was young too.
No Knight left army in 1971 at 31 years old with 100 and 250
record. But but I will say this, I mean,
again, Bob Knight underrated 100 wins at 31 years old, insane.
Will Wade after six years, his record is 109 and 60, which is
very close to where McKnight was one O 250.
He's he's put up a lot of wins and he's shown the ability to
coach to me. The the hinge point is, I mean,
I I know what you know, I read about what he did at LSU.
I know it was, you know him. On, on FBI tapes.
And it's not just like OEP gave players impermissible payments
and like there's, there's bribery, there's, there's all
kinds of like actual illegal stuff, not just the rules stuff.
That's that's a little bit questionable, Not more.
It's more than a little bit questionable.
No, no, you're right. So I mean it, it it's almost you
have to discuss like are we going to discuss him as a coach?
Because as a coach there's a lot of things to like there.
The the real question is, again, this comes back to what we'll
talk about the next two candidates with baggage is you
look back at Samson and Samson was a great coach.
Samson has shown he's a great coach.
But we have history of hiring somebody at Indiana who has some
baggage. And the question is, are, are
you, is Indiana going to be OK with that baggage and with some
of, with some of the controversy that comes around with that or
the minute that the water gets turned up 1° in temperature, are
we going to have issues with it? And I think that's the problem
because if you hire a guy like Will Wade, there will be
stories. He might get a little in the
Gray area, whatever that I don't know what it is now with Nil,
but like he'll, he might do that.
He he's shown a history and unfortunately Indiana has shown
a history of not reacting well to that.
So Indiana, if they want to go down this road, to me, it's less
about his ability to coach. It's more about Indiana's
ability to deal with a coach who's going to live in the Gray
a little bit more than maybe they want or they say they want.
Yeah. And I mean, ultimately, I think
a lot of it is perceptional. I mean, there, there is an
argument to be made that I, you know, one of our network
members, Kathy Amos made to me a few weeks ago, which is, well,
if a guy cheated knowingly and willfully and then tried to
cover it up, that's not really AI mean.
That's a that might be a character flaw that you don't
want to overlook in a head coach.
Like it's one thing to say, well, look, everybody pays
players and and it's not, you know, it's it's totally
permissible. Now that's true, But going to
the level where you're getting show cost penalty slapped on you
to the degree that Wade did actually was more of a wrist
slap than perhaps you might think given what you heard about
Wade. And certainly the rules changes
have made a big difference. Again, this is one of those guys
that's really hard to adequately evaluate because the the, the
other thing, the flip side here, it's like you look at his
performance at LSU and it was good, but it wasn't like right
dominating. You know, his best season was in
2019. They went to the Sweet 16.
They were a three seed that year.
So they performed a seed expectation.
He had a three-year run where he had amongst the most efficient
offenses in the country. And then his last year at LSU
had one of the most efficient defenses in the country, but not
at the same time. And in fact, his offenses
outside of that 2019 team were at the expense of his defenses.
So there is a little bit of like feast or famine aspect to him.
He's been a lot more consistent in terms of what his teams have
done at Mcnee's, but he's also point, like literally they
played A-Team this year who's listed in Kenpom as biblical
studies. I'm going to call it up here.
Like you said, they beat them 111 to 57 there.
I don't know which Bible they're studying.
I don't know what but that they're listed as biblical.
Studies and even. Like one of those, when we look
at Indiana's football records from 19 O 4 is like we play the
Alumnisus or you're playing like the Indianapolis Armory.
It's like, I'm not sure if we should count that, frankly.
You've also got, as we look through here, I mean, they've
they've had a great band name. They've heard a band that IU
biblical studies. They're they're on like the
seventh longest winning streak in the country right now.
They've won, I think something like, I don't know, 21 or their
last 22. But the the one thing I'll note
is that they're winning a bunch of games against teams that are
significantly worse than they are because they're in the
Southland Conference. Like the best win they've had
and since since December was against the team that was ranked
176th and that was Texas A&M, Corpus Christi.
Now you can only play the teams that are in your conference.
But much like I feel with Ben McCollum, I just think people
need to pump the brakes a little bit on the record and maybe
focus a little bit more on like who they're beating.
So in this case I don't know. Play the team.
Letourneau when I when I Googled it, Mary Kay, Letourneau came up
before the university. So, so all of that to say, I am,
I don't know what I would think if Will Wade was the higher I
would be. I would be tremendously shocked.
You want to talk about going entirely outside of what the
normal spectrum of coaching and culture would be for IU.
