You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast.
Alan Clavio, Scott Caulfield joining you.
It is Sunday, January 12th, 2025, and we're back with more
IU sports talk as we get towards the middle part of January here
and continue to wind through the Big 10 schedule for the men.
And well, Scott, 2 steps forward, one steps back or one
step back with this basketball team again.
And we're going to dive into what happened in that Iowa game.
Look a little more holistically at what's going on with the
season since the last time we talked, and we'll see what else
we talked about as we move forward with this.
But Scott, good to see you again.
How are you doing today? I'm doing great.
I love going off off script real quick to throw you off.
But I mean IU football real quick, like it's better to have
won. So I don't love the idea of
like, hey, man, you know, we lost, but we're, you know, but
our two losses look pretty good right now.
If you look at the national championship game, it is, you
know, you look at that, it's like, all right, there's only
one team in the country who lost to those two teams and nobody
else. And that would be us.
And again, it's much better to win and, and make the finals.
But it it is funny, like there's not a lot of talk anymore of
strength of schedule or quality losses.
Like those are two quality losses.
Those are two good teams we lost to.
It is. And you know, it's funny because
a, I've seen a lot of people tweeting about that or posting
about that. And, and I think they should, I,
I have seen people be like, well, you know, it's loser
mentality if you, if you're, you know, celebrating losses.
And my response to that and what I would recommend everybody's
responses to that be should someone bring it up in
conversation? First of all, what's happening
in your life that you're talking with someone who's bringing that
up in conversation? If you're on Twitter, and I say
this as someone who's on Twitter all the time, that's your own
fault. But you know, the response is IU
fans aren't celebrating the losses.
IU fans are reacting to the hideously disproportionate and
narratively incorrect response or, or, you know, to IU losing
those games. IU loses to Ohio State, who's in
the national title game and has looked incredibly dominant in
most of the games that they played in this playoff.
And everybody was told, oh, Indiana lost.
They don't possibly belong in the College Football Playoff.
Indiana loses by 10 to Notre Dame at at Notre Dame.
And everybody says, oh, well, they clearly didn't belong in
the playoff. You know, Colin Coward's like,
let's never invite Indiana again.
And then you watch the rest of the playoffs, you're like, oh,
Notre Dame's actually good. Who would have thought?
So, yeah, it's it's a it's an interesting spot for IU fans to
be in. And it's been funny watching non
IU fans pick up on this. Like several of the accounts
that follow college football have, you know, picked up on
this since then. A couple of them tweeted out
like we all owe Indiana an apology.
And I'm like, what I what I find most amazing is again, Indiana
has broken the national media landscape when it comes to
football, where we're still talking about Indiana and it's
the 12th of January. We're not talking about SMU.
We're not talking about Clemson. We're not talking about, you
know, any of these other teams. We're still talking about
Indiana. That that's that's good.
I'm curious what the narrative when the preseason polls come
out and we're ranked like 19th and what what's that going to be
like? You know, you can't you're not
allowed to do that. Like there'll there'll be some
other reason why like, you know, Feinbaum and you know, Alabama
need to be pissed at Indiana for being there.
It's like, it really is it. It's like the, you know, Revenge
of the Nerds. And like the nerd is in the the
cool kids party. It's like, how can we get this
out? Like, how can we stop this
infestation because we let them in?
Illinois is coming next. Like I, I want to, I want to get
to our ad reads first, but I, you know, sorry, but I think
it's an interesting. In fact, let me we'll quickly go
to the ad reads and then I want to address that 'cause I don't
think it's gonna be quite the same.
But anyway, first of all, just a reminder folks, that if you
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That's right. That's right.
So anyway, we'd love to have you on that as well.
I want to go back to what you said though, Scott, about like
Indiana's going to be ranked to start the season in most polls
in football. Better be, yeah.
And I think I said when we talked about this last time, I'm
anticipating somewhere between like 15th and 25th.
And I don't think one of the weird things about college
football is that the hardest period of time you're generally
going to have in terms of national perception is the first
year that you're really good. So you think about like, I
remember when Kansas State came out of nowhere in the 90s and
made it in the polls and everybody's like, what is that
Kansas State? Ha ha.
They can't really be there. And then they were sustainably
good. And now we don't blink when
Kansas State is in a major bowl or they're in the Big 12 title
game or whatever. And I think it's going to be
that way with Indiana. You know, now Indiana has to
remain competitive for places in the poll, certainly.
But I look at Indiana as probably, you know, the next
phase of how they are viewed on a national stage to be kind of
like how Minnesota is viewed. You know, someone noted with
Minnesota's bowl win in the in the Dukes Mayo Bowl this year,
they've won that like their last seven or eight bowl games in a
row, which is wild to think about.
But it's like Minnesota's done just enough on the national
stage consistently that no one's like shocked when they're in the
poll or, you know, if they put together a big run that they
might be in contention outside for a playoff bid, especially
now. So I think with Indiana, a lot
of the nouveau riche, you know, negative reaction that you get
from a lot of the blue bloods and a lot of the traditional
media powers probably starts to go away.
I also think, you know, a lot of the arguments against Indiana
about, you know, well, they just have a bunch of group of five
talent that starts to dissipate as well, because you were seeing
them start to pull in more power for conference talent in this
transfer portal and recruiting will go up and all of those
things. So I, I actually don't think
anybody's going to bat an eye at IU being in the poll.
I don't think it's going to be one of those things where
everybody's like, well, they don't belong because this is how
it works. It's dumb, but this is how it
works in college football. That's fair, That's fair.
But we're not here to talk college football, sadly.
We will be back. I think next week.
We're going to sit down and talk through the transfer portal
editions and talk about where Indiana still needs to make some
moves and talk about how the offseason's gone so far overall.
But today, we're going to talk about IU basketball.
The Hoosiers were on a nice little streak there for a little
while. They'd won five games in a row.
Three of those games were in the Big 10 Conference, and Indiana
was four and one on Saturday at about 7:00 PM Eastern Time.
And we're getting ready to go to Iowa.
And it was a, you know, Iowa was projected to win by 5.
But it was one of those games where you looked at it and you
said, you know, this is an Iowa team that frankly is they're
they're not that good defensively.
They're very bad. Yes, they can score, but
Indiana's playing really well with this single big lineup
that's been forced by Malik Renew's injury.
They've been they've been getting good play out of Omar
Barlow. They've been getting good play
out of Miles Rice. They've gotten good play out of
several other players. And you looked at this and you
were like, this is a good acid test for Indiana.
