You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast.
Galen Clavio, Scott Caulfield joining you.
It is February 16th as we record this.
We're on the back end of February.
Thankfully, we're celebrating here in Bloomington by getting 4
inches of snow overnight with another four in the forecast
later on. And Scott, I speak for many
people when I say nobody asked for this, like at all.
Was not expecting snow when I woke up this morning.
We went. We were at a friend's house last
night watching the NBA All Star stuff late with our kids.
It's like raining. Go to bed, it's raining and wake
up in the snow. Yeah, it was really, really wet
last night. I'm glad that it didn't turn to
snow before then 'cause it would have not been not been fun, but
yeah. Another completely random free
thought. Of course we're walking into
stream yard and I have to put my e-mail in and then it sends me
a, you know, 8 digit code that I have to then put in.
And I wonder, like, are we gonna see this is a like, I'm not
making fun of diseases at all, but like it's like I'm taking a
mini cognitive test once a day. Like I wonder if Alzheimer's
rates are going to go down or up.
Like I'm I'm texting my, you see those studies like doing a
crossword today is good for your mind.
Like every day I'm doing cognitive test studies of like,
remember this 4 digit code, plug it into over there and do this.
It's just like, I just thought like, oh, this is like 433OO75
Remember that, remember that. And it's like this has this has
got to be good for me. Except that you don't have to
like, memorize it and repeat it later.
Like it's literally in your text messages and you then have to
punch it into your. I know, but I'm I'm.
Going to I'm going to not do that, so I'm going to be the
one. This is actually this is this is
actually my plan for getting a new Co host eventually is that
Scott eventually cannot remember the codes that are sent to him
30 seconds earlier. It's a it's a foolproof plan, so
and. Then I'm going to have AI Galen
on the other side. Just just rant, letting me rant.
I for one, am looking forward to AI Galen hosting this thing
during coaching searches because God, it's it's real.
Galen's kind of done at this point with it.
But anyway, no, it's great to talk to you folks and, and
obviously it's great to still have Scott here.
He hasn't cognitively declined yet.
And we're going to talk about everything going on with IU
basketball. You know what?
Speaking of cognitive decline. You forgot to hit record.
On on the video I'm recording on the podcast.
So all of that's gone now. We're not going to actually, no,
you know what, for those of you who are listening, we're going
to keep that on there. Now I'm going to go ahead and
create the instance online. This is great.
We're letting everybody behind the curtain of how this
operates. See the problem folks is that we
have a two stage process by which we have to get the
broadcast started, which really stinks sometimes because it
requires you at 9:00 on on Sunday mornings to remember all
these things. So.
Prove us as a as a researcher. One of us remembers numbers at
short times a day. The other one copies and pastes
from his text. And look at the results my
friends. I'll also note that one of us
does all of the producing on the podcast, all of the setting up
of the of the the recordings, all of the publishing of the
recordings, all of the promotion of things.
Occasionally that person might forget a step, but that's 'cause
that person has like 3000 steps to remember, while Scott has
two. Like just Scott just needs to
show up and speak English, which he struggles with occasionally.
I again, anger is a is a is a symptom of cognitive decline.
I understand. Anyway, so for the so the
YouTube audience is gonna miss all this, but those of you who
are still listening on Apple and Spotify will get the benefits of
all this, so we're gonna go and start again right now.
You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast,
Galen Clavio. Scott Caulfield here.
For those who are listening on Spotify and Apple, this will be
a great way for us to test who's in which audience.
Scott. Top get a decline test or funny
or not that's. Right the the we, we had a
little bit of a recording mishap on the video side.
So you all are just joining us but the the audio only audience
got some extra stuff. Use our Spotify first two-minute
numbers like so you can get everybody back to listen just
the first two minutes. That's right.
That's that's that's the algorithm speaking right there.
That's amazing. Anyway, Scott and I are back and
Scott had a whole thing about cognitive decline, which then I
demonstrated as a proof of concept in that, that first 3
minutes of the show. So it's great, great start to
things. It's the 16th of February.
