You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast,
Galen Clavio and Scott Caulfield joining.
It's the 8th of February as hope has been breathed back into the
season for some folks on the men's side.
Indiana with a big win a couple of days ago.
We'll talk a little bit about that.
We have a mostly listener, question focused podcast.
We got a lot of questions. We're not going to be able to
get to them all. You people are outrageous in the
best possible way. When I put the prompt out for
questions, it's always a cavalcade of things.
We're going to try to get to as many of us as we can.
We might have to do a second edition tomorrow.
I might bring somebody else along so Scott doesn't have to
field all the questions with me. But Scott it's good to see you
how you doing Everything all right I'm doing great.
So do I get to your one questions or Tier 2 questions,
Tier 8 level questions or G League questions you're you're
getting questions that will best help you make the NCAA
tournament. So congratulations on that.
We got to we got to get your net rating up.
Scott's net rating dropped a little bit.
He's played too many home games lately.
Just, yeah, I did that one good pod in the preseason.
Like that one. Just killer, killer pod.
You can go. Back to helps my Tier One pod,
you're like Michigan State. You're living off of 1V right
now and hoping that that's gonna be enough.
And Scott in the 10th high and we're worried about the
committee, quite frankly, like, you know the SEC Rep is just not
that impressed by what you've done.
So anyway, a couple quick notes before we get started.
We are on sub stack crimsoncast.substack.com, your
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If you want some additional VIP thoughts from me and Scott, I
just did one where we talked about this big 10 SEC alliance
and what that might mean. But we've done everything from
like travel recommendations to to restaurants to, you know,
stuff about IU basketball that maybe doesn't make it on the
main pod. But that's $5 a month, $50 a
year. We'd love to have you on board
for that and and be part of the community.
You get access to the Discord that's been formed for all the
back home network podcasts and other items within the
community. That's a great place to talk
about IU sports in general and sports across the spectrum, so.
I will start. I'm going to start doing more
IndyCar talk on there so that that'll be coming in a couple
people with a live event. We're asking for more IndyCar
specific talks. We will get that now that you
know Andretti isn't allowed to go to F1 I guess.
So he's staying here. But I do have to give you a
little bit of props again Tier 1, Tier 1, a good good good non
conference win the the big 10 FCC one that you did was was
awesome like it's I love getting your insight like it's good to
see and it is I was one of the one I'm not giving.
I don't want to give it all away, but, you know, one of the
ideas that you kind of laid out is that, you know this, this
could be the the end of the NCAA basketball tournament or like
that There's going to probably be a restructuring of how it's
done. And as a didn't think I was such
a conservative traditionalist. Now that I am like, I'm kind of
like, man, that sucks, but I also fully understand all of it.
So but anyway, wanted to give you that.
That was. I love hearing your thoughts on
that stuff because it does. I keep up with it not as much as
you, but it does help kind of clarify some things in my mind.
Thank you. Actually we are going to talk
about that a little bit because we had a question from a
listener about that, but I appreciate the kind words.
Thank you, Scott. Also a reminder, we are part of
the back home network. If you haven't checked out the
Ex's and Jo's podcast, please go do that.
Tremendous content there. They're doing the work podcast.
They'll be back in action tonight as they'll be covering
IU versus Michigan State. We've got the Crimson Cast
Women's Basketball show with Amanda Foster and Kevin Vera.
We've got, of course, Assembly Call.
We've got Film Room with Tony Adrania who's been just knocking
it out of the park here lately. Just a a ton of content across
the back home network. I have a pod with Tony talking
Pacers. Yeah, right Meridian on the
network. We're going to do one tomorrow.
Talking about the the latest trade of Buddy Hield is is out
of the Pacers. It's pretty wild.
I'm I'm quite fascinated to see what happens with all of that as
well. I was just shocked reading that,
like, wow, Marcus Morris makes 17,000,000 this year.
Yeah, I know. I want his agent.
Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know me folks.
I'm gonna defer to to to Scott and Tony on the Pacers talk.
They are far more equipped to talk about it than I am.
So go check out that podcast, subscribe.
It's a great listen. All of those podcasts and maybe
some new ones coming up here soon too, all brought to you by
Home Field Apparel are presenting sponsor folks.
We talked about it on Twitter earlier this week.
We got, we got the new release tomorrow the IU released nine
pieces of new apparel coming out from home field specifically for
IU. You know, of course, everybody's
made the jokes elsewhere about, well, I'm glad IU finally got
some home field apparel, apparel and it's like, well, folks, IU
always knocks it out of the park with new apparel, with old
apparel. You know, IU fans absolutely
show up with their wallets and this is your reward.
You keep buying things, home field's going to keep rolling
out new stuff. So keep your eyes out for
tomorrow as it will be another legendary drop and we're looking
forward to it. I've already got my next item
queued up. 10:00 AM is the launch. 10:00 AM at Friday.
We've seen these things. We've seen these things sell out
quickly, Scott. So everybody needs to be prepped
and ready to go for this. I I I'm not going to say what is
popping up specifically because I want to maintain some
surprise. But I can say that there's for
the first time that I can remember, there's a building
that's prominently featured that is not necessarily part of the
the athletic setup in the way that we think about it.
There's there's some great, there's a great slogan T-shirt.
There's there's a really nice trio of crew necks that are
coming out. There's another piece of warm
apparel that I don't recall seeing specifically for Indiana
and specifically with this particular logo that might have
some kind of a a metal implement that goes along with it.
I think you're going to really enjoy that just all kinds of
awesome stuff in this new drop from Home field Apparel.
So go check that out. And if you're a first time
purchaser of Home Field Apparel, you can use the code Home 23,
Get 15% off that first order Again Home Field apparel.com
10:00 AM Friday, we're going to see some new IU merch.
Looking forward to it. Anyway, I was going to make a
joke about like, you know, oh, I couldn't imagine they're doing,
you know, like when you said the building, I know the building.
And it's like I was thinking like, oh, like they're not going
to do like, you know, the the IU library.
I was like that thing would be kind of cool.
Or like I'm like Valentine, like I'm trying to think of like like
the the well house, but it's like I'm trying to think of
jokes. So it's like they would never do
that. And it's like those would all be
like I'm kind of in for all of those.
It's it's it's interesting. You know what would be the most
obscure building quickly like maybe the the so one thing, one
thing I noticed so when we were at the thing this last Saturday
and Hoosier Ticket Project was doing their their silent
auction. You know there's that you've all
seen it and Scott can see it above my my left shoulder here,
the orange ish basketball colored plate that commemorates
the 1976 championship. As you know it's got Kent Benson
with the sky hook over the Michigan player so on and so
forth. But you got Bob Knight, you know
in in kind of weird drawn mode. You've got Scott May, you've got
Kent Benson and then just randomly you've got the student
building for IU just like hanging out and it's it's
clearly the student building. It's the you know the one with
the big, the big bell tower on it and it's like why is the
student building of all the buildings in that plate?
I don't under, I mean it's it's it's it looks nice but but then
you get to thinking about it that's like surely there was
another building on campus that they might have utilized.
It would be interesting to see like, you know would anybody
ever memorialize Reed quad on AT shirt I I I doubt it severely
for a variety of reasons, but that there's there should be a
whole building's collection. Quad collection.