This is an example of it and I just look at it from the
perspective of Will Wade might end up being a really good like
coach who who spends a ton of time in college.
This is one of those dice rolls. I would love to hear the
explanation if it was indeed the higher of why he was the higher,
but I have a hard time seeing him being the higher as a result
of that. So I would, I would say my
excitement level would be like a 40 merely because I'm like he's,
he's clearly done too many good things in his career to discount
him. But he also doesn't done enough
great things to make him a shoe in for the IU job.
And then you Add all the other stuff and it becomes a real
issue. Yeah, I'd be A50 just because I
don't. I would be like you, very
intrigued. And Mike, it would come down to,
I think as a basketball coach, I'd be in the 70s or 80s, but
I'd be really nervous that in two years Indiana would reverse
course the university and say, oh, we don't like all of this.
And we'd be kind of doing the 2008 thing all over again.
I I don't trust Indiana can handle the the heat of somebody
who has baggage like this. For those watching on YouTube or
Spotify, we just did a complete costume and location change.
We had to stop the previous recording due to some time
constraints, but we're back, Scott, we're it's.
Oscar's weekend. So we're, we're doing different
gowns. We're, we're trying a new movie,
we're trying to make the best Oscar for best podcast.
I mean, surely we deserve it at this point.
I, I would agree. I, I would like to thank the
Academy. I'd like to thank my agent.
Anyway, one more, one more candidate to talk about.
A name that gets bandied about quite a bit within certain
circles and a name that's clearly being pushed for the job
by agents is Chris Beard. Chris Beard, currently the head
coach at Ole Miss and of course prior to that had a season at
Texas, which right at or during or after he was terminated due
to a domestic violence arrest, had a decent amount of success
at Texas Tech before that. And then of course had started
at Arkansas Little Rock in 2012. If you look at Beard by the
numbers, what you've got is a coach that's had a laudable
amount of on court success over the course of his time.
Looking at the numbers, Beard, who would be 52, so still
relatively young at the start of the next basketball season. 6695
win percentage 661 Wall at Ole Miss 11 and five in the NCAA
tournament, which includes 2 regular season conference
titles, 6 tournament appearances, one Final Four, two
Elite Eights and then Four Seasons with a top 15 Ken Palm
defense. I'm gonna call Ken Pom page up
here. You know, Beard gets talked
about quite a bit in relation to the IU job Scott, and some of it
is what's happened on the court with him.
Obviously took Texas Tech to that national title game where
they lost in 2019 to Virginia. Had the top Cam Palm defense in
the country that year. Went to an Elite 8 the previous
year. A tie to Bob Knight was if
anybody watched, you know, that weird reality show that they did
with Texas Tech back, you know, in the last couple of years that
Knight was at Texas Tech, you've seen Chris Beard in that.
But of course, most people know him from what he's done as a
head coach since he got to the Division One level in 2016.
So you know, Beard from the perspective of of being a
candidate that's had some success.
You know, that by itself, I think has made him a hot name
among certain circles. And then for many people, they
see the the Bob Knight influence or they they see some kind of a
seed in that Beard about a month ago, kind of out of the blue
drops a Bob Knight reference on a national broadcast.
You know, and we've heard quite a bit from reporters both on and
off the record who have said, like Beard is being actively and
very aggressively pushed for the job.
It's clearly a job he wants. But Scott, this is also a
gentleman who lost his job at Texas because of the
aforementioned arrest for domestic violence complaint,
ultimately was not charged. But as anybody who understands
the criminal justice system understands, that's that's not
at all unusual when it comes to domestic violence situations.
Was hired after a year out of coaching at Ole Miss and has
been impressive in terms of getting Ole Miss elevated to a
level where they're competitive for the NCAA Tournament this
year. But with Beard, there's just a
big obstacle that people should be focusing on.
And I've seen a lot of people try to brush off the domestic
violence arrest either through saying, well, you know, he
wasn't charged so therefore you can't hold that against him, or,
hey, everybody makes mistakes. I've heard that one a lot, which
is a bizarre argument as far as I'm concerned, Scott, my big
thing is like IU is at a juncture right now where they
have to make the right hire. They have to make a hire that
will stabilize the program, can be built around, can get
positive momentum going forward. There's more to that than just
being a good on court coach. And my concern that, you know, a
lot of people's fervor around Beard is kind of ignoring all
the other issues that would make this a very dangerous hire for
Indiana. And you know, that's, that's
even assuming that you don't find a domestic violence arrest
disqualifying, which I personally do in cases like
this. It's it's just, it's one of
those deals where the the risk does not justify whatever reward
because the risk is almost unknowable.