This is a game against a team that's borderline NCAA
tournament. They might make it, they might
not. You know, they don't really have
any, any great wins on their resume.
If you could go in and win at Iowa, it's going to be a quality
win regardless. And at the very least, let's see
Indiana go in and compete and and play to their maximum
potential. What we thought we saw in these
previous games that did not happen.
Indiana came out immediately allowed a huge run, which we've
seen a lot from this IU program, not just under Mike Woodson, but
certainly a lot under Mike Woodson.
Then they rushed back into the game, actually took a 28 to 25
lead. And and I was thinking at that
point, Scott is like, hey, maybe they figured it out.
Maybe they just needed to deal with that initial onslaught and
they'll be fine moving forward. And then they proceeded to get
absolutely boat race the rest of the way.
They they take a 28 to 25 lead and it turns into a 25 point
loss, 85 to 60 and just a almost a complete abandonment of what
you wanted to see Indiana doing on the floor.
Scott. The only surprising thing about
this game to some degree was that Indiana got themselves back
in it for a little while. Everything else read like the
exact same script that we've been seeing from Indiana,
certainly over the course of the last couple of years.
Yeah, I mean, that's the the this team is so inconsistent.
And I'm going to quote a couple times.
Like Zach Osterman wrote a great article today in the Indie Star
just kind of hammering that point home over and over again.
The thing that I was thinking about with this is, you know,
the joke you see less and less now as planes get safer, but
there is a joke for you and I will growing up of like, why
don't they just make the plane out of what they make the black
box out of? You don't know, like a, a plane
crashes. There's a black box that holds
all the audio recording and the joke is always like, just
because that thing is indestructible, like make the
plane that and then you're fine. And you, you think about that
with this Indiana team, you know, like the, you know, they
have that run against Iowa where they go, hold on, let me pull up
exactly that run. It was a, you know, 18 to two
run after they they've give it up.
And during that stretch, you're like, all right, this is great.
This is kind of what we've talked about all season.
Like why can't you just do that throughout the entire game?
And, you know, on a macro level, you have this where you have,
you know, two game stretches, like we talked about last time,
where they they're shooting threes, They're looking good.
All right, just do this throughout, you know, multiple
games. And in the end, I think that's
kind of a, the fallacy of that argument is, you know, not all
teams can do that the entire game or else.
Like that's why some teams don't win titles, So some teams don't
make the tournament. And, and I think that's like the
hard reality with this team is they're not capable of keeping
that stretch up, whether it's their ability to do it and keep
mentally focused on what they need to do, the schematics that
they're running, or the fact that there is another team over
there that when other teams seem to make adjustments, those
problems seem to compound. And you, you know, the
frustrating part with this team and kind of the last couple of
years of IU basketball is you see glimpses.
It's like a cloudy day. The sun comes out for 12
seconds. You're like, oh, that's awesome.
Why can't it be like this all day?
And then it goes away and then you don't know when it's going
to come back. The only thing that we know is
that this is going to be inconsistent.
And that's the thing. You know what, we might have a
stretch later on the season. We have two or three games that
are good or we have a couple of games or we have long stretches
within games that things are good, But it's really hard for
me to say I'm I feel like we've turned a corner on XY or Z
because every single season, one of those whatever you're talking
about, whether it's 3 point shots, whether it's effort,
whether it's defense, whether it's, you know, offense, whether
it's running efficient offense or any of these things.
They all seem to fall apart at different times and you never
have stretches of, you know, even four games where everything
kind of runs smoothly. I think that's what's most
madding about what we're seeing is it's just the the only thing
that's consistent is the inconsistency with this team.
Yeah, it's, I'll even go a step further.
I think the problem with this team is they really just fold
when put under pressure, like really put under pressure.
And it's, it's disappointing because a lot of, I think the,
the, a lot of the issues with IU really come back to the way the
fans perceive the team and the way the team is played.
There have just been so many games or so many stretches of
seasons where IU fans have worked themselves up to a point
where they feel like, hey, we've got some hope here.
And then Indiana just cannot measure up in games against
teams that are, you know, not necessarily any demonstrably
better than they are, but it feels like those teams are just
trying harder. And and that is the kiss of
death when it comes to a lot of of, of how IU is perceived.
And look, we've we've seen that even in good seasons, you know,
I'll always remember, you know, Indiana comes into that game at
home versus Iowa in Trace Jackson Davis's final year.
And you know, I think there were 11 and seven.
They were certainly in the hunt at that point.
I think to, you know, potentially win the Big 10 title
or or at least stay in the hunt. You know, Purdue ended up
winning. They they had pretty was 15 and
five that season. It was going to take pretty
losing a couple of games. They almost lost at Wisconsin
that weekend, but Indiana came out against Iowa, who was OK
that year, and then just got smoked at home in front of
everybody to the point that people were leaving like the 15
minutes left in the second-half. I remember that I was there and
it's like I think we were like in the mix for like maybe
getting a two seed in the tournament, but it wouldn't
happen. But it's like we were like we
were in the 3-4 line. It's like, yeah, we we win.
We went out here. It's like, wow, this is a season
we could actually. Yeah, I remember that.
And, and, you know, that it just, it seems like every time
Indiana really needs to double down.
And when, you know, sometimes they've been able to handle it.
But more often than not what we've seen is the result that
you saw last night where it's not even that they lose, it's
that they lose by a huge margin. And, you know, you want to go
back to the the you talk about Zach Osterman's story.
And he might have had this in the story, but he also had a
tweet which a lot of people have been referring back to now and
and added, Yeah, I think reasonably so.
Indiana has lost 31 regular season games in league play
under Mike Woodson. Of those, now 16 have come by
double digits, 12 have come by 15 or more points, 5 have come
by 20 or more points. And and last night obviously fit
into that category. I mean, you're going to lose big
every once in a while. But I think it's the it's the
method by which Indiana loses big in these games where they
just abandoned all principles, aren't able to play hard or
consistently and look like they've just kind of waved the
white flag at a certain point in the game and then just wait for
it to be over. And it feels like it just
consumes the entire bench. People aren't up and, and, you
know, shouting orders. The coaches are largely sitting
down. The players are largely there.
You know, it's it's just kind of this acceptance that we're not
that good. We're not going to compete
tonight. And then there's not there's,
you know, you just the same platitudes end up coming up in
the press conferences at the end of those games.
You saw more of that last night where there's just like you can
either not take what's in it his word, or you can take what's in
it his word. If you take what's in it his
word, it's like, well, you know, the constantly he's like, well,
the team didn't come out ready to play.
