None. You're listening to the Back
Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel.
Welcome back to Crimson Cast. Dale Clavio, Scott Caulfield
joining you here. It is the evening of Sunday,
March 16th and Scott, the season's over.
IU does not make the NCAA tournament.
IU announces to media companies are not going to entertain bids
to the NIT or the The Crown or whatever other tournaments there
are. And that's it.
We can we. Good night, everybody.
We're done. Except we're not actually.
But Scott, you were not along for the ride this morning.
But it's great to see you now. How are you doing?
And it's not. It's unusual to see you on a
Sunday night. This is a nice change of pace.
That's good. Good to be here, John.
I like March. Sadness again for IU.
That's true. One of our commenters, Two
things. First off, I was texting this
out. We made the tournament that
matters this year. We were in the college.
Football play offs like there was a tournament, we were in it,
we made it. So I thought you were going to
say we were in Atlantis and that's the only one that
matters. So we.
Were in that and then, you know, I I'm really looking forward to
can we please have some talk about how some of these teams
don't deserve it in a couple days, like when when UNC or
Xavier loses, like we haven't talked about them not deserving
it. But no, it's, you know, or maybe
the tournament should be 70 teams.
We're going to tackle a lot on the tournament stuff as well as
some of the coaching service stuff.
I will say I feel like every year the Big 10 gets 10 or more
teams in the field. There's just a barrage of
there's just too many teams coming out of the Big 10.
The big chance is not that good. The SEC got 14 teams in the
tournament this year. I didn't hear a peep about how
the SEC imagine a Big 10 team that was 6 and 12 in the regular
season, let alone two of them getting into the NCAA
tournament. I I mean, ESPN would need like
years of therapy or at least their analysts would recover
from that. Are we sure that?
Alabama football didn't make it in, just like ESP NS.
Like you know, we're so pissed they didn't make it.
The CFP. We're just putting the football
team in as a basketball team. I I God.
Anyway, so we're, if you watch the live stream this morning,
which I know many of you did you, you know that as, as the,
as the, the Steinman clan noted Galen the Oracle.
I, I did call the UNC thing. I, I chickened out.
I knew, like, thanks to you, I saw them like, oh, we're out.
I chickened out at the end on my last bracket and didn't put UNC
in and, and, and yet still was, was fairly in line with
everything else because of how out of left field the whole
thing was. We're going to talk about that.
I'm not here to do a victory lap, but I want to reiterate
what I said because I think people are finally starting to
see what I was talking about at the beginning of things.
But anyway, before we get on that real quick, just a reminder
we're brought to you by Home Field Apparel and Home Field
Apparel sponsoring the we. We've got teams in the
tournament that Home Field Apparel has apparel for, like
the Montana Grizzlies, who are going to be my new team that I
root for for at least the next 5 days.
Yeah, but you can go to Home Field Apparel, use the code home
23, get 15% off your first order.
They're going to have a ton of tournament related stuff.
They just had something else that popped I saw in my text
messages as I was getting over here into the studio.
There's going to be a bunch of things that I'm really
fascinated to see, like how it racks up over the course of of
the the two or three weeks of the tournament.
Home Field's always got their design team working up on
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All right, Scott, let's dive into the brackets first.
Indiana does not make it. It was interesting because I
obviously I was up late doing this.
I think I actually did a bracket last night at 1:45 in the
morning. And at that point, I still
didn't feel like IU was getting in.
And my rationale for it was simply like Indiana didn't stick
out in any single metric enough to really win an argument.
And I think ultimately that really kills a lot of teams that
are in this mix where if you if you can't make a a case.
And, and this is where I think to some degree it's why a lot of
the bracketology committee missed, at least on Indiana, is
that it was an easy team to kind of say, well, they're, you know,
they're OK in wins and they're OK in predictives and they're OK
in their quad one and quad twos. That the flip side of it is they
were never great in any one of those areas.
And there were teams like, as much as I dislike North Carolina
getting in, they had a high net and, you know, they they won 22
games. And so there was at least
something you could argue for there.
And a lot of times what ends up happening within this process is
you get the, the less pointy ends you have, the more you end
up falling back into the midst of things.
And so that's where Indiana landed to some degree.
I still don't think they got treated particularly well,
Scott. But what was your reaction as
you saw the news this morning that most people thought Indiana
was going to be in? And then you get to the
tournament selection show and you find out that Indiana isn't
going to be in. I mean, I'll get to it later
because I'm, I'm really pissed just about the overall, just the
overall missing the tournament again, that's a different,
different beast going into this morning.
I, I, I like you, felt like we weren't in for, for the exact
reasons that you're saying is that, you know, you, you need to
have something that makes you stand out as a real positive.
And we just all the teams and I listen to a lot of everything
you did, which was all very, very good.
We never stood out against anybody.
And all of the arguments, you know, US versus Xavier, US
versus North Carolina, you, you know, they had things that were
worse than us. They also had things that were
better than us. There wasn't one thing that we
did better than everybody else. We we're kind of mid all across
the board. And I also think too, that, you
know, just beating two teams in the in the tournament is not a
good look. And then something else that you
mentioned before is that I don't know if the Big 10 necessarily,
obviously the tournament doesn't help a lot of teams because
Michigan won. It was still a five seed.
But you know, what what did hurt is that it just put Indiana in
cement and the cement was dry on Thursday morning at 2:00 or 2:00
PM. And everyone else had wet cement
that was still kind of movable and things could be done.
And it, it felt like in, you know, Indiana sealed his fate.
And so it when when we finally got to the bracket, I didn't
think we were going to be there was a chance once I saw North
Carolina, based on everything you said, I was like, all right,
well, that's probably out. Like we're probably not going to
make it. And in the end, you know, yeah,
we didn't get treated that it felt a little bit unfair.
You know, 10 and 10 in the conference is OK.
But it's like we've been here. And part of it is like, hey,
man, don't have a six game losing streak.
Don't lose to Iowa by 15. Don't get slaughtered in the
games against Louisville and Gonzaga.
Like part this is definitely all self-inflicted wounds.
Don't schedule the way you did. You know, in the end, we really
didn't have. It's not like there's a massive
leg to stand on as it is for all teams in the bubble.
Yeah. No, I mean, you, you hit on a
lot of points I was going to hit on, which I'm glad you did.
I mean, I am far more irritated at the procedural elements which
led to Indiana not getting in than I am about Indiana not
being put in the tournament on merit.
Because as you very aptly put, Indiana really didn't do nearly
enough on their own to get themselves into the NCAA
Tournament. And you, when you think about
the arguments that we had to make for Indiana, it was, well,
gosh, they beat Michigan State on the road and they beat
Purdue. And that was really it.
Like, that was, that was like the, the amount and the number
of times we heard. And it was an accurate take
that, well, Indiana wouldn't even be in the conversation if
they hadn't won that game at Michigan State.
And the rest of their resume was just incredibly squishy.
And I'm glad you brought up the scheduling because I can
distinctly remember us doing a podcast and we weren't the only
ones. There were other people in the
IU sphere when the schedule got revealed in early September or
late August or whenever it was saying, this is really dangerous
for Mike Woodson and Indiana to schedule the way that they did
'cause I mean, go back and, and think about that.
We looked at the schedule and we said, well, South Carolina, not
a very good team. That's that's your big non con
coming in and then you're going to Atlantis and you have to win
basically Atlantis or at least get to the championship game.
And you have to play good teams there and you have to play them
close. Because if you don't, you've
left yourself not just 0 margin for error, but you put yourself
in a position where you can't make any ground up if you
continue to play at like a 500 or worse level.
And that is exactly what happened.
And look I this is where. And oddly, it even broke well
for them that they lost and still got to play Gonzaga like
they lost, which should have given them a worse, you know, a
worse bracket, but they ended up getting a better team to play
and it still couldn't get. Done.
Yeah, exactly. And and then it wasn't just that
they lost to Louisville. It wasn't just that they lost to
Gonzaga, but they got boat raced by both of those teams.
And it just again, like it happened last year, it set
Indiana down a pathway that they couldn't recover from.
Even if they had been playing fairly well, I think they would
have have really struggled down the stretch with this.
And then, you know, once you've done that, you lose all those
close games. And so ultimately, what's
frustrating is that another year where Indiana didn't learn their
lesson. And you know, I, I mentioned on
Twitter, you know, Indiana not making the tournament was, was
surprising. And really you can point to two
things. I think 2 pieces of criteria
that essentially were the nail in the coffins for Indiana.
One of them and, and, and this really sticks out, I think when
you look at all but one of the teams that got in the tournament
that and Indiana didn't. And that was Indiana's non
conference strength of schedule rating.
Indiana's non conference strength of schedule ended up
being 158th when you compare it to the teams that they were
competing against. San Diego State's non confidence
strength of schedule was 7th in the country.
North Carolina's was fifth in the country.
You know, these were teams that that actively went out and
scheduled good games against good teams.
You know, it doesn't explain everything.
And this is part of the frustration of the committee,
which is they're so inconsistent with their criteria.
Like Xavier got in and they only added a strength of schedule of
144th. What's what I really keep coming
back to though, is that whatever happens with other teams, IU
can't afford to play middle of the road non conference
schedules because they don't play well enough in their other
games in terms of margin of victory to compensate.
And so you can either play a bad non conference schedule, blow
everybody out, get your predictives way up.