A home field quad collection I I will say of random IU building.
Though this wasn't the Q&A but it is now.
When growing up in Bloomington, the TV station used to do a sign
on this. The kids TV stations used to
sign off at some point. So they used to sign off at like
midnight or 1:00 AM They would play the the IU song, the
Frangipana song and it would always end with a shot of the
like the the new bell tower that was out on like 17th like the
big kind of square looking bell tower thing.
And I was always like that's an odd last icon like of all the
buildings to kind of sign off and get the the closer spot like
that one seemed kind of odd. But it that's what that's what
they did back then so. Yeah.
Anyway so let's that's that's a good point.
I forgot about that. You'll WTTV sign off that's man
what a can you can you get that up on YouTube and then maybe
maybe Big 10 network can steal that from you as well.
Peacock will grab that too. It's like that I love.
I love for those who didn't see this like there were every every
broadcast. Now it feels like on on Fox or
on Peacock. I haven't seen it as much on
BTN. It's happened once or twice the
the the large YouTube archive that many of you know that I
maintain of old IU games. They the networks will just grab
footage and just how do you know they're grabbing it from your
YouTube because it's the only because the games that they're
grabbing I'm the only one that has a copy I seriously like.
So in the Peacock game they grabbed at this really dog eared
1980 game that Mike Woodson played in and no one else has
uploaded that to YouTube. I know it's mine.
I recognize the the the granularity of the of the video.
There's no credit and look I don't I'm not going to make any
money off of it. I I don't make any money off of
those uploads uploads, period. I I do it as a public service.
But it's annoying 'cause it's like at least like let's credit
doctor GC or let's credit thermocaster, whatever.
Like I like just just something 'cause it's like I I think you
need to do the reverse like you know they have the big thing
like you know the you know you cannot reproduce this like
express written cassette. Like I think you just start
pulling things off a Peacock and putting it on a different
YouTube channel. I need to I need to like I'll
hire a lawyer to just have them call during the broadcast.
I'm sorry, you're going to have to pull this broadcast off the
air now because you used it permissible our our premium
substack. It's like we make some money on
that like we're going to restream the Peacock games on
our premium substack. This is how we finally retire
Scott anyway. No.
Anyway so we didn't get to the questions because we we don't
have an inexhaustible amount of time.
We had our first question of the podcast from Damon, what do we
have to do to make the NCAA tournament?
And it's a reasonable question. And we got some other questions
that kind of fall in that vein. And Damon, first of all, thank
you for listening. Second, I got some bad news
there. There's not a lot that we can do
right now, I think, other than what seems.
DeLorean that is also a time machine.
Well, that would certainly help. Let's put it this way, If you
look at the the, the, the Torvik projections, Indiana winning
every remaining game, you know, so all what is it?
9 games, all eight games remaining in the regular season
and then winning in the first round of the Big 10 tournament
and losing in the second round of the Big 10 tournament would
not quite get Indiana into the tournament.
You know, according to the numbers.
Now there's be some shifting around with some other things as
a result of that, you know, and and I think a lot of it is going
to come down to like what happens in other environments.
But even if you even if you account for all of those
different items based on pure numbers, and this is where I
think the caveat's important, Indiana 23 and 10 and 14 and six
purely from a numbers perspective, wouldn't get in.
Now, realistically, if Indiana ran the table, they would get in
up until the Big 10 tournament because they'd be 14 and six,
and at that point they'd have a road win against Purdue, they'd
have a home win against Wisconsin, they'd have a home
win against Michigan State. And then you add into that
really the very little that they did the rest of the season.
I mean, they have that road win at Michigan, you know?
But that point, they'd have a bunch of wins that would make
them look better. They'd be 3 and 8IN quad one, I
think 8 and one in quad two, and with only one loss below that.
So, you know, realistically speaking, I think Indiana would
have to at minimum win 12 or 13 games depending on which games
they were. And then they would have to win
at least probably a game, maybe two in the Big 10 tournament.
Even then it would be kind of touch and go.
And a lot of this, again, kind of depends on what's going on
elsewhere in the country. I don't think it's a reasonable
ask simply because when you say what does Indiana have to do to
get in, You have to assume that they're going to play at a level
that's much higher than what they've seen.
We we've seen out of them so far.
So even though they wanted Ohio State, and that was certainly a
good win to have, I don't think that you can use how they played
in in the second-half of that game as a predictor for how
they'll play moving forward. And any any appearance in the
NCAA tournament, from my perspective, is going to rely on
one of two things. Either A Indiana wins the Big 10
tournament or B, Indiana plays like a completely different team
between now and the end of the season.
Both of those seem very unlikely and so I'm I'm not holding my
breath. There is a route, There's two
routes really. One of them is win the rest of
your games and then win at least one game in the Big 10
tournament. The other route is win the Big
10 tournament. I just don't think that that
either of those are going to happen.
Yeah, you've got me on to the the Bart Torvik, you know,
futurecast and playing around with it.
Even with us winning out and winning one game in the Big 10
tournament and losing the second, we're still in the first
four out, like we're like the fifth team out.
So it's like that still isn't good enough, you know.
But and I just played around, you know, if you say that we
lose at Purdue and lose at home to Wisconsin, which are both
reasonable and you win everything else, which is still
a pretty unrealistic situation. We're like 16th out like we're
we're not even in the first four or eight out.
I would say the best possible route now is in that Torvik T
you know Futurecast, there's a button that a check mark says
give auto bid if you click that we're in.
But I think that might be the best way in.
I mean yeah I'm showing like honestly if we win out and we
win two games, the Big 10 tournament lose to Purdue.
We are one of the last four teams in.
So it's like there's still a route to get there, but as as
you. Said it would, It would take us
doing just something that you There's really not a lot of
precedent of a team in the hundreds just all of a sudden
playing like a team in the 20s. Well, and look, obviously
Indiana would be looked at differently if they finished
with, you know, 13 or 14 wins in the Big 10.
And that's where you'd get all of those.
Like, does Indiana deserve to be?
And look what they've done over the course of the last 10 games
of the season. Discourse that we sometimes hear
from other teams who do similar things.
I don't even think it's worth entertaining until we see if
they went at Purdue. Let's have the conversation
absolutely. Or if they lose at Purdue and
win everything up until that game against Michigan State,
let's have the conversation. But right now I I don't.
You know, we're so used to Indiana at least being somewhat
in the tournament picture. From a conversation perspective,
this is the first year that I feel like any conversation on
that front is fanciful. Yeah, 'cause we're not even,
like, we're not even, we're not even, we're not even on the
fringes of the conversation right now.
And and so that's, that's a thing.
So 'cause, like, we had another question.
Well, I mean, I was going to say, like the other question
that should be asked honestly is like what do we have to do to
make the NIT? Which I don't want to answer,
but it's like we're, we're there.
I mean, keep in mind, NIT is going to want brands like
Indiana in the NIT. And right now, I mean that win
at Ohio State was big for that because at this point, Indiana's
projected generally I think to go three and five the rest of
the way, which would easily get you into the the NIT, you'd be
17 and 14, you'd be 9:00 and 11:00.
I really have a hard time seeing Indiana being left out.
But the, the, the one thing to think about on the flip side
there is the Big 10. Like, there's a lot of teams
that are kind of in this rut, in the right, in the middle that
will have about the same record at the end of the season.