And it's like, it's year 4. How is your team still coming
out not ready to play? How how is your team not able to
navigate these sorts of circumstances?
Not like the first time you've been to Iowa.
And it's not like this is a world beating Iowa team.
I mean, this is an Iowa team that you know, they've they've
they've done a few good things, but that was an Iowa team that
was 52nd in the net coming into the game.
Indiana was I think 56th or 57th in the net.
These were teams that were theoretically kind of on the
same plane of existence and yet they look like they didn't
belong on the same floor. So it's it's not just the loss
and it's not just the manner in which the team lost.
It's the consistency to, and I would actually say that the the
inconsistency is the consistency with this team, but the
consistency by which Indiana, when they start to lose games
like this, they don't just lose in half measures.
They go all out and lose about as badly as you can, which
doesn't really fill you with a lot of excitement or positivity
or the idea that somehow later on down the line they're going
to turn this around. And that's been the biggest
concern is like, you know, look again, losses happen, big losses
happen. I don't think you have to
overreact at one loss, but I do think you can react and should
react to the idea that once again, here you are on the road
in the Big 10 getting blown out by a pretty mid team and your
aspirations were supposedly much greater than that.
As Indiana, you had a you have a a huge, talented, expensive
roster of players who individually can all do really
good things. And it looks exactly the same as
last year's roster where you didn't have all of those things.
Like there's a consistency of of falling short in these moments
that seems to arch over all of the rosters that you've seen
here under Mike Woodson. And you know, even again, even
the Trace Jackson, Davis, Jalen Huchafino roster was not immune
to games like this or circumstances like this.
I brought this up a year ago or something.
I tried to get a name for it. Like the dead cat bounce or like
the dead on arrival game. But you know, just the, the game
last night when you look at the Ken Palm, you know, winning
probability at at halftime, Iowa had an 86% chance of winning.
And then within 4 minutes it was up to 94%.
And then it just becomes this, you know, you, you have like a,
it looks like a heartbeat and then it's just flatlined.
It's just like a second-half flatline.
And it, it, it echoes in the stats, what you're talking about
in real life, that for the rest of the second-half, Iowa's a 95%
chance to win. And it never changes.
You know, even the Nebraska game, you see some flutters
there and it gets to be a 6664 game with like 10 minutes to go.
And they ended up letting Nebraska go on a 17 to one run.
But you know, I, I, I did a breakdown of this at one point
last year, just how many of these losses that we've had
under Woodson and under Archie too?
That just to your point, aren't even just beat downs, it's like
in the second-half, there's not even Indiana's not ever within a
90% chance of, you know, a 10% chance of winning the game.
You go back and look at the, you know, Louisville game, it's
exactly the same thing. It's a little bit better just
because the halftime score is a little closer, but it just, it
becomes a straight line to zero and then just stays 0%.
You know, at 10 minutes to go in the game, Louisville had a 99%
chance of winning and just kept that way the entire time.
Gonzaga game, it's it's even worse.
I mean, it's like we go into halftime work, there are 98%
chance of winning and then it just never, never moves.
And it's, it's those kinds of losses that are infuriating
because like you said, you can lose, but to have a game where
after halftime it's just not competitive.
Like there's just not even a chance.
Like, how can I all right, they get a stop at, you know, I'm
always doing this in my mind, like, all right, we can get a 3
here and they get a stop here. Like you got to put together,
what's our plan to get this game back together?
And you have an option for that the entire game.
The other thing that I will say, I'll come back to this, you
know, I, I think this is also going to be of trouble with this
team game to game is, you know, after the last podcast, we were
talking about the Penn State game and, you know, you, I was
kind of lamenting the fact that, you know, we had basically let
Penn State go on a point per possession when they shot, you
know, what was it like 3 for 21 from three?
I was like, that's not great defense on a team that's
shooting that bad from three. And then you, you had a you, you
can look at it, you looked at it slightly differently and like,
you know, we're having a discussion, it's fine.
But then it's like 2 games later, it's like, Oh no, we let
Iowa score 1.18 points of possession and just let them
just obliterate us on defense. And it's like you can kind of
start digging into the stats in little pieces and trying to
manipulate it. But like, in the end, this
team's going to come out and do what it does, which is just play
poor defense and and now. Poor Yeah.
Here's the thing. I I do think you need to look at
it on a more individual basis, game by game.
I mean, as bad as Indiana's defense was last night, within
the confines of what Iowa normally does, that was actually
an OK defensive effort. I know that sounds weird, but
you know, if you look at what Iowa normally does in terms of
offense, Iowa, they, they don't play defense very well, but they
score, they average 118.9. You know, that's their, that's
their average offensive efficiency or their adjusted.
And that's exactly what Indiana allowed.
So they allowed Iowa basically their average.
Now you need to do better than that.
The problem was Indiana offensively just didn't do
anything. I mean, I looking at the stats,
that was the worst offensive performance that Indiana had had
since the game at Rutgers last year.
And I mean, depending on how you look at it, you could even go
back to the previous year again at Rutgers.
The problem there is like, you know what Rutgers is known for?
They're known for really good defense.
They're known for playing really hard nosed defense.
And and that's certainly given Indiana fits with their
physicality. Iowa is not Iowa is a really bad
defensive team and the fact that Indiana could not figure out how
to score with all the talent that they have on the floor
against Iowa and the fact that they on the game ended up only
scoring 8 like they're they were at .83835 points per possession.
They got obliterated on the offensive glass.
They they hardly pulled down any offensive rebounds and that had
been an area of of success. They turned the ball over a ton,
which is something that they had more, more or less not done.
They took four shots, Everything that you didn't want them to do
offensively, that's what happened.
It was very much a carbon copy of the Louisville game, except
in the Louisville game, Indiana had a lot of offensive rebounds.
They just didn't hit any shots. And this one, they didn't get
any second chances and they didn't hit from outside.
So, you know, it's another issue where it's like this team just
really has a hard time against a, a certain caliber of
competition putting everything together.
You can go back to the Nebraska game.
Their offense wasn't great in the Nebraska game.
It was probably close to being able to be an offense that you
could have competed for a win against.
But their defense was atrocious in that game.
And they let they let Nebraska just do whatever they wanted
from, you know, all over the floor, especially just shooting
the ball in general, getting to the free throw line, things like
that. So I, it just feels a lot of
times like Indiana seems to know what they want to do, but when
they can't do that, they really don't have a Plan B.
They really don't seem to be able to adapt well to
circumstances. And the, you know, Scott, I
mean, kind of looking at it more in the macro.