Yeah, I mean, you, you, you look at all the other candidates that
we've talked about that have some kind of baggage.
It's just running afoul of the rules of the game or pushing too
hard or cheating. This is this is a real, a real
arrest, like, like you've done a real crime, which, you know,
it's funny, all the other people you'll text me like, you know,
Wade Collins, here's what we're talking about that next time.
This is the only one that you and I have kind of pushed off
because we're not quite sure how to talk about it.
We've talked about at length how to do this.
We have recorded this before. And imagine doing this kind of
tiptoeing around this for multiple seasons as your coach.
I'm I, I hear what you're saying.
I agree with him. I'm not comfortable talking
about I'm not a I don't don't, you know, don't condone what
happened. I don't know what happened, but
it's like this is a very serious allegation.
It's a very serious crime. It it's something that I don't
feel comfortable talking about. Like I don't want to be talking
about this with my basketball program for years.
And, you know, we we had talked before this about, you know,
like the redemptive arc. You know, you got to give
somebody a second chance, which I agree with.
But as you said, it's like he has a second chance.
He's coaching in the SEC, like he has a job.
He's coaching one of the two best conferences.
It. It's one of those where if
another story pops up at any point during his coaching
tenure, it it could all fall apart again.
And is that really a risk you want to take, as you said, at a
very important juncture? And the the last thing I'll say
is the connection point. I'm also tired of the connection
points tonight and has to be somebody from the play.
We're done that we did that with Woodson, but this connection
point is so minor. Like yes, he coached with
Knight. That was when Knight was in
jilted ex-girlfriend. Like he wouldn't wear this is
the most comfortable red sweater I've worn in years.
I mean he hated IU at that point.
Wasn't like he was glowingly telling Chris beard stories
about assembly. Come sit up, come sit and let me
tell you about assembly hall and how great the pretty were
happening. He hated IU when he was at Texas
Tech. I'm not sure he ever got over
it. And outside of that, this is
Chris Beard is a guy who who has built his bones recruiting,
coaching in Texas and the Southeast.
If if he had not coached under Bob Knight that there'd be no
point where you'd be like, this is a real connection point to a
guy who can cut it in the Midwest.
Yeah, I mean, and look, I think on the Knight front, I've got
this on pretty good authority. Like they may not be as close as
perceived. I think it would be the way that
I would put it. So I think a lot of people miss
misidentify that connection a little bit.
I look, I, I look at it like this, this is a coach who
clearly can coach at a top level, but clearly has had some
issues that have made him not attractive.
Because look, it was at the Ole Miss last year.
Everybody was like, who's who's going to take the chance of
hiring Chris Beard and will it go off the rails?
So they hire him at Ole Miss. He coaches there for a season.
He's clearly very available to go somewhere else.
This is not too far off from Bob Huggins.
You know, post DUI arrest, the first time getting hired at
Kansas State and then trying to bounce after a year and ends up
bouncing after a year to go back to West Virginia.
But I'll note that last cycle, two programs that are very much
culturally connected to Indiana had openings.
Louisville had an opening, chose not to hire Chris Beard.
You know, like he was very available at that point.
They end up going with Pat Kelsey, a a relatively little
known coach at the College of Charleston.
Instead of hiring Chris Beard, Kentucky opens up Does Kentucky
hire Chris Beard given. Program that's that's more
willing to play in some of these areas if you like in Indiana.
Kentucky does not hire him and ends up going in entirely
different directions with the person that they're trying to
bring in. Arkansas had an opening.
Did they go try to get Chris Beard?
No. So point being, several pedigree
programs, programs that have have won national titles, you
know, decided that this was not the right move for them.
So I look at Indiana and Indiana being I think in a more
precarious spot in some ways than maybe not Louisville, but
certainly the other two programs were at the time of their hires.
This just feels like an unnecessary risk for a coach
that while he's had quite an impressive run, is not I don't
there's no national title. And you know, you're talking
about very good, but not consistently great across both
offense and defence performances.
And I I would even say I'm going to call something up here,
Scott, for those people who are watching on YouTube and Spotify.
But if you're not watching, I'll read it off.
I've got this this thing up that says, you know, it's coaching
notes and it's a it's a blind resume comparison between two
coaches. Coach a I'll just give it away.
Is Chris Beard 695 winning percentage over the last eight
seasons, two regular season titles, 6 tournament
appearances, one Final four two Elite Eights, Four Seasons with
a camp on top 15 defense. Coach B same eight years, 753
win percentage, three regular season conference titles, 6
tournament appearances, a final 42 Sweet sixteens five seasons
with a Ken Pomp top 15 defense. And I'll note this, Coach B also
had probably their best season as a, as, as a head coach of
their current institution wiped out by COVID.