That's the Big 12 model. Or you can play a lot of good
teams. And then when you're in this
position, somebody can argue and say, well, look, I you really
did try to challenge themselves. You couldn't say that because
Indiana didn't try to challenge themselves.
And we saw, we talked about it before the season.
We were not the only ones. It's just frustrating that that
ended up being one of the reasons why Indiana didn't get
into the field. And it's funny because last year
you had a we had a similar talk before the year and middle of
the year that they they challenge themselves a little
bit more playing Auburn and Kansas.
And then, you know, Connecticut, Louisville, where you knew who
you're playing in those games. But we looked at it as like
those are three of those four games are really tough.
If you can't get a win, you're going to walk out of last year's
non conference with really having nothing done.
And that's exactly what happened.
And you're right, it almost became worse this year.
So yeah, in the end, you know, I, I wasn't, it's, it's, it's
all self-inflicted. I mean, the only thing you can
say is maybe, you know, maybe Scott Dolson also needs to spend
some time seeing how we can get himself on the, the selection
committee because that, that might help out a little bit.
It is, you know, once you mention that and it's like, all
right, well, the North Carolina's getting in like this
just. You know what's going to happen
and I know they're going to say, oh, I I excused myself.
And it's like you're you're still hanging out with these
people and they still know where you're the AD of.
Well, yeah. And look, ultimately, and you
know, if you look at, you know, one of the arguments that got
made, it wasn't just strength to schedule, it was also net.
And I talked about this this morning, Indiana finished with a
net of 54. The teams that got in above them
for the most part had better Nets.
San Diego State was the one exception, but San Diego State
had the 5th toughest non conference strength to schedule.
That's why they got in. Xavier had a net of 45 despite
having what I think was a demonstrably worst record
against teams that were competitive for the field.
North Carolina had a net of 34, I think, or 35.
Again, 20 spots better roughly than Indiana, even though
Indiana had better individual wins.
North Carolina had that to point to.
And you know, someone just pointed out, Sam pointed out in
the comments, it's frustrating. They at least never learn the
importance of being metric merchants, not at least blow out
the bad teams or be competitive against the good teams.
Indiana tended to struggle with both of those.
And so, look, it's water under the bridge to some degree.
I do want to say one thing the, you know, a lot of I saw
something, I think it was Sports Illustrated, whatever Sports
Illustrated is these days, tweeted that the biggest
surprises of this tournament were Indiana getting in or
Indiana not getting in and North Carolina getting in.
That is not the biggest surprise.
The biggest surprise is that West Virginia, who was on
literally every bracket, didn't get in.
And I am baffled by this, Scott. I mean, West Virginia, they
were, you know, they had their, their net was 51.
And that's probably what dinged them a little bit.
But they were 19 and 13. They beat Gonzaga in Atlantis.
They beat Arizona and Atlantis. Yes, they lost Tucker Devries,
but after they lost Tucker Devries, he hasn't played since
the beginning of December. They won at Kansas, they won at
home versus Iowa State, they beat Cincinnati.
They beat Utah. Like four of their six quad one
wins happened after Tucker Devries was injured and out for
the rest of the season. When they were asked, when the
committee was asked after the the draw today, why didn't they
get in, they actually cited Tucker Devries being injured.
And it's like Tucker Devries has been injured the whole season
basically. How could you use that as a
criteria? So I think the larger irritation
there is just how inconsistent they've been with applying the
different criteria, how they approach it, how, how subjective
it seems to be applied. And you know, this is where we
had a, a really good comment earlier on from, from Richard,
how can bracketologist analyze gut feelings?
Everything they said that mattered seems to just not.
And this was the point I was trying to make this morning.
It's like if you go by the the rules that the committee
themselves lays out and their procedures, you come up with the
bracket that all 111 bracketologist came up with, and
then you get in the room and they have to bring the vice
chair. I've been watching the bracket
show for 30 years, 35 years, however long it's been.
I have never seen them send the chair and the vice chair in
because they know that the chair by himself can't account for the
fact that a team that didn't get it shouldn't have gotten in.
But he happens to be the athletic director of got in.
I just found that a fascinating and and and transparent tell all
things considered with things. So anyway, I just it's again
the. Question I have for you as the
bracket expert is so Texas Xavier North Carolina got in
West Virginia, Indiana, Boise State did not looking at the
last bracket matrix, Texas was in 50 brackets.
Xavier was in 30 N Carolina was only in 27 W Virginia was 111.
Indiana was in 90 Boise State was in 36.
So it's a it's a weird mix of think you'd normally this is you
know, bracket matrix is 111 of the top bracketologist.
It Western Union was all of them.
I'll ask you the question this way.
Every year there's different metrics that people, you know
that the committee is looking at that kind of change based on the
three who made it in and the three who didn't.
Obviously most bracketologist were looking at something
different than the committee. Based on you analyzing these
teams, what what did the committee value that those three
teams had outside of somebody in the committee room that worked
for one of the universities that that every other bracketologist
missed? Cause you know, North.
Carolina only being in 27 and West Virginia being in 111,
that's a gap I'm not sure I've ever seen.
Yeah, I mean, I, I think the big thing was people looked at North
Carolina's resume and said they don't have any wins and
therefore they're not gonna get in cause the committee
historically values wins. Well, they didn't in their case
and they really didn't in Xavier's case.
Now Texas, this is again, it's a problem where you've got all
these teams with incomplete resumes and, and, or not
incomplete, but like the, the resumes that have big holes in
them. And Texas had a lot of good
wins. And that's the, the thing I
don't want people to take away from Texas.
Like they really do have a lot of good wins.
They just had 15 losses, which is an insane amount of losses.
I think it's the most losses that have ever been put in the
field as an at large. But this is where the age-old
issue and actually Jim Miller with a great comment here to
feed in, but the SEC being overrated.
There are 500 conference overall.
Obviously there are 500 overall conference because they all play
each other and but there is a danger with all of this where
the metrics start to eat themselves and you end up with
overrated and underrated teams based upon the other members
within the conference. And the Missouri Valley used to
do this all the time when the Missouri Valley was an actual
good conference as opposed to whatever it is now where they
would get their RPI so high that everybody would be in great
shape for the RPI. And it's like, you know, you get
to the end of the year to be like, why do we have 4 Missouri
Valley teams in the field when they're none of them are that
good? That's essentially how it works.
And so ultimately, I think there's not one through line
that all of these teams could be looked at.
Again, I'm not, I'm not shocked they put North Carolina in
because of the, the commissioner being in there.
And that's the piece that you can't account for unless you're
cynical. And fortunately I'm cynical.
So I've I've been able to get over that hump.
But that's ultimately where we end up with things.
And I this is where this is a frustrating science and it's,
it's not straightforward, despite the fact that there's an
entire list of things. That says, here's how you're
supposed to do it. And then the committee, we hear
this all the time, whether it's this, whether it's the eye test,
whether, you know, there's all these things where it's like,
well, we have these rules, except in this case or that case
it's anyway. So, so Indiana is, is done.
There was a, there was a note, I think it was, I think it was
from pigs.com that Indiana's not going to participate in the NIT.
They're not going to participate in the crown.
So that's basically it season's over.
I mean, we had a we had a question earlier on in the in
the chat about, you know what, you know, tell us that IU's not
participating in these. It sounds like they're not and
so. Side note, you and I have talked
about this a little bit like I, I just, I find it hard to
believe I, I find it hard to believe that maybe this year
they can, but at some point, like Fox made the crown, it's,
it's not like it's the NIT or it has no history.
They're doing it for the first time this year.
Fox pays for the Big 10 network. Fox writes Indiana, you know,
theoretically through, through Big 10 network writes every
school check for 50 or $60 million a year.
Fox didn't do the crown tournament to have, you know,
Duquesne in there. They, they want the top teams
from the top conferences that aren't making the tournament.
I, I understand that, you know, IU doesn't want to do it and
there's transfers and other things to worry about.
But I, I just wonder how this is going to be sustainable over
years. It feels like one of these years
Fox is going to say, hey, guess what?
Do you like that check? We write you at the beginning of
the year for $70 million. Well, guess what?
I'm going to pull a little bit of a leeway here and you're
going to be doing the crown. And I don't care who plays.
I don't care who coaches. I want somebody out there with
the name Indiana Jersey. And if you want that check in
August, let me know. I just, I find it odd to think
that you can just basically, you know, thumb your nose at the at
that fox. Who's?
Creating this tournament for for, you know, for inventory.
Well, you're right, except you know, it's I think as we talked
about earlier on IU, all these teams, they may have contractual
obligations. The players don't.
And ultimately, if you don't have players, it is far more
damaging to people or to like the schools and the brands and
everything like that to have people running around in
uniforms that don't belong there.
And it's not just IU already. And, and I think I've probably
missed some of these, but Iowa has turned down both the NIT and
the crown. Rutgers has turned down both the
NIT and the crown. Like none of them are are going
to be participating in this. And you know, I'm looking at the
NIT field right now and it is, it is barren.
You know, I'm looking for power conference teams in the NIT.
We got Georgia Tech, we got Oklahoma State, we got Stanford.
We've got still looking, still looking.
I think that's it. I think those are our only three
power conference teams. It's Georgia Tech, Oklahoma
State and Stanford. You got like you got Dayton in
there. You've got George Mason, Wichita
State, UC Irvine, UAB, so. Fox didn't do this to Yeah, but.
Fox also created it, I think without realizing that a, the
NCAA was gonna shorten the portal window and move it up and
put teams in a position where they couldn't do anything.