It's it's snowed in Bloomington. Did it snow up in up in wine
country up there? Yes, up in wine country, the
grapes are they're they're, they're in rough shape.
I did have a new bourbon last night.
That's what we were doing last night, Bourbon on the rocks.
It was nice. Was this was this your first
time with bourbon on the rocks? No.
No, no, no. Just.
I'm just, I had a nice big ice cube.
It was just. I'm just setting the stage, my
friend, for everyone. No, we had about two inches of
snow last night, so over, like, 3:00 AM because it happened way
after I went to bed. But not expecting snow this
morning. Are your hunting dogs excited
about the snow? Yes.
Yes.
Chester and I, I don't know, Rufus, are very excited about, I
think. Mortimer.
Yeah. Mortimer Beauregard.
Yes, you gotta, you gotta give me a heads up like hey, I need
some fun dog hunting dog names. Give me a 2 minute.
They're they're your hunting dogs.
You should know what their names are come on Anyway, we're
brought to you by home Field apparel, your place to go for
the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest
designs and a a never ending array of amazing pieces coming
out of home field apparel. They had some new Creighton
stuff that they dropped earlier this week.
They've obviously had some really good looking stuff on the
the IU front coming out relatively recently.
Go to the website you'll find pretty much everything.
The rink side hoodies that they have, a new St.
John's collection. St.
John's Good team to follow. Might be a nice bandwagon team
to jump on for the tournament this year.
They've got quarter zips, they've got T-shirts, they've
got bomber jackets, just a little bit of everything.
I. Blame home field for the
weather. It's like I think this is the
weather saying it's still hockey, you know, hockey jersey
season. It's not time to be done yet.
It's it is possible that Connor and the the folks up at home
field have like AI guess storm it wouldn't yeah is it do you
cloud seed for snow yes I I guess you have to right yeah you
ever. Watched the movie Geo Storm.
No no, no. It's a it's a great bad movie.
It was on. Why did this get made?
It's great. OK.
Yeah. Anyway, use the code HOME 23 if
you would like to go along with home fields, plan for climate
domination. And you know, they got you
covered if it's cold outside, they got you covered when it
gets hot. They've got some great like 3,
like quarter three quarter sleeve T-shirts, baseball
T-shirts. It's great.
Again, Home field apparel.com. Also give them a follow on the
socials and you'll find amazing deals sent right to you via
e-mail as well if you sign up for the newsletter.
Again, Home field apparel.com. Also, we are on sub stack
crimsoncast.substack.com. We've had a lot of folks signing
up for the free newsletter recently, which we greatly
appreciate and we would like to invite the rest of you who
haven't to go ahead and subscribe with it.
Scott, do you know what today is?
Actually, you know what this this particular episode is?
Is this episode 2000? I know we're we're coming close
to it. No episode 1200, four hundred.
We've got a ways to go for 2000. Cognitive decline, it's hitting,
yeah, but it is, it is episode 1200.
And obviously we're thrilled about that.
And I think also just generally thrilled that we've got so many
people in our Substack community.
It allows us occasionally to do chats and to send podcasts right
to your inbox. We occasionally have some VIP
videos, which are paid subscribers get, we don't do
them like every day, but we do some things there occasionally.
It's $5.00 a month, $50 a year if you'd like to do that.
But if you just want to do the free one, that's fine too.
And we appreciate having you folks joining us.
Join the Nearly 1200 subscribe. We only almost have one
subscriber for every episode that we've done.
So give every every subscriber gets an episode.
It's exciting, looking forward to it.
So we'll we'll be a stop. Me when we when we're in month
five of the coaching search, that'll be one of our we just go
to the subscriber list. All right, Mark, you're getting
episode 1124. Just start handing them out.
So anyway, crimsoncast.substack.com Also
check out the Back Home Network YouTube channel.
Just search Back Home Network on YouTube.