This is why I was very hesitant about getting overly excited
regarding this five game-winning streak that Indiana had put
together. Because on the one hand, this is
where it's tough as a podcaster or as a writer trying to deal
with the ups and downs of an individual season.
You know, here you have an IU team that had won five in a row.
Yeah, you can kind of throw the Chattanooga and Winthrop games
out, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't think those were
particularly important one way or the other.
But three Big 10 games in a row, including a game on a neutral
floor, and, you know, you win all three relatively handily.
And you cap that off with a win at home versus AUSC team that is
not helpless. As we saw yesterday, that USC
team won at Illinois and and one pretty handily, but it was
Rutgers, Penn State and USC. You know, Rutgers and USC are
not going to the tournament this year.
They have some significant issues.
Penn State is, I mean, that's the Penn State team to turn
around and lost by 30 at Illinois immediately after
losing to Indiana by 6. So it's like, well, how
impressive was that victory really for Indiana?
And then they run into Iowa, and Iowa is clearly from an effort
perspective and from a plan perspective, a significant cut
above what Indiana's able to provide.
And then you, you know, this is where you come back to what
we've been talking about for a while, which is what's the
ultimate goal of this season? The ultimate goal of this season
is supposed to be not just making the tournament, but
putting yourself in a position where you can be a protected
seed where you're top four in the conference or better.
You know, that was that was always supposed to be the
narrative. And yeah, the Rutgers, Penn
State and USC wins were, were nice.
Those were games, all of them, maybe, maybe all but the Penn
State game that you absolutely had to have.
And Penn State was one of those Rd. borderline games or away
from home borderline games where it's like you, you got to win
that game if you want to achieve even close to the goals you had.
Well, so was last night because again, Iowa is a borderline NCAA
Tournament team. I don't think they'd be in right
now. And Indiana looked like they
didn't belong on the floor with them.
And that's that's really disturbing when you think about
the sheer volume of games of that caliber or better that
Indiana's got right in front of them here over the course of the
next month. Yeah.
And the other thing with that five game win streak, because
even within that, you know, the trouble is the losses are just
everything's laid bare. This is you, you see everything
poor, It's bad defense, it's bad offense.
And you get, you know, slacked by Iowa and you see lack of
effort. Same thing in the Louisville and
Gonzaga wins. Even that five game-winning
streak, you know, we're trying to find the positive things, but
it's like you beat Winthrop, but you went one for 20 from three.
Like that's not awesome. Like there's a red line in, you
know, you look at like Bart Torvik does a great job with the
stats for every game and it's like green is good, red is bad.
There's not one game that we have where everything is green,
which is kind of wild when you look at like some of the non
conference teams we've played, like a Winthrop should be a game
where it's just like that's not only a get right game, that's an
all green game. But no, you still go one for 20
in that game. You know, the the the Penn State
game, that's a good win on the road.
But even within that game, you had a feeling like you put them
away and then you really let them get back into the game.
You and I were at the USC game where you won that game, you
know, by 13 or 14 going away, but there were large stretches
that game in the first half where you're letting USC kind of
dictate the pace of the game. And and you know, the trouble is
there hasn't been those wins where it's like the wins have
not been as emphatic as the losses.
And that's where it gets really tough.
The the other thing that I want to hit on just I will continue
to be, I'll probably continue to talk about 3 point shooting as I
tell you not to talk about 3 point shooting, but I go back to
this, you know, we, you know, they Indiana goes 12 for 27
against Rutgers. It's kind of it's a weird
schizophrenic way this team shoots and plays with the three.
If you go back to the Nebraska game, they went eight for 3535,
three-point attempts. And then it just becomes this
kind of slow, you know, like it's in, you know, like a half
life, just nuclear physical. You're losing half every single
time. You know, the next couple of
games they shoot 2020, they go 12 for 27 against Rutgers and
then they go 9 for 23 against Penn State.
That's why I said they're not going to do that again.
And they go 6 for 21 against USC, 4 for 16 against Iowa.
They they keep making less and shooting less.
What what we know is that there will be a game at some point in
the next 5 or 6 where they're going to shoot 35 threes again,
Maybe they'll hit 10 or 12. And it's like, that's what I
don't want to hear. Like, oh, maybe we've turned the
quarter because we have it Like everything kind of continually
goes back to the scary thought is that, you know, maybe the
norm is kind of what we're seeing against Iowa, that
everything always seems to kind of funnel back to those types of
games. Well, and the.
The good games are maybe the the the wins are maybe more of the
mirages. I, I would look at it perhaps
more like this. If you look at Indiana from a
three-point shooting perspective, there's some very
disturbing trends right now. But, but I think the most
interesting one to me is right now, you know, Indiana's overall
3 point shooting percentage on the season is 31.9%, which is
actually worse than last year. Now you know there are 246 in
the country and three-point percentage made and they were
much better than that earlier on in the year.
Last year, as bad as they were shooting from three percentage
wise, they were making more threes than Indiana's made so
far on the course of this season.
They shot 32.4% last year from three.
So far they're at 31.9% this year.
If you take Indiana's 3 point shooting stats against top 50
teams, Indiana shooting 28.6% from three this season which is
not great. Not good, Bob.
But what's interesting to me is they are their three-point rate
against those teams is 36.8. Now that's low, but it's not as
low as their overall. So they are taking more threes
against better teams. They're just not hitting them.
And you know, that's, you know, that's a real problem.
The the shooting's really gone to a large degree.
I know that that USC game and Luke Goody hitting some shots,
everybody's like, oh, the three-point shooting's better in
the last 10 games, Indiana's shooting 29.7% from 3:00.
That's three, 109th in the country over that span of time.
Their three-point rate in that in those last 10 games is 200
and 82nd in the country. You know, so they're both
shooting less threes percentage wise and they're also shooting
them less often. It's, look, you're going to have
variance with threes and, and I think sometimes, especially with
the team that clearly doesn't have an offensive system that is
specifically designed to focus on threes, you're going to have
those boom and bust games like you're talking about.
And so I, you know, I worry a little bit less about the boom
and bust games as I do about the overall trend line.
And I just, I worry with this team that they are putting
themselves in a position where they're either trying to force
threes into their diet or they're simply not putting
themselves in a position where they can succeed that much.
You know, they are pretty reliably the Rutgers game and
the Penn State game look like big outliers over the last 10
games versus what they've done overall.