You know, I mean, it's, it's like, what do you can't go
participate in a tournament when you don't have players and you
don't know if you're gonna have players.
Like half these teams don't know what their rosters are going to
look like. And in the case of Iowa and
Indiana, they don't have coaches at this point.
So, you know, it's I whatever Fox's thoughts were, they're
gonna have to go back to the drawing board on this because
even if you were gonna run it, the time to run it would be like
tomorrow, Like, hey, we're gonna do a 5 day tournament that
starts now. And the championship game is
like the morning of, of the, the Saturday of the tournament.
The crown doesn't start till March 31st.
Like who the hell thought that was a good idea?
Yeah. So anyway, well, it is what it
is at this point. So IU season comes to a close,
Scott. I mean, we we obviously talked a
lot about the end of the regular season and then we were
optimistic about the Big 10 tournament game that went really
well. So now that we've seen that game
and now that the season's over, I guess, well, we talked about
some of the scheduling issues earlier on, but any other
general thoughts as you look at this past season and wave
goodbye? I'm I'm pissed, you know, I so I
wasn't pissed. Go I I had, I had gotten kind of
just relegated to annoyance or just kind of relegated to
ambivalence with this team, I should say.
And you know, but then we don't make the tournament.
I just started like here, here's my rant and I might cuss and I
apologize, but it's like 10 years.
I started looking at like, we've made the tournament three times
in 10 years and you can honestly say if Trace Jackson Davis
doesn't come here or come back, it might be one time in 10
years. But let's go with the facts 10.
Three times in 10 years, including this year in the Big
10. Here are the teams that have
made it less than us in 10 years Rutgers, Nebraska, Penn State
and Washington. That's it, Rutgers.
In the last 10 years, Rutgers, I got the whole numbers.
Rutgers made it twice. Nebraska, Penn State, and
Washington have all made it one time.
Now let's go up from there. Minnesota, Northwestern have
also made it 3. Ohio State's made it 4 out of
10. Iowa's made it 5.
USCUSC has made it 5. Illinois 5, Oregon 6, UCLA 6,
Maryland 6. Wisconsin 7.
Michigan 7, Purdue 9, MSU 10. We're in the dregs.
I mean, it just, I'm pissed. It's like this is, this is
unacceptable. And it goes to your point, you
have to nail this effing higher. You just have to.
And then I also look back to the last time that we made the NCAA
tournament three years in a row. Not a stretch for a team that
charges a ton of money that, you know, we're, we're top of the
top of the the food chart. The last time we did that was
2003. All right, I'm turning 47 this
year. I was 25 when that happened.
That was 22 years. And that's like when Marty McFly
went back to the future and then, you know, in in the first
one, that's what he went to was the last effing time we made the
tournament three years in a row. Like it's absurd how bad this
has gotten when you look at it and just you look at the group
that we're in, Northwestern and Minnesota.
Well, and, and as Patrick attically or happily pointed
out, Penn State of the list that you put forward is the only
legacy Big 10 school on that list and legacy also like very
that's like 92, like not even a big that's a like a big 11
school. I, I you now I wish you hadn't
brought them back to the future thing up, because now I'm gonna
think about you as George McFly for the rest of the the night,
because you know, like Scott being played by Crispin Glover
in the movie. I I think we could all get
behind that personal. I won't come back for the second
one. I'll have a contract dispute.
I'm I'm out. I'm out.
We're gonna steal your IP and just hire another actor to play
you. Who would we get to play Scott
if we couldn't agree to contracts with them?
That's fascinating. But no, you're, it's a, it's a
baffling statistic. And it's like, you know, I've, I
heard a lot of people arguing that Mike Woodson perhaps had
been let go a little early, not IU people, but people outside
because they assumed IU was going to get it.
And they're like, well, look, you've made the tournament three
times in four years. Well, they didn't, they didn't
do it, you know, I mean, and, and even if they had, and this
is the other thing, Scott, three times in 10 years.
And you know, you, you think about it like the the 2021 or
the 22 tournament, sorry, Woodson's first year, they were
in the playing game. They were one of the last four
teams. So you still get credit for
that. But you're not talking about,
you know, high levels of success during these time periods.
And no, it is, it is definitely we've talked a lot about the
ebbs and flows of IU basketball historically.
And as as rough as the the the aughts were, this is really a
stretch of time that's equivalent to like 1958 until or
1959 until 1971 when IU made the tournament.
Once in that entire stretch, they kind of hit their lowest
step. Now they hired Bob Knight the
following year and then went on a huge run and, you know,
essentially dominated the big 10 for four years.
Robert got me right. I'm actually wrong.
It was O6 to O8I. I screwed that up.
I was wrong. So it's it's still a while, but
yeah, not as bad. Thank you.
So I'm with you. It's really frustrating because
it's IU should be better than that.
Like even in even in the worst of times, you would think IU
would be better than that. And I OK, I like this Zimmerman,
Bruce Willis and his prime is current.
Scott, let let me we're going to workshop that a little bit more,
but better. Than the reverse.
I know that. But look, ultimately I'm with
you. I guess the frustrating thing to
me about this season was IU fans essentially got bludgeoned into
accepting the continuation of the Woodson era with the
argument that Oh well, Woodson just needs more help
financially. They need to spend more money on
players. You know, the the line was and
got repeated by many people. Well, gosh, you know, they the
Xavier Johnson was injured and my favorite, well, they didn't
expect Jalen Hood Shifino to get drafted in the first round.
He was supposed to be a two year player and that was the argument
as to why last year was a fluke and that IU fans were being
unreasonable. And everybody was supposed to
chill, as we were told by, you know, by by certain players in
the the senior night last year or senior day.
And then IU goes out, they sign a bunch of players in the
portal. Some questions were asked like
are these guys going to gel? Is this going to work?
But it was it was all supposed to be fine and everything was
going to set up well and media bought into it.
Indiana was supposed to be a top 2 program.
Fans were told that they were part of the problem, that they
were not contributing positively to things.
They were, as Patrick just said, hurting the program.
And then Indiana came out and essentially did a redo on the
previous season. A slightly better redo instead
of being entirely out of the tournament package.
They were in the midst of potentially being looked at as a
tournament team, but not really. And then at the end of it, they
don't make the tournament and they're out.
And it just ended up being a really unenjoyable season all
the way through. And you knew it.
Honestly, like the moment in in that first game in Atlantis
where you realize that Indiana was in real trouble against
Louisville. From that point forward, it's
like the the potential of the season and anything that might
have been fun in the least just went away very quickly.
And you know, I can remember what was it.
It was at one point, I think it was like it was 2720.
No, it's 2925. And there were about 5 minutes
left in the first half. And it's like, well, this might
not be too terrible. And then Indiana proceeded to
score 4 points in the next 9 minutes and that by that point,
they were down 48 to 31. And that was before they left
the 23 to three run off in the second-half.
And it's like, wow, this team doesn't care.
Like fundamentally now, there were times when they did care,
but they constantly look like they were fighting against their
own nature and fighting against a system that had been installed
that didn't really work for who they were.
And I think that's the thing I'm going to remember the most.
There were legitimately talented players on this team.
There were players that legitimate that legitimately did
care. But by the end of the season,
you, you know, you had a guy that you brought in at point
guard who you couldn't play as a starter at point guard.
You had to play him in almost spot relief and, and you gasped
every time he took a jump shot. You had a center who played
really hard but got undercut by the way that his coach decided
to employ him with another big man.
And you could say the same thing about the other big man.
You had a player who was not the most gifted offensively, but
clearly was a guy that did a bunch of things right to help
the team that didn't play that much in the first part of the
season for reasons that we still haven't ever had really
explained to us. And talk about Anthony Leal, of
course. I mean, Anthony Leal in the
first, what, 4/13/14 games of the season only had five games
where he played double figure minutes.
And once you got to the Iowa game, he didn't have a game
where he played less than double figure minutes.
So like, yes, Indiana kind of figured it out at the end.
But I think what was most disappointing and, and a little
bit offensive, I think it's just, it's just a fan is it's
like it took them that long to figure out this is how you're
supposed to play winning basketball.
And when I say they, I mean the like Mike Woodson, it, it
shouldn't have taken that long. And the stubbornness and the
arrogance with which he approached this season and last
season really frustrates me because it led to where things
ended up. And I don't know how you
sugarcoat that. Like, there's not there's not a
redemption arc here where it's like, well, you know, Woodson
really tried his best here and there.
Yeah. I mean, in the macro, I'm sure
Mike Woodson had the best of intentions.
But in the actual micro of looking at how he handled this
roster, this team and how he, you know, the, the way that the
players interacted with it, you just cannot help but be
frustrated at a lot of lost potential.
This was not a team with the talent level that should have
missed the NCAA tournament. You know, an 8 seed should have
been a disappointment for this team.
Missing the tournament is unfathomable, unfathomable or
unfathomable in English. If you look at the talent and
you look at the potential and it never or at least rarely reached
that potential. And that is that is probably.
It actually makes I think this season even more frustrating
than last year 'cause last year's team has had some serious
flaws in the way it was constructed roster wise.
This team should not have fallen victim to that same problem
because it had the talent, it just didn't have the plan.
The other thing, and we'll do more Woodson postmortems with a
lot to talk about, but the thing that was really stark this
season, but that I'm going to take away from the Woodson era
is just how disconnected I think I felt and a lot of fans felt
from the coaching staff and the team, which is bonkers when you
think about the main selling point for bringing Woodson in.