Now, I'd be surprised if like, Rutgers, Ohio State, Michigan,
Maryland or Penn State got invites to the NIT simply
because I don't think any of them are going to finish with
good enough records to quite get there.
And, you know, Maryland is kind of the big question mark.
The rest of them, I I I'm having a hard time seeing the route.
But for the rest of the teams that are in that middle, a lot
of it depends on what the NCAA tournament does.
You know, if Minnesota makes the NCAA tournament, which is still
an iffy proposition. If Michigan State wins makes the
NCAA tournament, That's an iffy proposition.
Nebraska still not sure they're six and seven in conference
right now. Iowa is seems like an NIT bound
team, but they're still technically in the conversation.
A lot of Indiana's fate might ride on what happens with those
other teams, because if they're in the NCAA tournament, that
makes it easier for Indiana get into the NIT tournament.
The NIT, it's not the NIT tournament, it's just the NIT.
Sorry, NIT. Yeah, it's last thing about the
NITI was joking with Andy Bottoms about this at our last
event. It's like he's, you know, he's
he's very good at the NCAA bracketology.
But I was joking, like, you know, there's an open lane,
'cause I remember there's there's a guy, there's a there's
a guy that does NIT bracketology.
I'm joking. It's like there's five, but it's
like I feel like I have to go on the dark web to get there.
It's like I'm open, like, you know, the Silk Road, like I can
order cocaine and stuff and heroin online.
Like the NIT projection sites are like if I'm almost going to
clear my browser and go Incognito mode, it feels so
dirty. Anyway, go ahead.
Did you just compare the NIT to Class 1 narcotics on the
podcast? Wow.
That's really fascinating, Scott.
And we're learning a lot about you.
That's OK let's move on. They're all things I don't like.
Put it that way. Fairpoint.
OK, not things you would not order in NIT bid on Silk Road.
So I think, I think it can be done.
Anyway, let's let's get to some other questions here.
So we had a question and I'll go back.
This was the one that Patrick asked about that video that I
did regarding the alliance, the Big 10 SEC alliance, which is
where it was actually two questions here.
Where does antitrust come into the equation when it comes to
the potential of the Big 10 and the SEC getting together?
The NFL has been fighting that, curious that that eventually
could come into play if the Big 10 and the SEC break off.
So I think this is a really fascinating question, and I
don't think there's a clear answer.
Part of the problem with college sports is that the definitions
are all screwed up because college athletics has spent the
last 75 years trying to argue that they don't have to pay
their employees. And so as a result, you know
you've already had demonstrated stratification of college
athletics that all goes back to the player compensation aspect
that's been going on for the last 40 years.
You know, I mean we're obviously focused on Big 10 and the SEC,
you know those 34 teams are getting together.
We don't know for what exactly. We we know, but can't you know
with 10 years ago we had the Power 5, which largely split
themselves from the Group of Five within the FBS subdivision
and said we get the lion's share of playoff bids.
Well, nobody filed antitrust over that.
Then before that it was, well, we're going to have Division
One, then division, you know, then it's like Division 1A,
Division 1B, Division 11C or it was FBSFCS, whatever that
stratification. Before that you had even the
idea of there being divisions because that's only been around
since the 1970s and so. I think the idea of antitrust,
putting the brakes on college sports reorganization is
probably not something to rely on.
If you don't like the direction that things are going or even if
you do like the direction that you're going, but you're worried
about it. Because I don't know that the
courts can legitimately say everybody in this marketplace
gets equal access. Like there's no argument for it.
There's no argument that. I mean if there was, I think
we'd be seeing you know something akin to well you know
how can how can Division One FBS limit FCS teams from being in in
this, you know, new in like in the playoff for instance.
It's it's largely because businesses and and industries
kind of set the rules for themselves.
This isn't monopolizing in as much as there's 34 brands
involved. You know, there's been this
stratification and you've got dozens of years of professional
sports that you know as the the one aspect here is will we see
collective bargaining between athletes and either schools or
conferences or some combination of both.
If there is collective bargaining, then that is an
agreed upon labor situation with the idea that yes, this is an
oligopoly or this is, you know, some kind of a of a of a
monopolistic thing. But it's allowed, because that's
been the status quo, not just for sports in the United States,
but frankly, sports all over the world for a long time.
Yeah. I mean, antitrust is, is like,
you know, when there's only three airlines and it's like
they're the only ones who can fly there, that's kind of an
antitrust thing here. It's like, you know, how how
would the courts figure out the difference between, you know,
like a scholarship to play football at Indiana Wesleyan and
a scholarship play football at Georgia like you?
And I know they're different, but it's like, are you saying
like, that's still a scholarship to play football at a level?
It's like it's a different level, but it's it's, I just
don't see it as a possibility. And as you've said, it's like
universities have spent 100 years saying we're not a
business. We're not, we're not adhering to
all of these rules. And now all of a sudden they're
like, oh, we are now we are, but we, but we kind of are.
Because they don't want to deal with, you know, paying their
players. But we do want.
It's it. This is where they've created
this very messy bed. And I also think that, you know,
this is where, you know, to get real collective bar, I mean,
sorry, not collective bargaining.
To get real antitrust, you need more than just courts.
Like you need, you need some federal government, you know,
intervention. And this is where, you know,
we're not going to take this into a political side, but it's
like the the government is not getting anything done even on
immigration, let alone. And they got to take time to
come together across the aisle and figure out, you know,
antitrust legislation for the NCAA.
They, they've made it very clear, like the NCAA's trying to
get stuff through Congress, the Congress, like we're done.
Like we're not, we're not dealing with this.
We don't want to touch this. You guys figure it out on your
own. So I just I don't see any of
this happening for them. Patrick also asks what is the
SEC Big 10 partnership mean for the future of regular season
basketball. Maybe a a glorified Big 10 SEC
tournament Also feels like this is going to be the kind of thing
that forces Notre Dame to make a choice along with like UNCFSU
Clemson. So on the first thing, I don't
know. I mean, look, so much of this is
about, if you look at football, that is really the template I
think that you would see in any restructuring of the landscape
based upon the Big 10 and the SEC getting together and saying,
all right, we're the most important people left at the
table. You know the NC Double AII have
a hard time seeing the NCAA disappearing.
But I do see a scenario that's very likely where the NCAA just
doesn't derive money from the NCAA men's basketball tournament
because and that's that's a kind of a death blow for it to do
anything because that's where it gets most of its money that it
then distributes down to the smaller members, the the members
that often times aren't even in the NCAA tournament but
certainly the ones that are at the lower levels of Division
One. You know, look ultimately this
is where and it kind of goes back to your, you know, I didn't
realize I was a a a tournament conservative comment at the
beginning. The NCAA tournament is something
that people have grown to really love over the course of the last
35 to 40 years since it expanded to 64 teams and became a media
entity. A tremendous amount of money is
made off of it every year. Not as much as is made in terms
of like per team revenue generation as is made in
football, but it's still a very lucrative thing.
And I think from the standpoint of the Big 10, the SEC and their
media partners, they're looking at this as they did with
football. And they said our responsibility
is not to make sure that everybody in college sports gets
a chance at at playing for a national title.