You know, this was the season where this person's team was
going to be a two seed. They were in the top 10 of
Kenpom. We never actually got to see
that team perform. Coach A, as I mentioned, is
Chris Beard. Coach B is not is not Archie
Miller. I know.
That. He is not Chris Collins.
It's not Will Wade, it's Brian Dutcher of San Diego State, the
the the long time assistant for Steve Fisher, who of course, as
we talked about, took his team to the national title game.
They lost, you know, pretty brutally to UConn.
But is Matt Painter and Brian Dutcher?
There you go. It's like a tie.
Love Midwest guys is what I but you know, this is where I asked
myself with the beard thing, like everybody's like, well,
let's just look at the basketball.
It's like you can't just look at the basketball because you just
look at the basketball. His resume is pretty good, but
there's other coaches that have equal or superior resumes.
So that's to me, not the reason why you point to this guy and
say he's clearly the choice. Oh well, he took a team to a
final four. Well, who else?
Recently has taken teams to Final Fours.
I mean, Kevin Keats at North Carolina State just took his
team to a Final Four. I just mentioned Brian Dutcher
who took San Diego State to the Final Four, which I would
consider to be a bigger accomplishment than taking Texas
Tech Hubert Davis took his team to the title game.
Mick Cronin, who we've already talked about.
I'm sorry, Porter Moser, the. Oklahoma coach who when he was
at Loyola. You reverse engineer what you
what you've done before. Going through the top coaches
right now. How many of them took a team to
a Final Four before their first job?
Like Nate Oates hadn't, Tommy Lloyd hadn't.
I guess Tommy Lloyd still hasn't.
But I mean, like, but you go through that list, a lot of
coaches that are really good right now never took a team to a
Final Four until they did it with the place they're at now.
Yeah. So look, when you get down to
it, I'm going to actually call Dutcher stats up for those
people who haven't seen them because this is not a guy who I
think is a reasonable candidate. It's a shame though, because I
mean, he's had tremendous success at San Diego State.
He's had look at all these top 10 defenses he's had offense
hasn't been quite as good in most years, but that you know,
they had that 2020 year where they had both of them going at
the top 15 rate. I'll always wonder if that team
might have had a chance to win a national title in the tournament
that year. So my point being, like there
are other coaches out there who have similar resumes who don't
have the baggage. And even if you want for
whatever reason to take the approach that, well, you know,
whatever, whatever sins were committed were paid for, I
don't, I don't think you can put aside the fact that that
situation occurred. You've got a lot of industry
people who are very skeptical that this guy is going to be
able to sustain himself. This is just one of those hires
where I know the guy you can can take the risk, nor should they
because there are certain things, as you mentioned, Scott,
but fall beyond the level of, oh, you cheated with the
recruits or this or that. This falls beyond that as far as
I'm concerned. And normally we do our our zero
to 100 rating on this. And it's like, I don't know that
I could ever feel good about Chris Beard being hired as a
head coach because of what's happened up to this point.
And that's just I, I don't think Indiana needs to put itself in a
position where this is the direction that they go.
It's, it's, this is both too critical to hire and I just
don't think this is a person who has demonstrated over a long
enough period of time that they can keep it together under the
spotlight. Because that's exactly as much
as we've heard talk about fishbowl and things like that.
This is not the place to go and like live out a quiet coaching
life the rest of your time. It would be almost impossible to
get excited about this hire because in the back of your
head, A you just hired a guy that got arrested on ADV
complaint, whether or not he was charged.
And B, in the back of your head like this is A, a time bomb
waiting to go off. Like something is going to
happen that that is going to put Indiana basketball and the
athletic department in a really bad situation.
Agree with all of that. I would also say, you know, for
those who are saying just just focus on the basketball, let's
focus on that. It's like, all right, that, but
that's in a vacuum because I get you teach media.
If you were there at that first press conference, the third
question you asked Olson is how did you you know, what are your
thoughts about the domestic assault charges and how did you
put those to rest? I mean, like it's going to be a
question of the press conference like it's just it is.
And you know, the other thing that I will say is it's not,
it's, it's only, it's only been 2 1/2 years since that happened.
It's very, very recent. It's not that it's better to
happen before, but at least if it was like 15 years ago, it's
like, all right, that was 15 years ago.
It's been a lot of time past. Like we, we know what happened.