You know, when you shoot 23% versus Nebraska from 328% versus
USC, 25% versus Iowa, Like the so much effort and, and, and
focus has supposedly gone into trying to broaden the offense
and make it more modern and more holistic and taking advantage of
the three-point line, which you have to do from an efficiency
perspective. They, they're going the wrong
direction right now. And that really should be
concerning. I think if you're if you're
concerned about what Indiana's going to do long term and
whether they can snap themselves out of it, their offense looks
like it's going the wrong way in terms of where their points are
coming from and how efficient they are in those shots.
So if you don't mind, I want to go back to a macro point that
you made earlier just about, you know, what the goal of the
season was. Because I I think this is what's
also really concerning is having this game at this point.
You, you could lose at Iowa, but again, it's the manner we lost
the trend lines you're talking about.
When you look ahead, you know, this is where, you know, just in
Ken Palm, the next seven games are, are losses.
And you we, we talked about the stretch, the schedule.
We, you, you had last time kind of identified that Purdue to
Purdue stretch on January 31st. Like just to get to that first
Purdue game, you got to play Illinois at home at Ohio State,
at Northwestern, home to Maryland.
And then we get, then we get to what you think is the, the, the
toughest stretch of the season. You know, Kenpom doesn't have US
winning a game until we play UCLA at home on February 14th.
Because I'm like kind of dubious whether that that's a one point
win. It's a 50.50% game.
You know, this is where the rubber really hits the road.
And to me, you kind of run out of excuses because you are,
you're in your four of a 10 year, you're in the middle of
that season. And to me, you just, you don't
get the luxury of saying, oh man, it's a bunch of tough
opponents. You know, what are we going to
do it? At some point you need to be one
of those tough opponents, but you just can't be the nail
that's getting hammered in. But this is where it gets really
tough because you know, the next four or five games,
statistically, they they, they, they should be losses.
They're going to be tough games to win.
You have an Illinois team is now pissed.
They're going to come in here, try and, you know, get right
game. And I I'm, I'm not sure how this
team kind of breaks out of this fight.
And there's also a team that over the last couple of years,
when they get drilled like this, they they don't always come
right back. And sometimes this has led to a
three to four-game losing streak in the Big 10, as we've seen
multiple years. This is what I was always
concerned about was this stretch of the season.
It felt like we had to come in with some kind of like, we have
things humming and we're not just a sputtering engine that,
you know, dies on the road in Iowa City.
Well, the effort is and the consistency and effort's a big
problem. And, you know, you saw one of
the things that people pointed out quite a bit last night was
Iowa just look like they cared more and that they were playing
harder and and that in Atlantis, like it hasn't that that.
Was evident in Atlantis and we're still dealing with it.
Now, you know, there's a couple of things I'll say a you know,
college basketball, every year we look at it and we we look at
the projected wins and losses. And sometimes we forget that
they're going to be individual moments that don't work out that
way. And and you'll have really good
teams that'll have really bad games, especially on the road.
I mean, look at last night on the national stage.
You know, Auburn goes on the road, they get there's an injury
that they state and they only win by three at South Carolina,
who as we know is not particularly good.
Iowa State has to go to overtime to win at Texas Tech, who was
unranked. You know, Kentucky struggles at
Mississippi State. Mississippi State's pretty good.
But you know, there there were a lot of instances including
Georgia beating Oklahoma yesterday, Illinois losing at
home to USC. You're going to have games where
teams don't play well. They're good.
And Indiana is talented. Like Indiana has pro level
talent. They've they've got a pro level
center, they've got a pro level point guard, They've got they've
got other players that can contribute at that level.
It's the lack of consistency that makes you think, well, you
know, Indiana's probably going to pull a couple of victories
out of a hat here that you might not expect from simply looking
at the probabilities. Like, and not just at home
either. I mean, you know, they'll play
Illinois at home on Tuesday. I won't be shocked if Indiana
wins that game. They'll play what, Michigan at
home on the 8th of February. I wouldn't be shocked if Indiana
wins that game. But it's the whole string of
things like it's, you know, when you look at the losses in the
Kenpom projections or the Torvic projections, these are
probabilities that arch over an entire rest of the season.
Like right now, Indiana's four and two in Kenpa, in the Big 10,
in Kenpa, they're projected to go 9:00 and 11:00.
Well, if you look at the actual numbers, they don't.
They're only projected to win four games, but that's built
into where they're probably going to win one or two games.
They're projected to lose and lose one or two games that
they're projected to win. I just, what worries me for
Indiana is the overall trend line of where they're headed.
This Iowa game was really important.
I think I tweeted this right after the USC game.
It's like what we're seeing out of Indiana in this USC game
wasn't perfect, but it was just if you could play like that and
go into Iowa and have the way that Indiana played translate in
some way to that game, that would give me an indication that
perhaps they're going to play better than we thought that they
would down the stretch. I didn't see that last night.
And we talked about this a lot last year where they went on the
they had the multiple losing streaks in the Big 10.
And a lot of it was like, I keep waiting for something to
illustrate to me that this team is going to play with more
consistency. And if you think about like that
stretch last year that started right now, they beat Minnesota
at home. It wasn't that impressive of a
game. They never really put Minnesota
away. And then they turned around and
had to play Purdue at home and then at Wisconsin and at
Illinois. And they lost all three of
those. They beat Iowa at home, lose to
Penn State at home. And that was that big one where
everybody was like, uh oh, Yep, they win at Ohio State randomly,
and everybody was shocked by that.
And then they lose four more in a row.
And by that point, you're 6 and 10.
And the season was almost over at that stage.
It essentially was over at that point.
And even though they won the last four to get to 10 and 10,
the damage had been done. So that's what worries me.
And then, sorry, just to go on to the larger points someone had
made, just figuring finishing that off, You go to the Big 10
tournament, it's like you gut out a win against Penn State.
It's like, OK, now maybe we can make a run in the Big 10
tournament to maybe get into the NCAA tournament.
It's like, oh, no, you play Nebraska, you lose 93 to 66.
Again, a game where at halftime you have a 98% chance of losing
and it just stays at 90 the entire game.
So like, again, these kind of flux point moments, these
pivotal moments where like, all right, can we turn the corner
and get some momentum? You not only lose, you just get
shellacked. Yeah, I mean, Indiana was four
and two last year and they finished 10 and 10, but the way
they finished 10 and 10 disqualified them from being a
legitimate team to consider in the NCAA selection process.
Now they're in slightly better shape now 'cause you figure last
year when they were four and two, they were 92nd in Kenpom.
They were, you know, in the 90s in the NET because they've done
so much damage to themselves in the non conference.