He didn't have any college coaching experience.
He wasn't a young, innovative coach.
It was this guy understands Indiana basketball, he
understands what's important, he understands the fan base and he
understands what needs to happen.
And none of that happened, you know, under Creed, for the most,
it felt like Creed understood how important Indiana basketball
was. His ability to pass that on was
sometimes in an odd manner. Basketball was different then,
but you had teams where you had guys for multiple years that you
connected with. I understand things are
different, but it's like not even Indiana thing like
Christian Watford just has had a connection over years.
Even before the watch shot. You know, guys like Verdell
Jones, you got to know, you know, But even under Archie, you
can tell with Archie, it's like part of it was just like, whoa,
this personality is not a good type for this type of job.
And he tried to kind of grin and bear it.
But you even had guys like Juan Morgan or Romeo Langford.
Like there are people that connected here, you know,
outside of Anthony Leo and Trey Galloway who've been around for
a little bit. I think Luke Goody too goody.
Yeah, no Goody came in this year, but and I'll I'll get off
the players. I just this the coaching staff
like it's just you never felt like there was a connection
between this team and the fans. And it's it's wild because that
was the whole idea of bringing a former knight player back.
Bringing a former player back was supposed.
This was not supposed to be the problem that there are many
other things that could have been the problem that wasn't
this and it many times it felt antagonistic toward the fans,
you know, telling us real fans and it's like it's your fault
and like it is wild that it got to that.
But I've never I will speak for myself.
I've. Since I left college, I've never
felt so disconnected and apathetic toward the IU
basketball program. It, I felt this way once and it
was, it was in kind of the, the, the bottom of the Davis era.
And, and that was, you know, there was, it was a very
complicated time, But I mean that the O3O4 and O four O 5
teams and, and even a little bit of the O5O6 team, although it
wasn't quite as bad, really, there was a distance there, but
people still felt very connected to the program.
Because, you know, obviously the atmosphere around IU basketball
was much different 20 years ago than it has been given
everything that's happened over the course of the last decade.
And you know, look, I, I think it was, it's, it was weird
'cause like, Archie was clearly not the right fit for the
program. Archie didn't have the right
personality. He didn't recruit the right
players. You didn't feel the same level
of disconnect. And look, I greatly appreciate
the players that played on this team and, and last year's team,
but it, it really did feel like the barrier was with the
program, like the program belonged to Mike Woodson and
Mike Woodson was going to let you know that the program
belonged to Mike Woodson and. Little stuff that I'll never get
over. Like when he got pissed and he
felt like his feelings hurt. It's like, I'm just done talking
to Don Fisher. Yeah, it's like that's.
That's how you want to. Do it.
That's just, that's petty. And I, well, it's tough because
I mean, you know, there's, there's like a comment about Leo
telling everybody to chill Luke Goody, you know, making the
comment about don't jump back on the bandwagon once you jumped
off. And look, I would have advised
the players not to say those things, but I think it's
important to also keep in mind that the players, I think, feel
responsibility to protect the coach.
They're going to go out and say things to try to protect the
coach, but it's the coach's job to not put the players in
position to say those things. And it felt like Mike Woodson
for the last two years has been throwing people in front of him
to try to protect himself from a reputational perspective.
And that's a shame. And you know, look, I'm sure
things have not gone the way that Mike Woodson would have
intended, but it's just, it's hard when you look at all of all
of the things in totality, the lack of a, a comprehensive
strategic plan that really worked in the modern college
game from an offensive perspective, the fact that the
defense was always just incredibly mid for Indiana.
Like it never really got to a point.
I mean, Woodson, you, you look at Indiana over the course of
the four years that Woodson will have been here, they'll have
finished with defensive efficiency ratings of 244584 and
38. So they had one top 25 defense.
And it was essentially with the team that he inherited from
Archie Miller. Offensively, they never like,
except for the one year, even with Trace Jackson Davis, one of
the best players that we've seen in Indiana uniform in this
century, they were only 28th in the country in offensive
efficiency. The other three years they were
95th, 105th and 68th. When you take that and you add
it to the complete lack of effort or intensity when it
comes to recruiting. You know, no recruiting plan our
our friends over at X's and Joe's, Mike Weemuth in
particular, has pointed out like all of the misses that IU had in
recruiting. And then you Add all of the
public comments and all of the questionable things that
happened there in this feeling that Woodson almost acted like
criticism of him was it was unreasonable under any
circumstances. And you just it it it meshes
with a lot of what you read about Mike Woodson's ten years
in Atlanta and New York, to a lesser extent more Atlanta, but
it just created a lot of barriers between fans and the
team. And look, we've been through a
lot calling, you know, talking about games over the course of
time. Scott, what you just expressed
and what I've heard from so many fans about the distance that
they feel emotionally between themselves and this basketball
program. This is at a level I've never
heard before. And it's going to take a lot of
work by IU athletics and whoever they name is this next coach.
It's not just about we're going to name a new coach and
everything's going to be fine and you're going to come back
and everybody needs to get excited because we got a new
coach. Like there's a lot of bridge
building that this athletic department and this coaching
staff, whoever this new coaching staff is, you're going to have
to do because they have essentially allowed the fans to
be turned into an oppositional force from a perceptional
perspective by by by Mike Woodson.
And a lot of people are not going to forgive and forget
that. Like that's going to stick in
the back of people's minds. Like, there's going to have to
be a lot of work done to try to bridge that gap that frankly,
the athletic department is kind of allowed to happen, mostly
passively, but they've allowed it to happen.
Well, no. And as you say that like you,
hey, let's let's forget. It's like, no, I'm I'm done
being told what to feel and how to come back happily.
I'm going to push back on one thing you said when you said
like, I'm sure this isn't the way Mike Woodson wanted it to
happen, but I don't. I'm sure he didn't want to go
like this, but I'm not sure he thinks it's his.
Like I still, I've never heard him say that.
Like this really sucks. This is not the way I want it to
go. I'm I'm quoting Rav Johns
tweeted this. This is after the Oregon game
from Mike Woodson quote. I don't think there's a team in
the country we can't beat if we prepare and compete for 40
minutes. I don't think today's game was
an indication of how we've been playing the last 2 1/2 weeks.
Well, Mike, it is 'cause you lose like teams that are better
than you, you guys lose to and guess what?
Whose job is it to prepare and get your team ready to compete
like your job. Like what I haven't heard is him
just say, man, damn, this has been a tough four years.
This hasn't gone the way I wanted to.
He hasn't said that. So I mean, I I get your
sediment, Galen. Well.
I don't think he knows that. Like, I think he's like, let me
be clear. I I think in the idealized world
that Mike Woodson has in his brain about how he wanted this
to go, I don't think he wanted it to go this way.
No, I I agree with you. His comments I.
Totally agree. I totally agree.
And I and I think one of the things that became incredibly
frustrating for IU fans. But but look, here's the thing,
the Woodson's comments in in his radio shows, in his post game
conferences, like those things really frustrated IU fans after
a while. But let's be fair, that happened
with Archie. It happened with Crean.
Like coaches, when team, their team isn't performing at a high
enough level speak they always, they always do that.
And you know, as and Andy Stubb points out in the chats, like
Woodson never took accountability and was never
really held accountable until now.
I, I do think it's fascinating, like the sentiment inside the
fan base is kind of what we're talking about right now.
The sentiment outside is still, well, was Mike Woodson treated
too harshly? And I just it's hard when you
look at this culmination and whether or not you want to argue
that I you should have been in the tournament or not.
There's frankly no difference in my mind between what we're
talking about right now with IU out of the tournament and what
we would have been talking about a week from now if IU had gotten
in. As in the play in game, right?
I mean, it's real. It's the same season.
Like the the the end really doesn't matter that much.
And so I just, you know, and this I think actually, you know,
Ray makes a good comment here. Woodson never built a a winning
culture. And, you know, it's the one
thing I'm hanging on to hope with Scott Dolson as he goes
into this coaching search is I hope that there's finally a
recognition that you have to have a coach that builds culture
and builds it quickly. And we've seen that it can be
done. You know, I mean, you, you look
down at what Pat Kelsey did in one season with a brand new
roster in Louisville and they won that many games.
You want to look at Ben McCollum at Drake, You know, and again, I
we've the, the, the audience thinks I hate Ben The oh.
You're a fan of Don't hate. Ben McCollum.
I don't hate Ben McCollum. I admire his ability to build
culture in a short period of time.
I just think I want to I want to see him do it a few more years,
but but ultimately there was never a culture built and and
look, you and I went to a ton of games in person over the course
of the last, you know, four years.
And honestly, I feel like the the team that felt the most
together was that first team in some cases and it got
progressively less like Trace Jackson Davis kind of towed them
along in that second season a little bit with.
I mean, think back to when fantasy hit that shot and we won
and there was the memes of Woodson with a cigar.
I mean, it, it's that that feels like eons ago.
And that was his first year. And that that's what's wild
Galen is the culture was there. I mean, like that team did feel
together. You had fantasy on people's
shoulders, like they they rushed the court.
You beat Purdue, it was there and he brought back TJD, You
brought back a lot of that team. That was the culture of that.
I mean, you, you had, you built it like he had.
He did it that quickly and then it just completely fell apart.
Yeah, it's you know, it, it, it's just a shame.
And we we'll, I don't want a deep dive in the entire wood
scenario right now. There's time for that later.