We've got over 7100 subscribers there and you get all of the
shows in video format, including Assembly Call, the Doing the
Work podcast, all those shows in the network.
It's a great place to be. Anyway, let's dive in.
Let's talk briefly about the game that happened on Friday,
Indiana losing at home to UCLA. And you know, Scott, this was
one of those games that looked like most of the other games
that Indiana's played in the Big 10 so far this season.
They they fall behind early. And it was just one of those
games where, like Indiana always felt about 10 points away from
the team that was leading them, in this case UCLA.
And it kind of went back and forth.
There were moments when, you know, one point Indiana got it
to five and then it was back up to 10.
And then it'd be back down to seven and then it was back up to
10. UCLA didn't really put it away.
Indiana puts a rush on at the end, gets it to within 2, has an
inbounds play under their own basket, which was actually
designed fairly well. They get a good shot, they miss
it, and that was basically the ball game.
I mean, we kind of knew how this was going to go.
This played out very similar you you hoped maybe UCL as Rd.
struggles in the Eastern and Central time zone might come
back to bite them in this one. But as it turned out, Indiana
just couldn't quite get the job done.
Did you take anything noteworthy out of this game that you hadn't
already seen in a previous game? No, well, no, I mean the the
only noteworthy thing is it seems to be the miles Rice.
The ball seems to find him at the end of games like a a you
know, a magnet finds a refrigerator like it's wild how
it goes to him. You did mention like for all the
crap we've given Woodson about end of game stuff, that final
play from, you know, Mackenzie and Baca was a great, well
designed play. He did everything you could and
he didn't hit a shot. It's like guys missed shots.
It is it is what it is. It sucks.
He also had the little, you know, put backer before that
that didn't go in. But you know, I, I'm not my
thought was this, I don't want to get into a discussion about
this, but it is kind of, you know, we had talks about, you
know, apathy and like this is apathy.
You know, no one's showing up at the at the game.
To me, it's like this is kind of what apathy is that, you know,
talking to other fans myself, it's kind of like I watched the
game. It's like, all right, well, we
lost, like, all right, moving on.
It's like, I, I wasn't expecting a win.
A loss sucks, but it's like I shook it off real quick because
we're kind of in this weird zone of like nothing really matters
until we get a new coach because we're probably not going to make
the tournament unless we just rattle off like if we win 3 or 4
at, you know, if we'd won this and then, you know, beat Purdue
and then beat Penn State. So it's like, huh, maybe
something's going on. But it, it felt like that
Michigan State win is going to be the one that we look back on
in, you know, seven years. Like we look back at that, you
know, stretch when Archie had like 8 losses and there's like,
you know, he went eight for 9 and there's the one win in the
middle. I think that was also Michigan
State, oddly. But anyway, that, that's my main
thought is I, I don't want to get into a big, you know, apathy
discussion. But I do think for a lot of
fans, listening to like, you know, the assembly call
afterwards is kind of like we all expected a loss and we're
kind of like, all right, well, whatever.
Which isn't, isn't great, but it is, It's kind of where we're
going to be for the next 4 weeks.
I think about two weeks ago, it was after that game at Purdue,
we talked about like, OK, was that was that the beginning of
something or was that the end of it all?
I, I heard someone refer to that Purdue game as the death rattle.
You know, you play, you play well, like you show some life
and then you you don't actually end up winning the game at the
end. The Michigan State game kind of,
you know, are you familiar with the concept of the dead cat
bounce in in stocks where you know, a declining stock like
hits a point where it's low enough that there's some
capitalization it the price goes up and then it just sinks again
because it's not actually a recovery.
It's just a thing that is a brief resurgent that they often
call it a suckers rally in stock trading.
And that's essentially what I felt like that Michigan State
game was like. It was a it and it's one of
those things where I'm not, I know it sounds like I'm trying
to take away from IU, but realistically, like they played
well there. The problem is that it's just
not sustainable for IU. That game, Indiana had a
remarkable ability to score effectively, you know, against
Michigan State compared to what they would normally do.