They haven't done as much damage to themselves in the non
conference this year. They're 56th in Ken Palm, not
92nd in the net. They're what was the updated
number then? They're they're 60th today in
the net. But the problem is they're 60th
in the net. And, you know, they're they're
there's a there's a lot of teams they have to kind of jump over
that they have to play moving forward.
They have to play Northwestern on the road.
Penn State still gets to come to IU.
You know, they all the and then you got that whole mishmash of
teams that are between 20 and 35 in the NET, which is Maryland,
Oregon, Purdue, Wisconsin, UCLA, Ohio State, you know, Nebraska,
that like, at some point you're going to have to elevate
yourself up into that conversation.
And what worries me again with the consistency, or lack
thereof. Is that they may pull one of
these games or two of these games, but it's hard to really
have a lot of faith that they're going to pull a bunch of games
in a row simply because we've seen now two of the three years
that Mike Woodson coached before this and certainly several of
the years before that. As if you if you want to take
those into account, where Indiana is more likely to go on
multiple game losing streaks in the Big 10 than multiple
game-winning streaks in the Big 10, well.
And and you know what, what we're doing, you know, we're
trying to prevent present kind of the positive outlook of like,
all right, you know, it's projected.
All projected losses are not going to be losses like some
variants will happen. I get what you're saying that
the trouble with that is to me is not towards you, but just
kind of that that thinking is that, you know, this is a all
that's trying to do is like, how do we find a path where we can
get onto the bubble for the tournament?
And that's kind of all we're doing because what we haven't
talked about is like, all right, here's our path to get back to
what you and I had thought kind of the and most people, not like
we were out of bounds was a realistic expectation for this
season. And honestly, take coaches and
you know, years of helm out of it should always be a realistic
expectation for Indiana basketball.
Like every year, we should go into a season hoping to win the
Big 10 title and getting a protected seat in the tournament
like that. That is what Indiana basketball
should be going for. I mean, we haven't been, but.
I mean, at some point we just need to stop saying that.
I mean, really, you know, it's like what what evidence do we
have to demonstrate that that's what Indiana basketball is at
this point? I'm.
Just going to keep talking. Because I have no come back,
come back. To that, but I mean that I think
is what most fans want to believe or, or hope.
And you know, hope is not anything, but that's what we
hope to believe. But it's that's all we're
talking about here is like, how can we get to just the the
absolute bare minimum of what a season should be?
And it's like we're having to really struggle to find that.
And that's what I think is disconcerting is I'd love to
see, you know, not just win Illinois, like can you win the
next four games? Can you can you go into Purdue
on a four-game winning streak? And like you look at that and
say, well, no evidence says you can do that and there's no
reason to believe that could be done.
But there's nothing to say we don't have the talent to do
that. And that that's the frustrating
part is like we have the team. We have the talent.
And the thing that we also haven't talked about at all,
we're at minute 42 in this is we have the issue of this odd
problem of we have maybe one of our best players who at some
point will come back to the team, at which point all Indiana
fans know well that's going to muck up our offense.
Like we're the only team that's like we need more of our players
to not play. So our coach is hamstrung to be
able to run an offense that actually makes sense that you
know, if Renu comes back at any of these next couple of games,
it's nothing against Renew because he might be our most
overall skilled player on the team.
The way that he's utilized within the two big offense, does
that end up causing more problems in these games than
where we're at now? I mean, it's certainly an open
question. And you know, it's funny because
Indiana has slowly gotten better defensively over the course of
this season compared to what they did last year.
They actually, if you look at the actual numbers on a game by
game basis, they've kind of flatlined in terms of adjusted
defensive efficiency since the start of the year.
Offensively speaking, it's hard to say.
I mean, so much of what we talked about with Renew being
out and with the, you know, the change in how Indiana was
playing offense was largely tied to the fact that they played
three pretty good offensive games against Rutgers, Penn
State and USC. Well, last night they did not.
So it it does come back to this idea.
If you're continuing to shoot fewer threes, is it a situation
where maybe you have to have the two big line up back in just to
maintain some level of of offensive normalcy?
But then you take away the extra outside shots.
But if if you're not going to take the shots, like they didn't
take the shots against, you know, Iowa, then what's the
point? So I think you're right.
And and certainly I've said similar things, but the more I
think about it, it's like, I don't think the renew injury
matters that much. It's really like just how
Indiana is choosing to play. And, you know, there there's a
lot of effort issues and there's a lot of, again, consistency
issues that seem to go well beyond whoever is out on the
floor at this point. And that is really frustrating.
And I just, I guess I keep coming back to this idea, Scott.
I keep waiting for some evidence that it's going to change.
And yet I don't necessarily see that taking place.
You know, you can just the the one thing I'll say, and again, a
lot of it will be, I guess, put into more relief by what happens
in the next three games. Maybe this was just a big
outlier game and Indiana had that, just a bad game.
You know, if they come back and beat Illinois, then they've got,
you know, at Ohio State and at Northwestern.
Those are two games that are very similar in profile to what
they just played at Iowa. And, you know, they won at Ohio
State last year. They've certainly struggled to
win at Northwestern over the course of of the last several
years. But it's not an insurmountable
thing for them to do, you know. But again, it all comes back to
like, what are you predicating your belief in the team on?
You know, what is it you're pointing to that making you say,
I think Indiana's going to do this or I think Indiana's going
to do that? And what's disheartening about
the Iowa game more than anything else is a lot of the things that
people were leaning on to say, I think Indiana's going to be
better. They're rounding into shape, All
just washed away very quickly in that game.
And even if you want to say, gosh, that was just a bad game.
It's like it was a bad game in all the worst possible ways if
you're an Indiana fan trying to build some degree of belief that
your team is going to exceed expectations as they go through
the next month and 1/2. Well, it's taking that point a
step further. You know, it's you are right.
Good teams, great teams have outlier bad games.
The only way that you turn this into an outlier bad game is you
got to win multiple games in a row after this.
You know, you look at that 23 season Indiana, you know the the
the trace Jackson Davis here they were they were four seed.
They did lose three in a row. They lost to Iowa, Northwestern
and Penn State. But then the rest of the way
from this point on January 14th on, they never lost back-to-back
big 10 games. So then they they had out why
they had unfortunately too many outliers.
But you could say from January 14th on, it's like that's a team
that for the most part had it together and would have a bad
game here or there, but would then followed up with a win or a
two or three-game winning streak.
That's kind of what has to happen here.
And the the trouble is you're doing this into the the schedule
gets tough now, like this isn't the meat of the schedule.