But I do think as we think about the the IT being over at this
point and we're still just kind of soaking it in like it's all
over. But it just, if there's got to
be a culture builder here next, and it's not just a culture
among the players, it has to be a culture that includes the
fans. You know, as as much as people
have decided they're going to try to rag on the IU fan base,
this is an incredibly loyal, incredibly passionate fan base
when they are treated properly. And I think that's the real key
thing, you know, when, when, when the fan base is actually
kind of brought into the tent a little bit, then there this is
this is a fan base that you can effectively weaponize in a
positive way as a coach. And it's it's just not been
there over the course of of the last time.
And so, you know, what I'm frustrated by is, is ultimately,
and you know, and Pierce talks about this, can you think of a
lower talent to win ratio than the last two years?
I'm struggling to think of one. I mean, I mean, there haven't
been very many teams that had the level of talent this team
had, but there was there was no center to it.
There was no there was no centrifugal force that brought
this team forward and allowed them to do the things that they
needed to do. And then you add in all of the
recruiting losses, you know, when you're you know, it's
losing Liam Mcneely to UConn, you know, that one sucked.
I get it. Losing Jalen Harrelson to Notre
Dame, who's what got to a 13 and 17 this year.
Like it just all of these things that you could have used as
small things at least to win and get talent in it wouldn't have
mattered because there wasn't a really a culture to plug them
into. Probably not.
But Mcneely thing is almost like the scheduling.
It's like where's we put all of our eggs in one basket.
Yeah, it's like that's like guys like that sometimes go to UConn.
Adams says actually there were too many centers.
That's that's well done, Adam. That's that is really good work.
I that that might be the comment of the night so far.
But but, yeah, just just as Patrick said, like it was, you
know, recruiting Woodson, skipping events, all of these
things, these things, these, these things don't matter that
much when you're winning. They don't matter that much when
you feel good about how the team's going.
And even though, as, as Newcastle notes, Woodson beat
Purdue multiple times. Yeah.
I mean, Woodson finished with a 500 record against Purdue.
What else would be like that? I'm not saying that flippantly.
It's like that is really like you look back at the at the era
you'll be. Well, Woodson did beat Purdue.
I'm not sure there's a lot else that he can hang his hat on if
you think about the full four years.
The recruiting stuff and and that my buddy was on this real
early first year. Woodson gets hired and then
doesn't go to the Indiana State title game and, you know, they
go to the the Indiana State final four and and he's like,
that's weird. And and I was like, oh, you
know, he already has his recruiting, you know, you kind
of wash away. But it, it's not even just
recruiting. It goes back to something that
you've said that, you know, being the head IU basketball
coach in Indiana is almost like being, you know, the Pope or a
deity. And but being that that's a big
event in the state of Indiana. And even if you're not
recruiting somebody, you go there and you meet the coaches
because guess what? In a couple years, one of those
coaches there is going to have a kid you're going to want to
recruit. And if you just blow them off
and you only show up when you want that?
One recruit, you're not going to get him.
And looking back, it's like that was a huge like, wow, that
should have been a huge Canary in the coal mine.
And dude, that was like Week 2. That was week two of the job.
You know, part of part of the argument that people made to try
to justify the Woodson higher, which if you'll recall, like was
there was some skepticism because it was out of left
field. It's like we go back and listen
to our podcast on it was like, OK, I guess we'll talk ourselves
into this, but part of it was what we're going to do things
differently now. And, and we're going to be, you
know, like there, there was this whole different regime that was
going to be taking advantage of this influx of NBA guys.
And it's it just it, there was not an infrastructure in place
to make it work. And that's not IU athletics
fault. I don't think it was Woodson
tearing the infrastructure down that they tried to build.
And then it was basically Woodson, in many cases, not
participating in the kinds of things you have to participate
in to be successful. And I to some degree feel bad
for the assistant coaches who, I mean, they, they did go out and
try to recruit and they did other things.
And I don't think they ever had the backup that they needed from
the head man in order to make things happen.
And that's that's a real problem in any coaching situation at the
college level. And so look, I mean, you know,
we've we've really, we've litigated the woods and hire a
bunch. We've talked about some of the
things that have gone on. I mean, it's, it's just
frustrating. And I think for a lot of people,
I mean, we got it's 1030 on a Sunday night.
We got 550 people watching live right now.
And I think for a lot of people, it's just like this feels like
the nadir, you know, this feels like the point where IU they're
moving on from this coach. I think everybody, at least most
people are relieved. But ultimately it's like, what
now? Because there's no future.
I mean, there's there's clearly going to be a future.
There's going to be a coach hired.
There's going to be new players coming in.
There's going to be hopefully New Hope if they get the higher
right. But I think right now, without
any of those things in place and just sitting here as an IU fan
and reflecting on the last four years and really the last nine
years, there's very little to get excited about.
There's very little to feel pride in.
If you're an IU basketball fan and you're looking around and
you're like, you know, I mean, again, Louisville comes back
from winning what, eight games last year?
And, and I mean, the fact they're an 8 seed is ludicrously
stupid. I have a theory about that I'll
share on a different podcast. But you see them, You see, you
know, as you look around the Big 10, you know, this year, you
know Michigan hires Dusty May and goes from a team that went 8
and 24 last year to 25 and 9 and Big 10 tournament champions this
year. You see Oregon come in from the
PAC 12 and make the tournament. You see UCLA come in and make
the tournament like Maryland, who again, as I think everybody
will remember, was bad last year.
They were 16 and 17. They successfully recruited
Derrick Queen and they went 25 and eight this year and are a
four seed in the NCAA tournament.
And it's like, on the one hand, you can look at those things and
say, well, that could happen to us.
On the other hand, you look at it and you're like, how the hell
is Indiana a program that's got all of its history?
How how have they been unable to make any of those sorts of
hires? How have they been able unable
to turn around the program in any way, shape or form?
And how after investing arguably more money than any other Big 10
team in their roster this year, how did Indiana end up out of
the tournament? I mean, it is just, it's, it is
a level of frustration that I think most IU fans feel.
The fact that there are this many people that are still
interested in IU basketball, there's people that should be
thanking those people every day that they're still interested.
Because I know how frustrated I am as a fan, Scott, and I know
how you feel. And for all of the talk about
oh, there's too much negativity, there's too much this or that,
This is why there's negativity. This is why people don't
believe. This is why people are insanely
cynical about this. And I am very fascinated over
the next two weeks to see how Indiana Athletics decides to
address this because frankly, and look, you know, you all
know, you've heard me talking up.
I'm pretty sympathetic to IU athletics on a number of things.
The silence and the deference to Mike Woodson over the last six
weeks is starting to, I think, get on a lot of people's nerves
because at some end, you know, Patrick pointed it out like
Derek, you know, West Virginia dairy and debris comes out and
has some kind of statement about not missing the tournament
crickets so far from Indiana. I mean, it just feels like,
again, we've had an abrogation of duty here as far as
communicating with the fans, and I'm just like, at some point
that has to stop. Yeah, no, I, you said it all
perfectly. The the thing that you said
earlier that is starting to eat me up now more, and I think I
speak for a lot of other people as well, is whatever we do next.
I I don't want to be told and shited as a fan to be like, all
right now, now we're going in this new direction and you need
to follow us. Like now we need to be excited.
Like I I'm I'm very just let me let me get excited on my own.
And you know, you see how they did it with football.
There wasn't it just kind of signeti was just there and all
of a sudden he's yelling at basketball games like whoa, I
kind of woke everybody up. But it's like I see it happen
organically. But as you said, you know, if if
we hire somebody and it's somebody on the list that you
and I were both kind of like about, that's fine.
But I don't want to be told, OK, now let's be a super excited
like now let's buy season 10. Just stop, like, let it happen.
Let's start winning some games. I'm tired as a fan of being told
how to feel and being told how I should be excited.
And and you make a great point of there's nothing, you know,
Woods Woodson is saying nothing about missing the tournament.
It sucks. You're right.
All we know. Is that everyone wants to be out
because they've already just worked out of every.
We're not doing the NIT, we're not doing the crown, we're not
doing anything. Yeah.
I mean, I mean, look, you the Signeti thing is a great example
that I mean, and and his statement going into that, this
whole idea of I was upset at the how low people's opinions and
attitudes were about IU football and I felt I needed to do
something to kick start it. And he was right.
And you, you really do. You're not going to hire the
same type of person as Kurt Signetti for IU basketball for a
number of reasons. And to Signetti's credit, the
number of people who I've talked to who either knew him or knew
somebody that knew him at James Madison who were like, this is
not the guy that was at James Madison in terms of the way he's
acting in the press. Like he, he, he amped it up like
to WWE levels to the point that now you've got like morons at
Barstool talking about him being insufferable.
To which I say, good, right, good.
I'm glad that I'm glad that IU football is bothering you in
March, but you need someone at this point.
Like you need that. You need that level of turn up
with basketball. Basketball needs a real kick in
the ass from a culture perspective as far as the
overall program culture, not just the not just the players,
but the way like the IT is. It is a very stale pro product
because as you said, they've missed the tournament 7 out of
the last 10 years. It is not a product that I mean,
you have to really deeply love IU basketball to still be
engaged in it. And IU is incredibly lucky that
they have so many people that love IU basketball this deeply
and have such a long standing love for it that they have been
willing to stick with it and continue to go to games.