Our responsibility is to make sure our schools are taken care
of and make sure we're maximizing our revenue.
I realize that sounds disgusting to a lot of people and the
outcome of that would be something along the lines of the
Big 10 in the SEC, but just wouldn't participate in the NCAA
tournament. They would have their own
tournament, which would probably look something like a single
elimination version of what you get in the NC double or in the
in the NBA or or you know the NFL.
That's that just feels like the likely thing.
Would it be a replacement? Would that be the actual
national championship? I mean, if if you're talking
about A, if you're talking first of all about the big brands, the
football brands, Notre Dame, North Carolina, Florida State,
Clemson, if they end up joining this mega alliance of these two
conferences, certainly there's more teams playing really good
basketball elsewhere. You know, the Big East, there's
basically no teams that fit into this category.
There's Big 12 teams that don't fit into this category.
There's, you know, there's there's the Cinderella stories.
I am really curious if the Big 10 in the SEC look at this and
say we realize that the what makes the tournament special and
what draws people to it is that layer of unpredictability.
We just want a greater share of the revenue.
We don't want all of that farmed out to the rest of of college
sports simply because we all happen to be in the NCAA.
So I think the implications both for the regular season and for
the NCAA tournament, to answer Patrick's question or something
along the lines of this, the NCAA tournament I think will
continue. It'll probably include more
teams and those more teams will come from the power conferences.
There will be some additional money and the money will be
shunted more towards the teams that have the top level brand
recognition in the Big 10, the SEC, and to a lesser extent some
of the other power conferences, rather than just doing away with
the whole thing entirely regular season.
I actually think Patrick's idea is logical that you would set,
you would have like a mega big 10 SEC challenge that you would
market kind of like the N season tournament has been marketed
through the NBA where it is kind of like the big player
tournament. That happens and it probably
won't supersede the NCAA tournament in terms of
popularity, but keep in mind this is what the NCAA tournament
did to the NIT 75 years ago. It's the exact same.
Book, hopefully without the huge gambling scandal that ended up
undoing the NIT. But I could see that kind of
being the way that things play out over the next 5 to 10 years.
Something that that you something's going to have to
happen with the regular season. If you go back and listen.
I did a preview podcast the beginning of the year with Mike
Dakouri. We talked about this a little
bit. It's like we're looking at it
and you know, it's like there's eighteen teams in the Big 10.
Next year we play 20 basketball games, the Big 10 conference.
It's like that's you're either going to not play a lot of
people or you're going to play everybody once and it's like you
play Purdue twice and that's it. Like it.
It's going to be a weird structure.
And then if you, if you add more conference games, that's fine,
but then you get away, you lose all of, the, you know, non
conference games, which then like how you select the teams
for the tournament becomes wildly different.
So it's like something is going to have to change.
You're either you're going to lose a lot of the preseason
games that we like or the preseason, the whole whole other
levels of preseason tournaments. If you get this, you know, big
10 SEC challenge, then that gets rid of pre season games.
So like even if the NCAA tournament stays the way it is,
how those teams are selected is going to be just vastly
different because you're not going to have balanced
conference schedules. Like you kind of have two things
pushing, something's going to have to give here.
And so when I look at that, it's like 18 teams or 20 games isn't
going to make sense moving forward.
So I think there's a couple of things to keep in mind.
One of the reasons why the college basketball regular
season isn't that enjoyable is not just what you just said, but
what you said is important. But it's also that nobody's in
charge of college basketball. Like, there are some very, very
basic guidelines like you can only play X number of games and
not exempt tournaments. You can, you know you have to
play within these particular dates, but realistically,
there's nobody actually in charge of doing all of that.
What? Where that comes from a lot of
times is here's what coaches want and this is what gets
pushed. And that ends up, you know,
being the rule of law. Well, what coaches want is not
really the same thing as what would be good for college
basketball, either from a competitive perspective or from
a media revenue perspective. I mean, all these games that get
played, all the complaints you get about why are all these
games in neutral sites? Well, they're not at neutral
sites for media purposes. They're not at media sites for
competitive purposes. They're they're, excuse me,
they're not at neutral sites for those things.
They're neutral sites because coaches don't want to lose games
on the road, right? That's a bad idea like that,
like using that as a primary scheduling thing is not good,
but because there's not a lot of top down control in either
college football or college basketball, you end up with
these schedules. That only makes sense in many
cases for the coaches, not the consumers, not the media
partners and not the athletic departments.
And I think that is something that will change, especially if
the relationship between the schools and the athletes changes
to where the athletes are considered employees.
That gives you a lot more flexibility to think about how
you're doing scheduling. And it gives you the ability as
we see in the NBA and the NFL and other professional, you
know, sports entities, which college sports is as we keep
saying, that gives you the ability to say here's how we're
going to schedule, here's who's going to play whom.
And you can go a couple different directions.
Like I I really would love from a competitive perspective, the
Big 10 and the SEC are big enough now and will probably get
bigger because they'll add the brands that they want from, you
know, the ECC or the Big 12 that they say, you know what, rather
than this kind of cockamamie will have half the teams play,
half the teams thing. I'd love to see them break
themselves down into more reasonable divisions for
basketball, where you have a core group of teams that you're
playing regularly for rivalry purposes, and that makes up the
bulk of your schedule, that I think it provides media with
what they want. It provides consistent
competition. It still allows for slots where
you're crossing over and playing teams from other conferences,
You know, ultimately it checks all the boxes that need to be
checked. That's one of the big issues
right now with college basketball in particular is that
there's nobody minding the store.
It's just all been kind of cobbled together over the course
of time and loosely directed by the conferences.
There needs to be a lot more coordination, especially if
things consolidate more. I want to hit one thing that
Patrick said because it was a thought that I had from from
your your, your, your pod on the on this, where do you see and we
can finish this up with this. Notre Dame is always the one
that kind of clicks out there. It's like there's other brands
like Florida State and North Carolina that are like big
brands. It's like it seems weird that
they're going to be left out by the way someone's going to be
left out. Like there's at the end there
will be a bubble of. It's like, you know, it's one of
my favorite is like I think it was an interview with like Jay
Bilis or somebody was like talking about doing the the
studio show for the tournament and he's like, Dick Vitale's
like, oh man, you can't leave that school at all, man.
Like, how'd they get left out? And they finally went to break
and he's like, dude Dick, somebody has to be left out.
Like they can't all make it. And it's it's funny with like
the all NBA All Star now everyone's like, oh man, Simona
should be an All Star. And I'm always like, that's
great. Like, dot, dot, dot.
Who are you kicking off? Like nobody ever says that next
part of like, he should be open. But like Julius Randall sucks.
He should be out. I'm not picking on Julius
Randall, but it's like everyone's like, oh, my top five
is these twelve guys. Anyway, so there's going to be
something left out, but it does seem like Notre Dame.
I'm just curious your thoughts on Notre Dame because it feels
like we're getting to that point where it's like they're going to
have to decide and at some point get off or do you think it'll
really be Big 10 SEC and Notre Dame?
I mean, ultimately, I think the Big 10 and the SEC are going to
look at this and say, I mean, at some point Notre Dame has to
realize that they're like everybody else.
I mean, I mean really like. I mean if if Texas has been
willing to humble out there, if Texas has been willing to humble
itself to the point they're in the SEC.