So, you know, if, if you're going to lose the next three
games, you know, it's like, you can't tell me that this is a
great that was an outlier. And it's like, oh, well, it's
just tough opponents like that. That's too many variables that
you're compounding. They're like, I I hear what
you're saying. I'm not arguing with you, but I
would say that like for that to be the case, you kind of got to
win up to that Purdue game, you know, win or win three of the
four, like don't lose Illinois, don't lose Ohio State.
And then maybe we can talk about how that was an outlier.
But the trouble is you have four of them so far this year.
You know that that's the other trouble is like four of the
games that are outliers or games where you lost multiple digit by
multiple digit points. And that that's something that
very rarely happens to a good team.
You know, a good solid team that knows what its identity is and
and knows how to win a good number of college basketball
games doesn't normally have 4 10 + 15.15 plus losses by the
middle of January. Like I said, that's very
abnormal. Well, we'll see what happens as
you move forward with things here.
It's one of those deals where I, I think everybody that was, even
the people that weren't being honest with themselves, you
know, you, you kind of looked at this and said, you know, there
there could be positives that come out of this.
There could be situations where Indiana is able to go on the
road and win games. I think those things are still
possible. They have the talent to do it,
but you know, at this point, I don't know that they've done
enough and they they certainly didn't do enough in the non
conference to truly justify a a bid in the tournament.
So they're going to have to do the work in the Big 10.
Now, they had crept into the lower reaches of some people's
bracket projections. You know, that win at at to the
Palestras done some decent work for them, But that's that may
not be enough. And you know, the question
becomes like, well, if you tread water from this point forward,
if you're Indiana, have you done enough to get into the
tournament? Obviously you want to have that
happen. You want to get into the
tournament because that matters more than more than whatever the
pre season projections were getting in the tournament still
matters. You can have the conversation
about was all of this sufficient afterwards?
But it does look like a team that if you were going to wager
right now at 13 and 4:00 and 4:00 and 2:00, you know, if you
were going to wager whether or not they were going to make the
NCAA tournament, I don't know how many IU fans are wagering
that IU is going to make the tournament.
You know, and, and that's the people that aren't doing
bracketology. Like I, I still do that
regularly. I look at what they've got to do
the rest of the way. The nice thing is they're going
to have plenty of opportunities to win games.
And you're the bracketologist. Let me ask you this.
And, and this is a tough question, but.
How many wins in the Big 10 do you think they need to get?
And I know, I know there's so many other variables, but like,
give, give us the the fans a, you know, 9:00 and 11:00 I don't
think gets it done. 10 and 10, you know, what level are we like
that? I think that's given us a shot
to be, you know, firmly in the bubble.
See, the The thing is, I don't think you can do it that way.
I mean, there's going to be, and I hate to be like wishy washy on
it, but like there's going to be I, I saw something the other
day, actually this morning where I think it was John Rothstein
tweeted something out about, you know, there's going to be 7 and
11 SEC teams that make the, the. So many good losses.
But but but, but this year, he's right.
I mean, the SEC is really dominant in terms of their
overall play. But not all 7 and 11 teams are
created paid off at ESPN 2. They're they're coming for all
of us. I'm trying to make a point,
Scott. You know, like Texas is a team
that cannot afford to go 7:00 and 11:00 in the SEC and make
the NCAA Tournament, whereas, you know, someone like Ole Miss
could go 7:00 and 11:00 because they've got enough on their
resume that, yeah, you know, if they if they go 7 and they're
three and O right now, they're not going to go 7:00 and 11:00.
But they've beaten BYU on a neutral floor and they've beaten
Louisville on the road. I mean, there's they've got a
lot of things going for them. Indiana doesn't have those
things. So when you ask me what record
is needed, a lot of it's like, well, who are the wins going to
come against? Like if Indiana goes 9:00 and
11:00 in the conference and 18 and 13 overall.
But their 5 remaining wins are like, you know, they win, don't
laugh, but they'll they win at Purdue, they beat Michigan at
home. They they win at Ohio State,
they win at home versus Ohio State and they win at
Washington. That might be enough for them to
get in. Whereas if they go with the same
record, but their five wins are like Northwestern on the road,
you know, Washington at home, Ohio State at home, Penn State
at home, Maryland at home. I don't know if that's enough
and maybe it is. So a lot of it is like who does
Indiana beat? Where do they beat them?
You know, there there aren't a whole lot of games that won't
help in some way if you win them this in this rest of the season.
I mean, at at Washington's probably not going to do much
for you. And you know, I would say
probably like at home versus Penn State's not going to do a
whole lot for you. And I don't know that at home
against Ohio State's going to do a whole lot for you.
But there's a ton of other games that are going to be helpful to
the point that Indiana almost like all they have to do is just
get if you can win six games the rest of the way.
I think a collection of six wins out of this mix probably gets
this team into the tournament. It's just they kind of look like
a zombie team at that point because if you're if you're 10
and 10 in this big 10 where everybody's kind of equal, I
don't know that Indiana demonstrates that they're that
good on the national stage going into the tournament by just
going 10 and 10 against this schedule.
So it's like, again, it all comes back to what are you
expecting or what are you hoping to get out of the season with
IU? Obviously, getting into the
tournament is is the bare minimum, and especially with
this year's team and especially coming off of what happened last
year, but that's got to be the primary focus at this point.
And so you dust yourself off from this Iowa game, you're
probably going to play an Illinois team that that won't
play as well on the road as they do at home.
You're going to be pissed off. Illinois is going to be pissed
off because they just lost at home to USC.
If you can come out and win that game, I think it again resets
the conversation about where Indiana's going.
You're five and two, you have a home win against a bona fide top
20 team. Those are all going to help.
It's just I need to see Indiana win a game like that.
That would be they beat Illinois at home.
That would be by far their best win.
Like their highest rated win against teams in Kenpom is that
win against Penn State. And Penn State was 51st.
The, the, the four teams they've played that are in the top 50 of
Kenpom, they've lost to, they lost to Louisville, they lost to
Gonzaga, they lost to Nebraska, they lost to Iowa.
And then like, you know, Penn State's 51st, USC 68th,
Providence's 84th, South Carolina 73rd.
That's the echelon of teams they seem to be able to beat teams
that are sub top 50. I do worry at the end of the day
that that's not going to be enough to get it done.
Yeah, if you're going off of that, we got three more wins.
Right. And so, so now it becomes like,
you know, can you win, how many games can you win against top 50
competition? But you also.