And you saw if you went to games this year in person, you didn't
see this on television, but if you went to games in person, you
could see as as 5 dusty banners points out in the in the chat,
the fanbase is dying off. It's on life support a little
bit. The, the, the mains were not
filled for every game. The balconies were empty for
most of the games. I think the Purdue game was the
one game where there were people all throughout the balconies.
And even that wasn't completely sold out.
It might have been numerically like, you cannot continue to put
a subpar product year after year in front of people and then tell
them that it's their fault, that it's a subpar product.
And I think that's the thing that's irritated me the most
about this last six weeks, is that the overarching atmosphere
on this, not necessarily from IU athletics, but certainly there's
been nothing put out to try to counter that.
That perception is that somehow this isn't Woodson's fault or
Archie Miller's fault necessarily, that somehow the
fans have been to blame for this.
And I just there better be some damage control.
There better be some real efforts on the part of the new
coach and the new coaching staff, but also athletics to try
to acknowledge the fans in some way.
You know, whatever you want to say about the night era,
whatever you want to say about the the Cream era, even for for
the fans, always felt like they were front and center.
And I feel like we've drifted further and further away from
that over the course of the last decade.
And it's a much different thing right now than it was when Cream
got fired. And that needs to change.
Like we've got to have something different at this point.
I agree. So.
I agree so I I'm going to move move us forward just a little
bit of coach. I want to ask you, this is what
I've been thinking about. I, I've listened to everything
you've put out. You've if you're not listening
to Galen when he does coaching talk, it's it's fascinating.
A plug to the insider. You got a great insider video a
couple days ago. Just kind of laying at your
thoughts on things. I'm going to ask you this.
So now we know one variable is down.
We're not making the tournament. I'm going to ask you, I feel
like I'm comfortable in saying this now that if Indiana does
not have a press conference or a coach by let's say Tuesday, I
feel pretty comfortable taking all of the non NCAA coaches off
the board. So NBA coaches, coaches who are
currently not coaching in the tournament, I would say they're
off the board and you're just going to be your coach is
currently in the NCAA tournament.
Is that is that a fairway to look at it?
I mean Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday, But it just feels
like if you if you're lining up somebody who's not in the
tournament right now, you do it Monday or Tuesday.
I don't know that I necessarily agree and here's here's why.
As of a week ago, there was a real good chance IU was going to
be in the tournament. You are probably going to be
approaching things from the perspective of well, let's take
the most extended timeline while also keeping in mind the portal.
And if that's the case, I don't think that you're going to set a
deadline. Like I've seen a lot of people,
We had actually someone in the chat earlier who I recognized
from other chats. I'm always curious who that is,
but I've never actually gotten a clear sense of who they are.
And but they're not the only one that said this, that have been
arguing that there's going to be a press conference tomorrow.
I do not believe that we're going to see any kind of an
announcement tomorrow about a new coach.
But I would say even even if it's not a current NCAA coach,
which I think is a possibility, I don't think you can
automatically assume that if we get to Thursday and there hasn't
been an announcement that it's somebody that's currently
coaching. And, and here's why.
I, I think from the perspective of how you would have timed this
out originally if you had something, if you've already got
something squared away, which is one of the the going theories,
which is that I use had someone said they're in the background,
they wanted to wait till the season was over.
You kind of have to because of how complicated it is.
Even if that's the case, I don't think you're scheduling that for
Monday. And if you didn't already
schedule it because you might have been in the NCAA
tournament, well, you're not going to suddenly turn around,
call the guy and say, hey, fly to Bloomington immediately or
we're going to send the plane because we're going to do a
press conference right now. I just don't think it's going to
work that way. So I understand where you're
coming from, but I don't think that you can really read
anything into the announcement timing for this week when it
comes to that population or that sample of potential coaches.
But wouldn't have to be this week.
You mean, again, let's say it's somebody not coaching in the
tournament. Wouldn't you want to get it done
before the portal opens? Well, you would like to, but
again, I, I think this is where it's going to be really
fascinating with a lot of these teams how they handle this
because there are going to be some teams that are going to try
to fill this week. But like, for instance, like
North Carolina State does not look like they're on the
precipice of hiring somebody immediately.
We hear, we've heard names tossed around Will Wade's in
that mix. There's another couple of people
in that mix, but that's looks like it's still in the rumor
stage. We don't know what's happening
there. Iowa, I mean, they're, they're
parting waves with Fran McCaffrey.
They don't look like they were immediately going to hire
somebody. So I think you would like to get
somebody in before the portal opens.
I don't know if you're necessarily going to be able to.
You got to get somebody in very quickly around the time that the
portal opens. And again, just a reminder
everybody, the portal opens in eight days.
It's not like a long way away. But with all of that thought
through, I just would like to note that, you know, you need to
be careful about assuming because we go go past a certain
date that that takes certain candidates off the table that.
Makes sense? Yeah, the coaching thing is
going to be fascinating because again, and I'll, I'll reiterate
what I said in the subscriber video.
I also said a little bit in one of the podcast a couple of days
ago. I, I just would be very, very
careful about making assumptions based upon what you're hearing
in media reports or, you know, whatever you want to call like
Internet reports, social media, because you know, like all the
talk today was about Brad Brownell and all the talk over
the course of the Thursday we're at.
Now is that is that our guy for the for the week?
But then, but then before that it was all about Ben McCollum
and and I just want to note that the could it be one of those two
guys? Sure, it could be.
I mean it, it's very possible. But again, I would just note,
like when when Kurt Zignetti got hired, he was not being talked
about by anybody. Seriously.
All the talk was on Jason Candle.
All the talk was about, you know, Paul Crist, like these
were the names that we were hearing.
He mentioned some of the talk was that Allen wasn't going to
get fired, right. No, you know, Adam Rittenberg
was like, oh, hey there. Like, you know, he's going to we
think he's going to be retained. We've heard no talk about him
fire like that. Really that you think.
So when Mike Woodson got hired, we didn't know Mike Hart was
another one. Thank you.
Andy Stump. When, when, when Woodson got
hired, We didn't really have an inkling before the the news
broke the day of. You know, there was that weird
scene at the Knicks game where Woodson's, like, hugging people
as he's walking off the bench. And it was like, well, that's
weird. And if you put two and two
together, you would have saying, OK, maybe that's the indication.
But people didn't look at that and say, Mike Woodson's going to
become the next head coach. That's not how the reporting
went. When you do a Google search,
coaches hugging starting. Today.
When? When?
When when we saw Archie Miller get hired, the, the, the news
kind of came out of nowhere. It wasn't rumored.
I mean, Steve Alford was the one that we heard about constantly.
Remember, like I remember distinctly Seth Greenberg with
his normal terrible analysis coming out after hearing Scott
Dolson talk and saying, you know, you, you hear Scott Dolson
say these things, he's talking to Steve Alford.
It's like he wasn't talking to Steve Alford.
He was never talking to Steve Alford.
You know, So I just, I would just really caution everybody to
be careful to accept at face value.
And I would also caution Dolson, don't talk to Steve Alford this
time. He's.
Alford already announced that he was coming back to Nevada for a
that doesn't. Mean anything.
So it's like if if Alford calls let's.
Not don't. Not take that call but.
You know, so I just want to, I want to just tell everybody
don't freak. That's actually, I think a
really good attitude with a lot of this.
Don't freak when you see things on message boards.
Don't freak when you see things on Discord.
Don't freak when you see things on X, because again, if you
acknowledge that Indiana has managed to keep almost all of
these hires under very, very tight wraps until they happen,
it doesn't make any sense that we would know about Brad
Brownell three days before he got hired, or that we would know
about Ben McCollum 5 days before he got hired.
Like what? Like, what's the logic that you
would be using to make that kind of a leap?
Right? That's that's the thing that the
people get sucked into it. I get it.
It's not a whole lot different than people getting sucked into
the Brad Stevens thing, you know, like, so I get it.
But but my point is don't freak during the search.
And and I don't know when the search happens, but I guarantee
something's gonna drop. It'll almost certainly be Zach
Osterman that gets the news first or, or Pete Thamel, like
one of the two. It'll probably Thamel because
it'll be an agent calling Thamel and he'll release the news and
then Osterman will jump on it immediately.
That's how the system will work. That hasn't happened yet, but
just if I almost look at the presence of names on message
boards and chatter as being a good indicator that person won't
be in contention for the job. And as we've seen, like, you
know, there's now rumors that Brunel is going to get a
contract extended. We don't know if that's actually
the case or not. But it is fascinating watching
all of this and you look at how it's timed out.
I just think the I just don't want people to get too down the
road of being despondent. I've had so many people message
me the last couple of days who are huge IU fans, but they're
like, I can't take another bad hire.
And I'm like, the only reason you're saying that is because
you're convinced from these media reports in very loose
terms that we're having a bad hire coming up.
And I just had a hard time fundamentally believing that if
that was the direction we were going, that it would be this out
in public already. No, I agree.
The the trouble is my speaking to myself as well here now is
when it gets really hard not to freak out.
You know, the we, we've known we've been doing this, this
coaching thing. You and I have done what, 5
podcasts with four different coaches every time over the last
four or five weeks and it's been, it's been easy to be fun
while there's also games going on.
Oh, this is fun. Like, and then I'll also watch
IU play Oregon in a couple days and like now it's done.
But like now we are just a boat without a motor.
Well. We're just we're.
We're a boat, the oars are pulled in, we're just sitting
there and, and now this is all we have to think about.
But just like now, now is the time.
You do need to heed the advice to, to chill.