You know if if FSU is and North Carolina are going to humble
themselves to not being the most important members of their own
conference and and melding into these larger conferences.
I I don't know why the Big 10 in the SEC would look at Notre Dame
and say yeah you know you you deserve special preference on
all of this and you deserve more money than everybody else.
That that didn't work when the when Texas tried that with the
Big 12. You know, so my project and look
I said something when this last round of realignment kicked off
when it was clear that Notre Dame kind of backstabbed the ACC
in a lot of ways and and put them in a really weak position
like the Noraday will eventually pay for that.
I think in terms of what they have to do in order to maintain
in this environment, they've they've got their own media deal
for this next cycle and and that will carry them through until
the end of the decade. But when the next round comes
up, I don't know if that's going to be there at the same level.
And if you're the Big 10 in the SEC, it's like, well, if we're
the real power brokers in this, I think the question is does
Notre Dame actually join the club, do they join the club for
scheduling at this point? You know a lot of the debates
have been about, well, you know will Notre Dame join the Big 10.
They'd rather join the SEC. And it's like at this point it
doesn't matter. Like it really doesn't matter.
And I, you know the if if the money's joining the appliance
basically and and at this point the Big 10's probably looking at
it and saying fine, you don't want to join us, you you now you
got to join the SEC. But guess what, we're all under
the same media contract. So that, I think, is the
ultimate thing. You know what's what we got to
do? It's like if all of these things
kind of move forward, there comes a point where it's like,
fine, Notre Dame. If you want to do your own thing
and have your own media, that's great.
But like, who are you going to play?
It's like if you really piss off the Big 10 and SC, it's like
great. Hey, by the way, not even pissed
off. It's like you're the Big 10.
It's like we have enough scheduling to deal.
Like we have enough things we got to schedule.
It's like we don't have room to put Michigan against you in the
next couple of schedules. So have fun playing SMU and
Boise State. Like, knock yourself out, Notre
Dame. Because, like, we don't.
You're either in or you're out. We're in like we we have more
than enough content to go around.
We can't we don't have room to slot in a bunch of games against
you. You.
Yes, Notre Dame becomes a luxury as opposed to a necessity in
that environment and I and I think, I think Notre Dame
realizes that. What I think is really
fascinating though and the this is the last thing we'll say on
this because I want to get to some IU stuff.
If you saw the announcement earlier this week that ESPN and
Fox are partnering on an app that is going to be like the
centralized sports streaming site with the idea that you'll
be able to go to this app and you'll be able to access all the
stuff on ESPNESPN plus Fox, FOX plus BTN, like all of it's going
to be there. If you notice who wasn't in that
mix, it was NBC and Peacock, who is the contract with for Notre
Dame. It's for NBC and Peacock.
Like that they hired a guy who was an executive from Peacock
and NBC to to run their athletic department.
You know, I mean, what's fascinating to me is, you know,
there's going to have to be some hard negotiations, I think, to
bring NBC and Peacock into that app, and that's going to be the
app everybody wants if you're a sports fan.
That's what everybody's been clamoring for.
It's like we don't want to switch between five different
things. Does that become a wedge issue
to get in Notre Dame to kind of, you know, play by the rules that
the rest of the college sports community have decided that
they're going to focus on? That's going to be a really
fascinating thing to see. So anyway, some other questions,
Jamie Jordan asks basketball question.
I keep coming back to this. If we just IU men's basketball,
if we just sucked and it was fun to watch, would that change your
opinion on the team? We're awful on both ends of the
floor, but it's also not enjoyable to watch the style.
If we were Michigan, where the offense was good but the defense
was awful, but the vision for the future was a more modern
style, would you be as annoyed with the result?
It's hard to word it properly. I guess I just don't see
anything changing next year with the style and roster
construction, because that could have happened this year and it
didn't. OK.
This is an interesting question that's popped up quite a bit
because it's really a question of are you dissatisfied with the
outcome and is the process change how you feel about the
outcome? Scott, go ahead and take your
take the first crack at this one.
No, it's a great question. Something that I brought up on
one of our last pods being like, you know this just is not a fun
team to watch which I I stand by like the the the way they play
is tough but it's you're asking that question.
I think back to we have a pretty good example of the alternate
reality of this which was the end of the Tom Crean errors.
Those teams were offensively dynamite.
I mean they were shooting all over the place.
It was like hey Devante green, you want more green lights, Like
go for it man, knock yourself out.
And I, you know revisionist history is is one thing but I
remember being during living through that time being very
unhappy with those teams as well.
So I, I, you know, as somebody who is not enjoying watching
this style of play, I I think it's tough.
But, you know, in the end winning kind of cures all ills
and losing unfortunately heightens all those things.
Because I I would just say under Tom Crean those last two or
three years, there's other pieces there where it's like
Crean had the highs and the drops of like there's more to
the Crean story than just that. But you know, Crean was the
alternate. Like that was a fun and
exciting, very offensive style of play that also wasn't
working. And I don't remember at the
time, you know, being like, Oh, well, you know, we're losing.
But hey, at least it's fun to watch, you know, But I maybe was
a little bit more plugged, but I'm also like 10 years older and
had ten more years of, you know, anyway, so I I would say while I
understand that sentiment and at times I agree with it, and I do
agree this team is not the most, you know, aesthetically pleasing
to watch. You know, the only thing I, the
last thing I would say is that at least under those cream
teams, you always felt like there was that 2016 type run
where it's like if they can just get things kind of figured out,
like this team could beat anybody on any given day.
I'm not sure I always feel that way with this, this version of
the team, just cause the offense struggles so much.
But I I think in the end it's probably just the losses that
are hurting because under Crean it was an offensive explosion
and still wasn't a ton of fun. I think we're all happy to be
off of that when that time came to the end.
Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'd note
that in terms of offensive efficiency, Michigan is not that
much better than Indiana. They're 54th in the country this
year. Indiana's 99th.
Not I'm I'm not sitting here standing for Indiana's offense.
It has not looked good. I don't think Michigan's playing
well enough or is enjoyable enough as a team to make that a
better scenario than what Indiana's dealt with.
And and honestly, I don't even here's the thing, you know, I
think the a slow pace or a stodgy kind of out of date
offense is going to make people irritated.
But if you're winning, it's a lot less irritating.
We talked about that a bit on the last show.
If Indiana was fun to watch offensively but was losing, I
think people would really get angry at the defense, which is
what happened in the green era. That was the that was the
mantra. It's like well, you know why
can't we have a coach that that's one of the reasons why
people were so excited about Archie Miller.
It's like oh, finally a coach that can coach defense and then
wow, look what happened. So I actually think, I think
it's a really good question, Jamie.
I think a lot of the discontent is less about the style though.
The style hasn't been awesome and more about there's been
large stretches where it just feels like the team either
doesn't know what it's doing or doesn't care what it's doing.
And that's a bit unfair because we're just reacting to what
we're seeing. You don't know that about the
players. It's more you're just kind of
reacting to these long stretches where they they really look
disconnected from what's going out on the floor.
But you know to me, I think that's that's the big thing for
most. I mean if you look at the teams
that have been disliked the most by IU fans over the course of
the last 50 years, a lot of it really comes back to this
perception that the teams haven't bought in or that the
teams are are just, you know, not, they're not capable of
playing in a way that makes them look like they're connected.