Have to then win those three like no joking, you got to win
the the Northwestern Washington and Penn State game again, like
you. This is where you can't start
throwing in more bad losses, but you pick up a win against
Illinois, it's like great, you got that in the bank.
You got to keep those three. You know, again, the the sub
fifty teams. You know, any Northwestern home
to Washington at Penn, you know, home to Penn State, you got to
win those three, like those three have to become wins no
matter what. And then you're just stacking
bonus wins on top of. It, I mean, to me, the, the team
that's going to be the biggest competition and maybe the
greatest measuring stick for Indiana the rest of the way is
Ohio State. Ohio State is 32nd and Ken Palm
and they're 49th, I think in, in, in Torvic.
And you know, they both calculate things a little bit
differently. And sometimes I like the Torvic
ratings more than I like Ken Pom 'cause I think they, they match
a little bit better what I'm actually seeing in terms of, of
game by game stuff. You know, Indiana right now is
projected to go one and one against Ohio State.
That's really a team they need to beat twice.
You need to be able to demonstrate, especially if
they're as close as they look like in Torvic, where Ohio
State's 49th, Indiana's 52nd, you need to be able to say we
beat that team twice. We are clearly of the mid level
teams in the Big 10. We're clearly like above the
fray. I don't know that Indiana's
going to be able to do that. That's where that that game
really fascinates me this upcoming Friday where they have
to go to Columbus and take on Ohio State.
And Ohio State's been almost as schizophrenic as Indiana.
You know, they, they, they, they, they beaten Texas on a
neutral floor. They've beaten Kentucky on a
neutral floor. They have a lot of good losses.
They don't have a lot of good wins.
You know, the Kentucky and Texas wins.
They get credit for those. But they also, you know, they,
they've, they've lost to Texas A&M, Pittsburgh, Maryland,
Auburn, MI State, Oregon. No, no shame there.
They actually played Oregon pretty tight at home on
Thursday, but then they almost lost in double overtime at
Minnesota, which is a really hideous team.
And their overall numbers statistically just don't look
that impressive. But that's a team that, you
know, Indiana could, if they win that game, it's a big boost.
But if they lose that game, it really clearly defines Indiana,
I think as being a cut below right, what they need to be.
So a lot to watch for. And, you know, I know this, I, I
always feel bad when we have to do these podcasts and it all
kind of sounds doom and gloom. And I think it's hard to do a
podcast after you lose by 25. Really, I mean, Indiana should
have lost that game by 30. They had a couple of shots at
the end of the game that that made the score a little bit
respectful, but that was a 30 point loss at the end of the
day. What do we say here that puts
that into a system or a situation where you feel better
about the pathway? I don't know that a lot of
people are particularly inclined to feel better about the pathway
that Indiana's got in front of them.
So I do worry about, you know, how do we how do you maintain
some semblance of optimism when it feels like you've seen this
movie so many times before as an IU fan?
And ultimately this is the break point as we kind of thought it
was going to be at the beginning of the year.
It's like once you get done with the non conference and once you
get through that opening spade of relatively easy Big 10 games,
what does Indiana do from here? How do they react?
I'm as curious about that as you are, Scott.
I have my theories that I think Indiana's going to kind of mid
their way to about a nine win season in the conference at this
point and be probably just outside the bubble if I had to
project right now. But the nice thing for Indiana
is they clearly have the talent and the ability to do better
than that. It just becomes a question of
whether they'll actually do better.
Than that Yep yeah I mean my my biggest concern for this for
this coming stretch to kind of put a point on this is you know
if if they're not able to make any kind of hay between now and
Purdue if they end up do losing you know Illinois Ohio State
Northwestern Maryland. My, my concern is, I think at
that point, it becomes really tough to come up with a
narrative of how this team makes the tournament.
And I, I think that's tough to do when you're still in January,
January 27th, to be at a point where you and I have to do a
podcast where there really isn't a logical path to the
tournament, but you still have 10 more game, you know, seven
more games ahead of you. A lot of them at home.
It could get very vitriolic very quickly.
And I, I just, nobody wants that.
Like I don't want that. Nobody wants that.
Like I just, I would like to have the, the glimmer of hope
and maybe even more than just a glimmer of hope.
I, I don't want it to be extinguished before we even get
into February. And that that's what concerns me
is there's there's still a lot of opportunity here.
There's still a lot of ways to get there.
Those paths start to get very tight and closed if you don't do
something over the next two to three.
Weeks we'll see what happens feels like again, we have this
conversation every year. I think the one year we didn't
have this conversation was was 23.
And that was, you know, certainly one of those seasons
even there, it's like, you know, at this point, it's funny that
the that same year, that 2020 year, one in four, I mean, that
was actually where I was going with that On this date in that
year, Indiana was one in four and had lost three games in a
row. Now they were, you know, two of
them were close games, but, you know, getting obliterated at
Penn State. A lot of people had given up
hope. And you know, the nice thing
about that year was Indiana went out and won five of their next 9
and got themselves back up to 9 and five in conference.
And very much was eight of their next nine, eight of their next
9, sorry, you know, and put themselves in a position where
they were a contender. And, you know, and in those in
those games was a road win at Illinois, which was surprising,
a win at home versus Michigan State, a win at home versus
Purdue, a win at home versus Rutgers, a win at Michigan.
Like there were a lot of really good moments in that stretch.
That's where Indiana kind of sits right now, albeit with a
better record, right? You know, I mean, you're when
you're 4 and 2 instead of 1 and 4, you're you're in pretty good
shape. The difference was, and the one
thing I'll say there, Indiana's overall statistical profile
coming out of that Penn State game in 23, they were 33rd in
Kenpom. They were significantly better
than what this year's team has demonstrated so far.
And, you know, you could argue they got unlucky in those losses
to Iowa and Northwestern. You can't really argue that they
were unlucky in any of the losses that they've suffered so
far this season. They've just been bad in those
games. And that will be an interesting
thing to watch as we move forward.
Can Indiana put themselves in a position where they just play
better because that's what it's going to take to win the games
that are in front of them? So, yeah, all right, well,
that'll wrap it up for us on this edition of Crimson Cast.
We will be back with more in the future.
We'll have another podcast, I think coming up this week.
We'll probably have a football podcast coming up later this
week. So just keep an eye out for that
as we continue to move through January and Indiana takes on
Illinois at home this upcoming Tuesday.
My thanks to Scott. My thanks to our presenting
sponsor, Home Field Apparel and our entire family in the Back
Home network. I'm Galen Clavio saying thanks
for joining us here on the show. We will catch you folks.
On the flip side, stay never daunted, bring back the Bison.