And I'm speaking to myself as well because I get caught.
I I start thinking about it, get caught up and start trying to
connect the dots and, and now is where these are going to feel
like dog years. Every day is going to feel like
a dog year. I would like to to say hi to the
truly Discord who's apparently watching the show.
At least some of them are. Thanks to Jay for pointing that
out. And someone was like, I don't
have any tidbits. I'll say this.
I have been really careful not to say who I think they're going
to hire or say, even though I want they're going to be higher
because I don't want what I say on this front to make people
think that I know something on this, that that I'm hiding or
anything like that. I mean, to me, I've said all
along the, the number, the people who think that they know
what's going on with this coaching search don't.
And I go back to this, this is actually a really good point.
I, I did already see Matt Painter.
I did see Matt Painter. That's right, though, Erger 54
here. Does the hire process for coach
significant give you any confidence they can get the IU
basketball hire correct? It does.
But again, that that part of that process was that nobody
really knew what was going on. Part of that process also was
that I, I was conscious that there were fake names or
misdirection names that were being spread by people who were
close because they were trying to throw people off the scent.
And so that's one of the reasons why AI think that they've spent
a lot more time on this than people are giving them credit
for. And B, they are very, very good
at not tipping their hand. And I think we should be, we
should feel good about that. I I will say I do not blame
anybody in the IU fan base who is approaching this hire with
extreme skepticism, given how the last couple of hires for
basketball have gone. And we may get to the higher and
it may be somebody who is like really unimpressive.
And at that point, I will probably say some very critical
things about the process. But until we get to that point,
I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because I
was very skeptical of the football process.
And it yielded not just a great coach who I think would have had
a good season in his first year like most normal coaches do, but
it yielded a coach that ended up with the greatest season in IU
football history. So it's just kind of like I'm, I
think they've bought at least. Some benefit of the doubt while
this process goes along. I agree.
No, and and that to me is where the Signeti hire really matters
because you know, it's some people are mentioning here and
we've talked about it many times.
You you know, this is this is Dolson.
This is like a small group of people, Scott Dolson leading
this. And you know, you have to have
faith that he's going to make the right choice.
And his track record is that he does.
He does. And he did.
So you have to assume that he knows what he's looking for and
what he's looking for thus far has been good because it worked
in in football. And so you it's really a comment
here by most like it's it. We have to chill.
It's hard to chill when nothing's happening and there's
no more games. But I, I agree.
We, we have to the, the thing that I will say back to kind of
your, your larger take on the IU atmosphere and you know, the fan
apathy and just myself, I early on when you said, you know, IU
has to nail this hire, I, I intrinsically kind of disagreed
because I just felt like, Hey, it's IU.
Like we, we hired a bad coach. We had another bad hire, like we
had two bad coaches four years apart.
Like we'll just, we'll do it again in four more years.
The more I hear you talk and the more I think about my own
feelings of where we're at with basketball, I, I'm more on the
moving more toward we have to nail this higher.
Just be just because I look at myself, you know, and, and I
forget someone had this in the comments up here.
He's been a season ticket holder for 23 years.
The first year he hasn't gone to a game.
I went to I think three games this year partially.
So I, I have kids that are getting older.
It's just like life's getting busier, but it's, it's no longer
appointment viewing for me either.
It just, you know, I've sees I've had season tickets since
2000 and with my dad, like I mean, it was, it goes back to
the 2000s and I've had tickets probably 20 plus years as well.
This is the least number of games I've gone to as well.
And I I just use myself as kind of an avatar for a lot of fans.
I could see myself disengaging even.
I'm never going to stop caring or, or not care, but I can see
myself disengaging more. So I just, I, I've come around
that I do think this is a very, very important hire.
And even if they don't stick it and it doesn't work, you know,
you need to have some wins, but you need somebody who can
understand the, the atmosphere they're coming into.
And while it's not the Tom Crean kind of toxic wasteland, that
there is a lot of toxic residue out there and there's some
issues. And you need a coach who
understands that, you know, it's not all their fault.
A lot of this precedes them, but it it becomes it becomes their,
you know, cross to bears, so to speak.
And they they have to be the one to move forward with it.
And they're going to take some arrows that probably are
directed at people who were here in the past and they have to
take them and move on. Yeah, No, it's.
I think you you really did a great job of summarizing the a
large part of the picture. It is going to be a tough sled
to start with. And, and look, I think Caleb and
Bob both bring up some good points.
I mean, Caleb says IU fans just need to look at the hires
Kentucky and Louisville made. All their fans were pissed.
They both had great seasons, Bob, you know, throws Michigan
in there. They weren't happy with the hire
at the outset. The pool of available coaches, a
pile of above average with questions except for a couple of
you feel like they settled. I mean, Kentucky was like, do we
get passed whatever? Like Kentucky had a real crisis
of confidence. Yes.
And so, look, as we've talked about before, there's a bunch of
different directions that you can go.
What we've talked about on this show over the course of the last
six weeks is it would be great for IU to try a different
approach and go after a big fish and try to bring someone in
who's got a pre-existing track record of winning big at the
power conference level. If they've taken some swings at
those folks, but it hasn't worked out for various reasons.
I think what's important to understand is that is not a
reflection necessarily on whether the IU job is good or
bad. I think it's a reflection more
on the fact that college basketball now is different than
college basketball was 25 years ago.
When Bob Knight got fired, there were a number of coaches at big
programs who would have crawled over broken glass to take the
Indiana job. Then of course, Miles Brand
decided he's going to hire Mike, Mike Davis as opposed to going
out and hiring Rick Pitino, who really wanted the job, or hiring
Bobby Cremans, who really wanted the job.
Like there were a bunch of program, you know, coaches at
other programs who were like, Indiana is clearly one of the
best programs you can go to now. I mean, look around like your 1
seeds are Houston, a team that was in the American Athletic
Conference a couple of years ago, Florida, which a couple
years ago wasn't even in the NCAA tournament.
Auburn, which was, you know, like the graveyard for college
basketball coaches more often than not.
You know, Alabama was in contention.
Alabama was barely a contender. You know, before they hire
NATO's, I think what we've seen is that you don't have to be at
Indiana in order to win big. Scott Drew won a title at
Baylor, which nobody would have predicted 20 years ago was even
a possibility. And that was before they had
half their team, you know, have to transfer because somebody
murdered somebody on the team. So I say all of that to say, if
Indiana's able to land a big fish, whether it is one of those
types of coaches, the Drews, the Otso Burgers, the Lloyds, you
know, whether they land a guy, you know, they land a Brad
Stevens or a Billy Donovan or, or somebody like that.
I mean, even if they don't land any of those, there are a lot of
great coaches that are at at lower levels or coaches that are
just getting into the higher level, but are clearly on the
beginning of the upswing of the the bulk of their their best
years. You know, they're just entering
their primes. You know, coaching primes are
normally between about the ages of 48 and 62.
There's a bunch of guys that fit that category.
Those won't be sexy hires. And as we had pointed out with
Louisville and Michigan to a lesser extent, I think, you
know, people were like, who Dusty Mays at least been to a
Final Four and certainly Kentucky with Mark Pope.
Not hitting the big fish looks a bad in the beginning because
it's hurtful to your pride, but it doesn't mean that it's a bad
hire to go with the next person. But you have to have someone in
place who really understands what that means.
And I think where IU fans are understandably skeptical is that
in their brains, they've got IU hiring Mike Davis.
They've got IU not moving on in the right amount of time from
Tom Crean. They've got IU, you know,
deciding, yeah, let's put Bill Lynch in as the head football
coach. That'll work out really well.
Like, you know, the hiring Mike Woodson.
I I think what's different now is I really think whether or not
you want to attribute the Woodson hire to Scott Dolson or
not. I think that Dolson has really
grown in his time as athletic director.
And I think the fact that he went through this entire process
of trying to figure out what made good football programs,
good football programs and use that as a criteria through which
he then went and found Kurt Signeti.
You you have to say, perhaps he's learned a lot more about
what makes a program work and and how much, how important
culture is, how important understanding of logistics are,
how important it is to get someone in place who understands
what their job is and is willing to do it.
Like those things matter. And I don't know that those
things have necessarily mattered.
I think honestly, I think Fred Glass, it was like Archie
Miller's the top name in the pool.
I'm going to go get Archie Miller.
And it's kind of like there's a story in Season on the Brink
about where where they're going through the whole thing about
Delray Brooks and most people don't remember Delray Brooks.
Delray Brooks was Indiana Mr. Basketball I think in 1982 or
83, and I think it was 82 actually, or maybe it was 84,
whatever. It was around that time Michigan
City and everybody wanted Delray Brooks.
And Bob Knight is like, well, this guy's clearly a good
player. He's like, Delray, I expect to
see you in Indiana. I want you there.
Delray really wanted to come to Indiana.
Delray gets to Indiana and it's very apparent very quickly that
Delray Brooks can't play the style of basketball that Bob
Knight needs him to play. He can't play good man to man
defense. He's not a great individual
scorer. He's not a guy that can play in
the system that Bob Knight is playing.
It didn't mean Delray was a bad player.
Delray went and start, you know, was one of the two best players
arguably for that Providence team that went to the Final four
in 87 alongside but Billy Donovan.
But it was a great case of of of Knight at that point focusing on
a player because he was highly rated, not because he fit with
the system. And I think that to some degree
that's what happened with Fred Glass and Archie Miller, where
like Archie Miller was clearly the best hire of the cycle.