I mean you go back, we talked about the 2013, 2014 team.
You know that team had all of those hallmarks and a lot of
people said that team was awful to watch.
They look like they had no fun playing with each other.
They had trouble doing things on the floor. 2003, 2004 and 2004,
2005 both fell into that exact same pattern.
Some of the late period night teams, especially like the, you
know, the 9596 and 9697 teams really fell into that pattern.
The the the 8485 team, the the team that preceded the season on
the brink year. I mean that to me is where you
get into the most trouble with IU fans is when it just feels
like there's a disconnect from intensity and focus.
And it's why I think this seat ears team, when they do play
like that, everybody gets happy all of a sudden like that.
The the IU did not play well in that first, what 2425 minutes of
the Ohio State game. They play hard, they come back,
they win and people are thrilled by that.
And you know, that's got people talking about what do we need to
do to make the tournament and stuff like that.
Like that's what people want. It's not even necessarily the
style. I think that's a secondary
thing. So I and look, I think other
people might disagree or have a different approach, but that's
how I've approached things. Yep.
No, I agree some other we have got a ton.
Like I said, we're not going to be able to get to all of these.
So we did have a question from let's see where did it go?
Let me, let me jump back to this other one.
I'm going to save the football questions.
I think we're going to do those as a separate thing to tomorrow
or over the weekend because there were a ton of football
questions and I'd like to, I'd like to address those.
Zach Wallace asks. Hypothetically, this year ends
on a relatively good note. Coach Woodson's able to win some
recruiting battles and builds a winning team for next season
through the transfer portal. He leads A-Team to a Sweet 16 or
elite 8IN next year's tournament.
Does Dolson extend Woodson's contract if that were to happen?
Or what do you see as needing to happen to extend his contract?
It's an interesting thing. I mean, I think it that question
Zach ties into a bunch of other items.
I mean, Woodson didn't extend his contract most recently.
He got a salary increase, but he didn't extend his contract.
And I can't help but look at that and say to myself, I'm not
sure if Woodson wants to extend his contract much beyond where
it currently is. I do think you could see, you
know, in that scenario some kind of an extension for recruiting
purposes because it's generally a bad look to go out and recruit
if you don't have a contract that runs through the end of the
players that you're planning on recruiting getting there.
But it's really about, I think, the idea of where does Indiana's
optimism with the Woodson era, both administratively and with
fans, sit depending on what happens in this offseason and
going in the next year. As far as the offseason stuff, I
think what everybody seems to be looking for, and we had a bunch
of questions that hit this in one form or another.
Is there a sign of change? Like, is there a sign that some
kind of philosophical shift will occur?
Because I think where people get concerned and and you know this,
this even ties into some comments that we're going to get
to in a second. This ties into the concern of,
like, how quick or how slow are you to pull the trigger on a
coach? So like Ant Ant Wright, who's on
Twitter all the time, if you haven't seen his video
breakdowns, he's pretty good. But he gets asked this like, do
they fire Woodson? After this year, his response
has been paraphrasing, you don't give Archie Miller four years
with no NCAA tournaments and then turn around and only give
three years to a coach that's been to the NCAA tournament
twice, had a second place finish in the Big 10 and was a four
seed in one of those tournaments.
And I think that's a fair thing to say.
There were some comments from Trace Jackson Davis today.
Did you see those comments yet, Scott?
So Darrell Junior asked this, what's your take on what?
On what Trace Jackson Davis said about giving Woodson more time.
He said something to the effect of you can't swap coaches every
two to three years, you need stability.
Do you agree with that? And how can you have stability
when Woodson's already up there in years?
How long is he going to coach? See all these things are
swimming around. First of all I'd like to note
Woodson, while while certainly in his, you know in the upper
ranges of coaches, is younger than a lot of other coaches, I
think he's like 9 or 10 years younger than Jim Larranaga.
He's he's like five or six years younger than Rick Barnes at at
Tennessee. There's a lot of coaches that
are coaching that are doing really well, that are older than
Woodson. I don't think age is the
appropriate metric to look at this.
I think it's more does it feel like there is a pathway and
going back to the Trace Jackson Davis's comments, what do you
see out of Woodson that makes you think that the pathway that
Indiana's on is a proper one? That's where I think, Scott, a
lot of people are concerned because that doesn't really feel
apparent right now after, you know, Trace Jackson, Davis
leaves and Miller Cop leaves and so forth.
Yes. I mean the, the age thing is
real, but I think it's really tied into the performance
because you look at, you know, Tom Izzo's 69, who's in that age
range and it's like Michigan State is really underperforming
this year. And then you can get the
narrative like, all right, has Izo lost his touch?
And you start to get that, you know, with Lara Nega, it's like
they were just in the final four, what, last year?
So you're like, Oh, well, this is a guy who knows, you know,
was able to change his time. So like age really is just, it's
a factor of are you winning right now.
And if you're not, like it'll happen like that where if you're
over 65, it's just like you lost your touch.
The narrative will get started and then it kind of, it's going
to be interesting to see, can Tom, can Tom Izzo turn that
around in Michigan State for example, a guy who's 69, four
years older than Woodson? You know, back to the original
question, if you know, let's just take that, that scenario.
He does. You know Woodson does well in
recruiting. The soft season figures out a a
system that works better and this team makes an elite eight.
Yeah, I mean that would be something we haven't done at IU
in like 20 plus years. That would be a a, a high high,
which is kind of always been the problems here is all of the
coaches here. I'm fine giving a little bit of
time. The trouble is like even our
highs have been basically getting the Sweet 16, getting
our ass kicked for the most, for the most part.
And that's not high enough. You know, you you start getting
some elite 8, some Final Fours that buys you a lot more time.
And so yeah, I think if you're Dolson you wouldn't want to give
like a 10 year extension. But yeah, maybe you extend it
two more years because at that point it's like OK now it looks
like what Woodson is doing is starting to yield results.
If we're getting to an elite eight that that would be a a a
fantastic season. I think the trouble is we're
starting to get these. You know it's something Osterman
talked about kind of half life of coaches.
But you know even our highs now are not as high.
You know we're we're not winning the Big 10.
You know the highest under Woodson is you know the 2nd
place finish in the Big 10. You know a Sweet 16 where we get
kind of boat raced out and it's like now after that we have the
drop off season again. It's like at least you know,
Creed had a #1 ranked team, won a big 10, you know, lost the
Sweet 16. And then it's like I think as a
fan, all I can say is, you know, it's just it is tiring that it's
like our highs seem to be getting a little bit lower.
But it's like we always hit this like why every year we have a
good season it has to be followed by this just
precipitous drop off. And like to me that is what is
starting to get really, really tough is you know even the bad
year we're talking about at Michigan State, they're two or
three wins away from at least being in the NCAA tournament.
It is really tough and it's hard to continue to give time when
it's like you have one good year and then it's just it it's like
it has to be followed by this drop off.
And look to add to that, I think one of the issues is what's the
foundation, if you're going to argue that, OK, last year you
lost a bunch of pieces, you're going to have to take a step
back. Fine.
Where are the good young pieces that you can really point to and
say this is what is going to lead to success moving forward?