And defensively, they really stymied Michigan State in a way
that was surprising given the fact that Michigan State, and
look what they did last night, they went in and beat Illinois.
At Illinois. Sometimes you play well enough
to win and the opponent does not play well enough to win, which I
think we've been saying on this podcast for a month now, Scott.
Michigan State there, I I looked at 2019, Archie lost 12 to 13
games and won a game at Michigan State in the middle of it.
And it's like, you look back and you're not like, oh man.
I think they were really close to serving in the corner after
that Michigan State game. It's just it historically looks
like, Oh, that's a weird outlier.
Who would have ever thought that East Lansing would be the place
where we would like get the dead cat bounces for these bad
seasons that Indiana's had? It's it's why it'd be like if it
was happening in Mackey, you know, except with victories.
And obviously, I mean, Indiana has won win there in the last
few years, but it is kind of peculiar given how much of A
House of horrors that place has been.
Of course, we still can't win in Madison, but at least with we
kind of own East Lansing now, which is nice.
So yeah, that's right. So anyway, they lose to UCLA and
I think the biggest thing that stands out to me, and again,
it's like it's you can almost, you're almost at a point where
you can't really interrogate the season any more than you have.
And and that's the thing I think that stuck out to me the most
about UCLA is it's just the same team.
It's a team that's Got Talent. It's a team that clearly made
many moments in key spots in the game, doesn't really know what
it's doing. And you've got one or two
players out there that seem to know what they're doing.
And then there's a lot of confusion.
There's a lot of yelling in the huddle, there's a lot of
pointing and people getting upset with each other.
It just seems like a team that's not well organized and and not
executing what's being said, which calls into question both
the execution and the people that are asking them to do the
executing. And again, all you have to do.
I think if you look at the raw efficiency numbers for IU, the
last time they held an opponent to under a point per possession
was the USC game which was on the 8th of January.
Right. Maybe it's us.
Yeah, perhaps that's so we we need to go back together and and
sit. The cast is in the house.
Right. Then we need box seats for this.
But now you brought up another good point, which will wrap this
particular part of the podcast on which is I the the apathy is
there in force. Like the number of people I
talked to who didn't even watch the game, who were like, oh, we
lost again last night. I mean, the the hall was in
fairly good shape. And you could tell even at the
end of the game, like it was not its full throat itself.
There's just, you know, on the one hand, it's like announcing
that Woodson was not going to be returning was, I think very
helpful in terms of turning down the the top level heat on
Woodson. That was important and the
players as well. But what it's done is it's kind
of neutered the Hall a bit in terms of what it normally does.
And I don't know why anybody would be surprised by that.
I'm sure the Purdue game, it'll be back to somewhat of its
normal self, but it really does feel like everybody's just
playing the string out players, coaches and fans across the
board. So it's.
And it could have been it, it, I, I agree with all of that,
Like it's, it's what needed to be done.
It, it had they won that game, like I said, if they won that
game and then they won the Purdue game, it would have, it
would have been even a more peculiar situation because then
it's like, holy crap, like this. They they, they finally figured
it out. And I guess that could still
happen, you know, if, if they like, but The thing is, if they
beat Penn State and they beat Washington and they beat Oregon,
they could get a little three-game winning streak there.
I would urge people to be like again, let's I'm not sure they
figured out it could just be the level of opponent that they're
playing. You know, the the good news is
looking at the projections for Big 10 standings, you know, Penn
State is Penn State, Washington, Northwestern just look locked
into under seven wins and you know, Indiana should get one
more. And even if they don't, they
might still finish ahead of Northwestern, Washington, Penn
State. Like I, I think, and I say this
not jokingly, I think them making the Big 10 tournament is
safe. So that joke can be off the
table. And that'll be the the the Soul
tournament they make this year. Oh, I don't know.
I, I don't know if I agree. I mean, they're, they were in
Joe Leonardi's first four out yesterday, like post UCLA loss.