We, you know, you've, you've demonstrated a long period of
time. And again, this is just Indiana
is a program that doesn't like to play in the Gray.
This is you're, you're like you said, you're willingly putting
yourself in the in the Gray in a very important hire.
And if things go wrong or if more things come out, even if
they're alleged, you're probably in a tearing it down to the
studs situation. Again, like, like this is the
one that we've talked about. Every other coach we've talked
about, like whether it's I keep joking about Chris Collins, but
you know, Chris Collins or any of these other guys there,
there's a bad scenario where ends up being like Archie again,
like, I mean, four years didn't work out.
This is the only one we've talked about where there really
is kind of a, you know, end of Samson era possibility there.
And it's like, is, is the reward really worth that risk?
Yeah. So that's yeah, I think, I think
you know about all that you can say on the topic.
And and again, I just from knowing what I know and who I
know at IU and the way that this institution is going, a lot of
the moral high ground stuff on recruiting and paying players,
like that's gone. Like all that's, you know, that
era is over. There are certain things that go
well beyond that. I just think the beard situation
falls right into that category. So anyway, before we wrap up
some real quick news, there was some chatter.
It was not chatter. It's actually like printed
reports from the Des Moines Register that TJ Otzelberger has
signed the contract extension, which a lot of people
immediately jumped at and said, well, he's off the hot board.
Whether or not Otzelberger is actually off the hot board or
not, this signed contract extension doesn't really change
anything that we talked about the last time.
You know, we did get confirmation that they did drop
his buy out from 20 or so million to $4 million.
It actually drops to two of their athletic director leads,
which I don't think is going to happen.
So a lot of the talk about Otzel Berger was predicated on the
idea that this extension had been signed.
He didn't just sign it. It just got publicly released
through open records request, which is why you're now getting
this information. So it actually kind of confirms
the idea that at least from a financial perspective,
Otzelberger would be a viable candidate for Indiana to go
after. Whether or not he's the guy they
end up hiring don't know, but that's.
Having this much time, it is turning into where we're
becoming like the LA of the 90s in the NFL, where everybody's
just using us as leverage to get a better deal.
Like if you're the coaches, you might need to come together your
next meeting. Like, hey, right, you know,
Kansas, you guys are having trouble with self.
Can you fire him in like February?
It's just gives us a long. This is a nice three months to
just everybody can renegotiate their contracts and then
somebody can go take that job and we'll just UCLA, you guys
are up next. Like everyone just it's like
it's like Hard Knocks. Everyone takes a shot at it.
Everyone gets a three month period.
One of the top schools. But no, it's it's we will hire a
coach, but I think that, you know, we we almost need to bet
the over under on the number of coaches that renegotiate their
own deals when this is done. I mean, we're already at 2
again. The old sport thing probably
happened maybe before this, but. Just.
For fun we'll have him. We have Dusty May there might be
another one. Like we're going to get 3 or 4
coaches who just get to renegotiate based on this
process being so long. This is the problem with when
did something get signed versus when did something get publicly
made available. And that's people you see now
Gene Hackman. I mean, people, people miss this
stuff all the time or they misinterpret when news comes out
and what it means. And so Gene happen joke, but
just it was that was terrible. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
acknowledge that. Geez, but that that's I think
important for people to keep in mind.
And and again, when we were talking about Olsenberger, it
was, it was with the idea that the buyout had become more
reasonable. So there'll be some interesting
things I'm sure that'll pop up. But again, like you said, Scott,
it seems. Outside like I.
Use being used as leverage for all of these people.
The only one we really know about it was Dusty May because
that one was signed at some point in the last couple of
weeks. But even that does not look like
a contract. That is, I mean, it wasn't like
that buyout became unreasonable. That buyout went to seven and a
half million dollars. Credit you, this is your thing
too. It's like I'm I'm joking about
the buyout. There will be other buyouts
happening. That doesn't mean that the
person said no to IU. It just means that they they
noticed a leverageable situation situation and they leverage it
for themselves. Which doesn't mean any of these
people are saying no to IU. They're just saying yes to more
money and then possibly could also be saying yes to IUI.
Mean we don't like, we don't know.
No, it's just like I, I get money, my former institution
gets money, everybody gets money.
It's great. Yeah.
Anyway, All right, we'll we'll
go ahead and wrap things up as we will have another game coming
up tonight, Indiana taking on Washington.
We'll be back next day or two. Talk about that game.
Have some bracketology updates for you candidates and more
candidates coming up for Scott. I'm Galen.
This is Crimson Cast. We'll catch you folks.
On the flip side, bring back the bison.
Stay never daunted. So everybody.