I mean, Gabe, Cubs has played pretty well this year, but you
haven't seen a lot out of some of the freshmen and sophomore
pieces beyond that that would lead you to think that's your
nucleus moving forward. You don't have anybody in the
recruiting pipeline that's that's clearly apparent right
now except for the one guy that you've signed.
I don't think it's unreasonable for fans to be nervous because
what Trace Jackson Davis says is correct.
I pointed this out on an earlier podcast.
It's like you have to have some stability.
All the programs you're pointing at around the country, you know,
whether it's Purdue or whether it's Michigan State or whether
it's, you know, Villanova under Jay Wright.
One of the hallmarks there was the consistency that came from
having the same coach. But I also think you have to be
cognizant of right coach too. Well, not just the right coach,
but is that coach? Is there a clear pathway where
it's like there's already been a foundation of success late?
And I think what has caused so many people to take a step back
and really question it this year is the idea that IU would fall
so far back after losing. Admittedly, you know a, you
know, a couple of NBA players and then some guys who are
playing professional basketball, but to fall that far back and to
be in the position that Indiana's in this year where the
NCAA tournament is, is basically a pipe dream.
The NIT is not an assured thing. To not have a stronger
foundation, to be able to sustain through that, that's a
real problem. And so that's where I think a
lot of the questions around Woodson come from.
It's not just the lack of success, it really is the lack
of clear pathway forward. And it's a lot of, well, you got
to trust Woodson and the coaching staff that they're
going to make the necessary philosophical changes where
they're going to make the necessary roster moves because
they had the chance to do that before, didn't.
And you know, IU fans are pretty savvy.
They're not just going to be like, oh, well, we'll get them
next time. That's, that's they kind of
feeds into not just what you said at the end there, but also
the question from Doctor R why does it have to be so exhausting
to be an IU basketball fan? And you know that that really
ties right into it because I think it is a bunch of things.
A there's been a lot of false promises over the course of time
that this coach or that coach was going to bring the glory
days back or or maybe not in the glory days, But just successful
basketball at a high level, at a national level.
And I think it's extra exhausting for IU fans, because
IU fans, we're not historically used to these huge peaks and
valleys that other programs are. I mean, I was thinking Michigan
State in the Seventies, 80s and 90s.
You know, they won a national title in 1979 with Magic Johnson
and and Greg Kelser. They, you know, they were in an
elite 8IN the in the late 80s I think, or early 90s.
But then they'd have seasons where they were like 11 and 17
and they know they would be like 5 and 13 in the Big 10, they
would have these. And that's Michigan State.
I mean that's that's considered to be like one of the top ten,
top 15 programs in the country. Ohio State would have those
peaks and valleys. You know, they went from, you
know, being on the doorstep of a Final Four in 1992 to, you know,
barely being an afterthought in the Big 10 a couple of years
later. Indiana largely avoided that
until the last 2025 years, and now Indiana's got most of the
valleys and and none of the peaks.
As you just pointed out, Indiana fans, partially due to their own
self mythologizing, but also due to the way that the program's
marketed, the way the program's covered in the media.
You know, you're, you kind of feel like you're paying filet
mignon prices for hamburger a lot of the time with this, with
this, you know, the fandom of being in at IU.
And that really is exhausting because when you feel like
you're supposed to be better by birthright, then you have been
for a long period of time. And when you've had, you know,
certain segments of the of the IU establishment, for lack of a
better term, saying, you know, what's been missing is we
haven't had a night guy in his coach.
And then you finally put one in and it's like this looks an
awful lot like the last 25 years has looked.
That's really exhausting and it's.
And you know, to some degree, it's like the fans can't do
anything about it. The fans aren't to blame for it.
And some of it's bad luck and some of it's bad decision
making. I mean, there's a you could
parse any one of a number of things out, but that's what
makes it so exhausting, because mentally you're prepared.
You're expecting there to be this certain level of of caliber
for the program. And when it doesn't hit it over
and over and over again, you start to ask yourself, like, why
is this such a big deal? Why is this such a problem?
Especially when Purdue, who you know frankly has been, has had
as much success as IU has had in the conference without any of
the titles outside of the conference.
When they seem to be able to figure out a level of of
consistency that Indiana can't, or Kentucky being able to figure
out that an Indiana can't, that really does get exhausting.
And the two things I'll say to this is that one where it gets
exhausting for me is you know, you you've mentioned this
before, you said it before and I I believe it's true.
It's like it just does not have to be this hard.
Like when you have the right coach and the right setup, you
look at like Chaka Smart who couldn't get it done in Texas,
like it's working at Marquette within three years, like boom,
they're top ten and it's like it.
You see it happen other places where it's not a a 12 year
rebuild and you don't need every perfect alchemy to make it work.
It's just like it starts working and starts working quickly when
things are lined up. And so it's really frustrating
hasn't happened here. The thing that I will say to
consistency where I've changed my tune a little bit is I I do
think it's a little bit of hypocrisy when you hear all
this. Hey, we just got to have
consistency because like the part that isn't mentioned is
like like I said earlier, it has to be with the right coach
because the same people. And I'm, I'm kind of getting off
the consistency train because not that I have anything wrong
with the current, you know, I I have my own feelings.
But it's like you look back, I I definitely felt like it was a
time to change off of cream. I definitely felt at the end,
middle to the end. It was time to move off of
Archie. But you know, you can't have it
both ways. In my mind, you can't go back
and say, man, Archie was a bad hire.
That really sucked. But also like, hey man, we got
to have consistency because if you want consistency, you
shouldn't have fired Archie or you shouldn't have fired cream.
Like at some point if you want consistency, you've got to stay
with it. But you can't then be like this
coach sucks. Like you either get consistency
or you know you have to be like, we got to get it consistent.
It's to me, it's like it's got to be consistent with the right
coach. And I think that's been part of
the problem is we haven't had the coach that comes in, locks
in and suddenly turns things around quickly.
It's always either a slow turn around in Crean's case and then
you know just a complete fall off, no turn around in Archie's
case or here where again you have the turn around and then
the wheels fall off quickly after that turn around.
That I think gets everybody concerned.
It's like is this the right person?
We get in this back and forth. But as I say, the consistency
argument, I think it's like you it's tough to look back and
again, we should have fired him, we should have fired him, we
should have fired him and then be like we also we got to have
consistency. It's like you can't.
Not sure you can have both the same time.
Yeah, I look, ultimately there were good reasons for all the
coaching moves that were made and I think that's important to
keep in mind. You know the move off a cream
was largely because of the fall down and recruiting which Bob
and Mike accurately and added and I think really effectively
pointed out on on one of the Exes and Joe's podcast episodes.
You know, Archie was moved on from because the the team went
backwards in year four. It didn't, it was not a not
moving forwards. They weren't breaking through.
They were doing the opposite, you know with Woodson.
Look, I think what Woodson did in his first two years grants
him enough of a benefit of the doubt that you know you, you
know you need to make some obviously some changes.
But clearly the right mix can lead to a a pretty good level of
success and that needs to be built upon to where it's higher.
Where I think though you have to be really cautious and and
really vigilant if you're IU from an athletic department's
perspective is you know is what is being done actually moving
the ball forward and getting you back to where you want to.
You say you want to get to which is being a national contender.
And that is a tough thing to figure out.