And I'm just like, if they beat Purdue, if they win at Oregon,
if they any, or, you know, the end the game at Ohio State, like
if they win two out of those 3 along with the two that you
would expect that they would win Penn State, who I think has just
given up on basketball at this point.
You know, the game at Washington, I think Washington
has been a little feistier. But I I'm not asking for IU to
be in the NCAA tournament because again, it's I'm kind of
in the boat with everybody else who's like, can we please just
get the season over with? Because it just kind of has gone
nowhere. You're 15 and 11, but you win 9
games in the conference and I think you've got an A, a decent
chance of being at the end of the bubble because the bubble is
not very good. The bubble is not a particularly
strong bubble. So I just would caution
everybody who's like, well, hey, no more tournament.
I think at the very least this team will have the opportunity,
maybe even the mandated opportunity to be in the NIT
because if they're one of the first four out, they're one of
the top 4 seeds in the NIT at that point.
It would be interesting like we've we've have seen schools
opt out of that, but I do wonder if that happens here or not.
I'll be curious to see how IU decides to handle that.
It would be an interesting scenario both directions.
Is, isn't this year also the the Big Crown tournament at the end
of the season? Or is that next year?
It's 2025. I've lost track.
I think you're right. It is this time, Yeah.
So, and that's also a big 10 Fox Sports connection.
So I mean, I, I take it back because they don't make the NIT.
They'll they'll be in the big the big crown or whatever the
hell it is. It's just, you know, at least
get an that's an invite that you can turn down.
And then finally, you can talk Daddy like you can tell Fox
like, hey, we're we're we're not going to provide content for you
like that's. The big fox fox.
Like after all we did for you people, you know, it's, it's,
it's. Like you, you have these
situations where it's like teams are done and we just want to be
done and go to our coach search. It's like Fox is like we don't
give an S Like we need content for you to play and go get your
butt kicked in the big crown. Yeah, the Big Crown launches
this year. That's, well, that's, that's not
ideal, but yeah, the college basketball crown, yeah, it
launches 2 automatic qualifiers from each of the Big E Big 10
and Big 12, as well as 10 at large teams will be selected
from the pool of teams that did not qualify for the NCAA
tournament. According to the Wikipedia page,
they still hadn't like announced what the criteria were, so.
I'm right now Googling college basketball crown bracketology.
Yeah, I haven't seen any brackets pop up on this yet.
It's a little bit surprising. There's not there's not a
bracketologist for like we've always joked, when you go to NIT
bracketology, it's like, I feel like I'm in, you know, the silk,
the dark web. I know like a level below where
it's like, oh like I could buy Iranian arms and get the
projection of the college. Basketball crown.
I will note that Todd Golden, not the Florida coach, but the
the writer for Indiana Hoosiers SI wrote an article about this
about a week and a half ago. And IU is the the team that's
pictured in the the thing. So I think we're getting more
basketball. I do wonder at this point,
though, in this kind of transitions to something else I
wanted to talk about, does Indiana want to be in this?
We know, of course, Indiana turned it down the NIT last
year. They weren't going to be a
number one seed in the NIT. So I think that was part of the
equation there. There was an original comment
that contractually the Big 10 teams along with the other two
conferences would be required contractually to be in this
thing. So if Indiana ends up in this,
is Mike Woodson still coaching the team or is he or do they
make a change there? The whole thing is very weird
and and I do think we need to comment on the fact that you've
now seen two games in a row where Mike Woodson has not done
radio with Don Fisher. You know, I mean, he'd sent
Calvert Chaney prior to the Michigan State game.
They sent another staff member, not a coach, but like the a
support staff member on the pregame radio on the on Friday
for the UCLA game. Now I've got a lot of thoughts
on that. I, I don't think we need to
necessarily delve into now, I do think it's kind of ridiculous
that. But it's lame.
I don't want to dig into it either, but it's it's lame.