Everybody thought that was the case, but he didn't fit what
Indiana needed. And as we've heard after the
fact, Archie. Talked to his brother Sean and
his and Sean's like you have to take the Indiana job you don't
like turn down Indiana from Dayton.
But it was clearly something he was never comfortable with.
And so I I think that I'm going to give Dolson the benefit of
the doubt that Dolson has learned from that experience
that you have to have a guy who's not just great on paper,
but great for the situation. And as we've seen now on
multiple occasions with IU basketball, that is absolutely a
key element of being the head basketball coach in Indiana.
You can't be here otherwise. Or if you learn nothing else
from listening Crimson cast, just hire the guy who raises
miniature goats. Miniature donkeys.
Donkeys. Donkeys, yeah, that's, that's
all you gotta do is just hire the guy that has miniature
donkeys and you're all good. No, I agree with all that.
I think it's it's a good, it's a good mindset to go into the next
week or two with. It is and and look, we may hear
something sooner rather than later.
We may hear something that you know, you, you may hear
something that you're just kind of like, I don't know about
that. And look, it may not work.
I don't think you're going to be able to effectively litigate it
on the first day of the hire or the first time you hear it.
And then again, I'm not talking from any level of insider
knowledge. I've got my theories about
what's happening. And, and there was something
that was said earlier in the chat that that I do think is
really important to keep in mind.
And I mentioned it in the subscriber video today, but I'll
say it here too. Like, I really do think the
seeds for Woodson's actual exit were planted internally in the
minds of IU Athletics a lot earlier than February.
You know, I think this is something that IU Athletics has
been looking at for a while, you know, and well, this is so
everybody's asking me to share the theories.
This is why I don't share theories on the podcast, Scott,
I'll say this. It's not me.
The, the, the, the, the theory, at least part a of the theory
is, I don't, I really don't think you have a three month
period or two-month period of time where you know that the
job's going to come open at some point, whether it's in February
or whether it's the end of the year.
And you do no work to, to, to address that or to, to, to range
things. And you know, you can make the
argument. I think Andy's brings up a good
point. Like in Dolph's mind, it might
have been last year, allegedly. I mean, all that smoke that we
heard in February of last year about the job potentially coming
open, that didn't come out of nowhere.
So this is not something that just popped up.
It wasn't like Mike Woodson walked into Scott Dolson's
office like, hey, I'm retiring. Surprise, like it didn't work
that way. That there was clearly something
that happened earlier on that allowed Indiana to start going
down this route from an intellectual perspective.
And Dolson, the way he works is a very kind of measured.
Yeah, this is not a guy who just shoots from the hip is yeah,
let's go with this guy. Like I, I'm with you on that,
that it's, if Dolson has nine months to work on something,
he's not going to do the project 2 weeks before it's due.
The one theory I'll share on this, and again, it's, it's not,
I don't have any proof of this, but it just, it seems
implausible given how leaky the rest of college athletics is,
that if Indiana's conducting a traditional coaching search and
they're actually bringing people in regularly and doing things,
you know, and, and talking with agents and things like that
directly. There's been very little
actually leaked from the Indiana side on this.
You know, it's, and it's really what I find fascinating is the
amount of just, you know, tons of people talk to both Scott and
I through DMS or things like that, Like the, the, the number
of fake outs and, and fake names or misdirected names that just
come out of the blue that get passed around and repeated over
and over again. And the fact that it's happened
in this very orchestrated pattern from the the very
beginning of the search all the way through till now.
Like, if you think, if all of you IU fans that go back and
think about the fact that, you know, first you had Dusty May
and then Destiny May, Destiny May signed a contract extension
that was weird. And then you had TJ Otzelberger,
which was promulgated by Jeff Goodman, who later claimed he
was not surprised that Otzelberger didn't take the job,
whatever. Then I mean you, you've had this
whole litany of names that keep getting floated and they're
floated like just at the right time to like goose people's
attention. That seems season 1 of IU coach
search had writers. It kind of feels that way, Like
the writers room has been working overtime with this
coaching search. Now here's Lotus.
Like who? Who's?
Going to be the killer. The, the Steinman class says
Goodman knows shit. I don't agree with that.
But here's the thing. And, and this is, this is the
thing for those who don't like Goodman, and I understand why.
I, I'm, I'm friendly with Jeff. I, I, you know, I, when Jeff's
in town, we, you know, we'll, we chat.
I enjoy talking with him. I think the thing to keep in
mind is that, you know, Jeff talks to a ton of coaches.
He talks to a ton of agents. It doesn't mean he's necessarily
getting the truth, but he is getting things that are being
told to him. It's his job to interpret those
things like any other journalist.
And and I think the thing to keep in mind with all of this is
I don't think I don't think the journalists are purposefully
lying, but I also don't necessarily think that they're
getting accurate information. And it's tough to parse these
things. Ultimately, what we come down to
is if you have to come back to Indiana's conduct in these
coaching searches is different than most other universities in
terms of how they handle it. You think about how the Kentucky
search went down. You think about how the
Louisville search went down. There were a ton of things being
floated around back and forth. Those were very public searches.
There was a lot of leakage in those.
I don't think that's what we've been seeing with this IU search.
Does that mean that Indiana will come up with a a different name,
one that we're not seeing on the board or one that's that's under
the radar? I tend to think yes, but I don't
totally know. And they had the question from
Josh, like, why are IU searches so different?
I think it's just 'cause IU has a really good system in place
where, you know, the, the, the power has been consolidated now,
you know, it's different in different searches.
I think, you know, last time around it was like two or three
people, but they knew that it was going to be option A or
option B, and option B ended up being Mike Woodson.
So there really wasn't a lot of discussion that had to be had.
I think with this one, there's been enough of A, a runway
established in terms of knowing what Indiana needs to do that
they are they, they're able to coordinate things in such a way
with the number of people who really need to know is really,
really small. And if you can keep that, and I
think Indiana's done a great job of it, like the number of people
I can think of at the top of my head that really need to know
what's going on is like the numbers 4, right, 80.
And if you got that, and if you know how to contact people
through the right channels and if you're contacting the right
people, the rest of it plays out itself.
And so that's ultimately where we're at with all of this.
And so I'm really curious to see what happens this week.
And I I just have this sneaking suspicion that it's going to be
a name that is either was either talked about and then was Pooh
poohed as not being realistic and fell off the board, or it's
someone that we haven't really even thought of too much.
I have AI have a feeling it's going to come out of one of
those two categories. And if I'm wrong, I'll come on
here and say I was wrong, but we'll see.
Anyway, we've almost gone an hour and a half.
We should probably start to wrap it up.
But anyway, what we'll do throughout the course of the
week, folks, is obviously we'll keep ourselves, you know, up to
speed on what's going on, follow along on Substack, follow along
on X. Someone said I sound like time.
I don't know if I like that. That's not that's pretty, that's
pretty mean. But but but I do, I mean, I know
what you're talking about. I do think ultimately though,
the idea that there's a bunch of people that know what's going on
is false. And the idea like most of these
media reports are coming from agents.
Most of these reports are coming from people who have a vested
interest in particular information coming out there.
And, and just keep that in mind. Don't freak out.
We may find out something tomorrow.
I don't think we will, but we might.
We might find something out next week.
We might find something out two weeks from now.
And something we both talked, sorry, wrap up some of we both
talked about and you mentioned on your last pod as well, you
know, IU is the the best open job out there right now.
So much like LA was used as kind of a foil to get other, you
know, to get cities to get a new stadium, every agent is going to
use Indiana as a push to like, you know, if your if your coach
wants the Iowa job, you want Iowa to feel like Indiana's
about to hire that guy. And so Iowa needs to either make
an offer or make a better offer than what they were going to
make. And so that's the good and the
bad of kind of being the biggest fish in the pond is you're going
to be leverage for everybody else.
Yeah, and that's that's where it at.
And you know what, I think Indiana's actually fine with
that. I think Indiana likes the fact
that they're being used in that way.
It's just tough because fans end up getting caught in the middle
of it. Because when all you have,
because the athletic department can't say anything, they can't
come out and say, well, we're actually looking at this group
of people, not this group of people, but they can't come out
and say that directly to the fans and they, you know, so it
puts everybody in a bad spot. So all I'll say is like, pump
the brakes. Let's wait to see what happens.
Someone arguing that Villanova is as big of a job, maybe, I
mean, maybe I, I would say that Villanova is a they've won
championships more recently, but they're those championships were
Jay Wright, as we quickly found out.
And I don't think Jay Wright's coming back, which makes that
job a lot worse. And we'll see.
Maybe somebody else is able to do what they did.
But if you look at Villanova before Jay Wright, they wandered
in the wilderness for quite a while.
So anyway, guys and gals, all of you folks in the audience as
always really appreciate it. Hopefully this was therapeutic.
I know it was therapeutic for me and Scott and we look forward to
chat with you all again throughout the course of the
week. Keep an eye on it.
Subscribe to the Sub Stack, subscribe to the YouTube channel
and go to homefieldapparel.com. Thank you all and we will catch
you folks. On the flip side, the IU
Basketball 2425 comes to a close.
Let's see what happens in the offseason.
We love you all. Thank you for being a part of
all of this. It's been a hell of a year
between football and basketball. Man, what a ride.
What a ride. Stay never daunted, folks.
Bring back the Bison. We'll catch you, folks.
On the flip side, it's all everybody.