I mean I don't I doubt that anybody really thought that this
season was going to go the way that it went.
And you know Woodson has contended now in his press
conference that a large reason for that is injuries.
I'm very skeptical of that being the reason.
But whatever the public reasons are, this is where internally,
as you would with any other sports entity, you got to look
at it and say a change has to be made because we don't feel that
the trajectory is is where it needs to be.
And we don't see evidence that things are changing the way that
they should. Or you look at it and say we
have faith that things are going to change and that what's
happening here is, is not representative of the overall
project. And look, I mean, at this point,
we got to see how this is going. Because ultimately what you're
going to have is a situation where a lot of what happens in
these last 8 to 12 games of the season, depending on how many
tournament games Indiana plays and what tournaments they are,
will help to illustrate what is the underlying culture of IU
basketball. And you know, that was one of
the big complaints under Mike Davis.
It was a huge complaint. It was really what led to Kelvin
Sampson getting fired. It was what was the problem
under Tom Crean? It was a problem under Archie.
Is it still a problem here? And if that's the issue, that
that's the one thing where I think you can say, look, there's
there's things you have to do to address that, that go above and
beyond what recruits are you getting, What portal transfers
are you getting? You know, what I saw in that
Ohio State game was OK. Maybe there is a vibe with this
team. That will demonstrate itself on
the floor. There's a lot of good individual
pieces and frankly, it's a very talented team that just hasn't
meshed. And that's a real concern
because that to me points back to a cultural issue, which is
not something I thought we'd see in this era.
And again, I I'm not one of these people sitting here
saying, well, Mike Woodson should be fired.
What I am saying is, you know, as a fan and as an observer,
someone who's watched this team for a long time and talked about
them for a long time, what I see on the floor really concerns me
in terms of trajectory. Because, you know, it looks like
the culture that caused, you know, or allowed Indiana to win
as many games as they did last year was centered around a few
players who helped to establish and maintain that culture.
Those players aren't here anymore and the players that
would be here next year might be a much different looking roster
from what you've got this year. And it's really hard to import
culture if you're not imposing it from the top down.
And so that is probably, to me, the overriding thing.
And that's again, something that makes it very frustrating as a
fan because that is something that is truly out of your
control and also very hard to talk about with any level of
confidence in what you're saying actually being the truth.
Yep, agree with all that. Anyway, any final thoughts?
We, I said we were going to go about an hour, We've gone an
hour. We're going to have to save a
Part 2 coming up soon. There were so many great
questions, a lot about football. We'll get to those later.
But any final thoughts in general from you?
No, no, I think I mean that that win against Ohio State was was
much needed. I mean the game I I think a lot
of us kind of like I was kind of like man it's it was good.
Good to see us get down on the road and then come back fight
back and find a way to win. Although what was that last
moment where it's like we're just, you know, it would have
been unfortunate, it's wild to say as you know, a team that had
so much success growing up. Like it would have felt like a
very recent way for IU to lose where it's like we have the
ball, Khalil where's driving and then like he twists his ankle
and misses the layup. And it's like that would have
been just an absurd way to lose if Ohio State would have gotten
it and then shot it back. But no, I mean that was that was
a a big win. You know you just you continue
to hope like is this going to be the turning point.
You know we've had these moments where they play great against
Kansas. They can't close it out but it's
like all right can we take that first 35 minutes bottle it up
and it didn't seem like we could you know the the IT it feels
like this is like a you know an engine that's kind of like
sputtering and you you hear it going and like it, it started.
It's like, can we get this thing clicking and moving?
Because that to me that is the to that question about
frustration. Like that's the frustrating part
is you see this team when it's clicking and going, you're like
this team is a tournament team, like there there is a core of
talent and A tournament team there.
I think that to me is the most frustrating part with this
season. It's not like we don't have the
pieces. And no matter what Woodson says
about injury, even with the people who are injured, I think
there's still enough talent there on this team to be a, you
know, mid top Big 10 team in a tournament team.
It's just not clicking for a variety of things.
I think that's the frustrating part, but it's nice to see it
when it does, but it almost becomes more frustrating because
it's like, can can we just find a way to extend this out?
But you know, again, there's there's still, there's still
some season left, there's still some things to do.
But I think that's that's my take away from the last couple
games. I I agree and I think what I
would say on that front is 2 things, one positive and one
that will sound negative, but it's just kind of realistic one.
What made that out of state game great to me was Anthony Leal had
another big moment and and that was awesome to see and I hope he
plays more. And Trey Galloway had probably
his best game in an Indiana uniform all things considered
and he had to like if Trey Galloway doesn't play as well as
he plays in that game Indiana doesn't win and and that's not
to take away from Malik Renew but but for Galloway and for
Leal to have those moments was really really special and it was
important in that it's hard to win games on the road in the
conference. We know that and Indiana Dallas
two Rd. wins in the conference. The possibly negative thing I'll
say is that they've got two Rd. wins against the two worst teams
in the conference Michigan and Ohio State.
So it's almost like I it's tough to win on the road and I'm not
trying to take anything away. But I I've tried to temper my
enthusiasm given that it was an Ohio State team who not only
looks like they've fallen apart in a much bigger way than
Indiana has, but Chris Holtman, like already has his bags packed
and is about 2/3 of the way out the door.
So like that is clearly like a hard reset situation going on
right now in Columbus. I give Indiana all the credit in
the world for taking advantage of it.
I'm just not sure how transferable either the the
effort or the outcome is to other games the rest of the
year, because that's not how Northwestern and Nebraska or
even like Penn State or Minnesota are right now.
Those are teams that look a lot hungrier than Ohio State does.
Last thing, it's funny you mentioned that.
You know, part of the, to me, the luck piece that comes in is
like just when you decide to hire a coach, are you in that
right cycle is like, you know the two biggest names when we
hired Archie were Archie and Chris Holtman and Holtman had a
nice bump early and it seems like, like you said, it's
getting close to hard reset territory.
It's like you look back at that that cycle of coaching.
It just might have been you know looking back that there just
wasn't that option out there, at least in the available coaches
that we think. I guess everyone's always
available if you know the Billy Donovan kind of nonsense, but
it's just, it is interesting. It's like you go back and redo
that. It's like maybe get Holtman, you
get 7. More years and you're still in a
hard reset situation anyway. Just that's the thought I had
when you mentioned that it's not.
I mean, look, you never know. It's like Chris Holtman was one
of the hot commodities along with Archie Miller in that cycle
and didn't work out for anybody. So yeah, and then just imagine
you could have had Archie Miller at Ohio State and Chris Holtman
at Indiana, and we'd probably still be going through the exact
same thing right now. It's a really fascinating
alternate timeline. Well you you'll hear all that on
our Rhode Island, our our Rhode Island Cross for Crossover
podcast where you talk about things that are our Rhode
Island. Talk.
This is where we Yeah, no, that's man, that that would be a
depressing episode, man. That's the if, if, if podcasts
are are alcoholic spirits, that's the malort of podcasts.
So anyway, on that note, we'll go in.
Yes. Yeah, we'll go ahead and wrap
up. Remember folks, IU home Field
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Big interview about to drop coming up with a former IU
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For Scott. I'm Galen.
This is Crimson Cast. We'll catch you folks on the
flip side, bring back the Bison. So everybody.