And for a guy who's been a professional coach his entire
career, who's coached in New York and dealt with media, this
is just petty. And I get it, like you, this is
your universe, your university, and you're pissed because you
feel like you should be being treated better.
That's fine. But go do your interviews.
I mean, I like, I like I've always joked, we know Don Fisher
like it's an Indiana pregame interview.
He's not going to ask you hard hitting questions.
Not going to be like, well, Mike, you really have sucked the
last couple of weeks. Like tell like it's going to be,
hey, Mike, you guys are really turning the corner, you know,
after that loss to Michigan. I mean, he's going to throw
softballs to you. To me.
It's it's lame, it's weak. And for all the crap you give,
you know, college kids, 1920 year olds for, you know, the,
the way they handle things sometimes to me, this is this is
really piss poor. I just, I mean, to me, it's a,
it's a really bad reflection. And it's like, dude, man up and
do your job. This is not hard hitting
interviews. This is Don Fisher before the
game. Well.
And I guess what, what bothers me on top of everything you just
said, 'cause I think it's accurate is that he's, he is
required to go do the post game interview, the press conference,
which he, he did. It's so it's like the, the idea
that you're, you're drawing lines there and you're not
doing, you know, what you're normally obligated to do with
your own radio is pretty lame. And it's also I, I don't know, I
just, I've been very not overly critical, but I think we've been
consistently critical of Woodson when he's gone in and his
message has essentially been, well, it's not really my fault.
You know, and he did that again in this UCLA game.
You know, he had a quote because someone asked about like his his
his upperclassmen not getting the job done in crunch time.
And, you know, he made some set of comments about like all the
winnable games they've had. And then he had a quote at the
end there, which is like, I'll take responsibility as the
coach, even though I don't miss a shot or it or miss a defensive
assignment. And it's like that we talked
about this on the show a couple of weeks ago.
And it's just like this is part of the problem is there's just a
lack of accountability. And I think you you hit the nail
on the head, Scott, Like this is part of your professional
responsibilities and you can be sore about the circumstances of
things, but it's it's just the whole thing has been dealt with
in an unprofessional manner by Woodson.
And the way that he's handled these postgame press conferences
is kind of fit right into that same thing.
And now not doing, you know, pre and post game radio.
It it just it's it's part of the same thing.
It looks petty, as you said, but it just kind of it, it doesn't
have that sense of like there's a certain level of of gravitas
that goes with being the college basketball coach at Indiana
University. Like you, you need to conduct
yourself that way. And I feel like, you know, as
much as there's been controversy and back and forth about
Woodson's comments during Senior Day last year, they fit right
into this pattern. And you know, when you when you
think about the totality of Woodson's comments over time,
public, his public comments and the way that he's handled these
things. And now to essentially be
skipping out on on obligations where you're supposed to talk to
the fans, it it's really disappointing because from the
standpoint of what was supposed to be a guy who understood IU
basketball and understood like the the the positioning of that
within the larger constellation of college basketball.
This is yet another set of circumstances where you're like,
you're you're just you're acting like you're above this position,
but like somehow those rules don't apply to you.
And you, and you brought up a good point earlier where you
said we would criticize players who acted petty or acted
self-centered with all of these things.
Woodson largely seems to be escaping that level of
criticism, at least among like the the people that are
regularly covering the team, which is an interesting thing to
watch. Everybody's giving him this pad.
No one's asking him questions about the circumstance.
And, and all of it seems to center around what we want Mike
Woodson to leave with some dignity.
And yet there's not a lot of that intrinsic dignity that's
being conducted in the way that he's handling some of these
things, including some of the comments he's making in the
postgame press conferences. It's just disappointing to
watch, no? It is and and the the thing that
you, you talked about like, you know, bringing back an IU coach
and bringing back an IU player who has ties, you know, and
again, this is I'm going to echo something you said, which is
true, Like most coaches just turn on you think you called it
auto speak, which I love that term.
Like they just go into auto speak mode and we got, you know,
really got to work on that defense and your shots just
aren't falling and it's tough on the road.
They just, they say cliches over and over again just fine.
But you, you would expect, you know, for all this talk of you,
we're bringing back a guy who understands Indiana and
understands that, you know, this.
You would think there would kind of be a just a couple of moments
like this. Like I'm really broken up.
Like I just, I can't believe that this is killing me.
I can't believe it, you know, that that's always been.
I don't want to turn into a bitch on Woodson's session, but
it's like that's always been. I think the thing that has held
fans at a bit of an arm's length is we love this program and we
care about it. And some people go to extreme
lengths both monetarily and time wise for this program.
And it always felt like Woodson was kind of doing this as a
coronation. And like, I, I don't have to do
that much and, you know, we can get by and what's the minimum
amount required to do? And I, I think that starts to
build up some resentment. This is exactly one of those
things where I think IU fans would just kind of like to hear
the coach who's a former player be on there and be like, this
sucks like this really sucks. Like I like to win.
I'm used to winning like this absolutely sucks.
This is gutting me. I was up all night.
Whether it's even true. I I think they would just like
to hear it and then just to be pissed, you know, just not even
do it. It just, it feels very as if
he's not as invested as the fans at times, which I know is not
the case, but it's like I, I, I, I'm having a hard time finding
evidence to say that isn't true. So we can get all, I don't want
to, we don't need to belabor the point, but it's like it is, it's
really a bummer. And, and it's for those people
who, the last thing I'll say is this is again, why it's really
frustrating on the outside for people nationally just to hear
some of those voices being like, I mean, Indian fans, like they
just, they, they, they want too much.
It's like there's a lot of little nuances here that really
do matter. And for people who spend a lot
of time and effort following a program and, and investing in a
program, those little nuances matter.
And so that's where you do get pissed at the national media
just being like, oh, they, what do you guys expect?
Like you're, you're, you're past your prime.
Like you should be happy you have Woods.
Yeah, well, I don't know that anybody said specifically that
recently, but I your your point is well taken.
Well, let's pivot to talk about that a little bit.
So, you know, there's five regular season games left for IU
and then you've got at least one game in the Big 10 tournament
because as you noted, IU is going to make the Big 10
tournament at as, as things are said now, Penn State losing
again yesterday. So now you've got Northwestern,
Washington and Penn State all with four win, four wins, four
wins and three wins, Minnesota with five, Rutgers with five,
Iowa with five, and then Indiana's got six.
So the chances of Indiana losing out and one of those remaining
teams winning to the point where they would eclipse IU seem low
at this stage. And so you're looking at IU
playing in the first round of the Big 10 tournament.
Seating is hard to say because Indiana's got some tiebreakers
in this mix. You know, they, they, they lose
the tiebreaker to Nebraska, they lose a tiebreaker to Iowa, but
they have the tiebreaker against USC.
If they beat Oregon, they'd have the tiebreaker against Oregon.
So they could really be seated kind of anywhere between
probably 9th and 15th. You like the fact that teams
don't make the Big 10 tournament?
Like, I understand it logistically this conference is
so big, but I, I again, this is old man, get off my lawn.
I think you're losing something every time you, you pull a
thread away that it, it, you know, I used to joke that the
NCAA tournament really is everyone is in the tournament.
It's just you have small bracket tournaments like the big, the
big 10 is its own like qualifying tournament, but you
know, theoretically it's a 312 team tournament.
It's just broken up a different, a bunch of different brackets
that meets 68. You've now lost that like
there's three teams, the big 10 that can't make it again.
I don't think Penn State was going to make a run to the Final
four. But it's just I, I, I just want
to say here, I don't like it, but that's all.
But I understand logistically you have to do it.
I just I don't like it. I mean, I'm, I don't
particularly care of one way or the other about who's in the Big
10 tournament once you get past like the top ten teams in the
conference. And so I, you know, there's a
lot of bad basketball that gets played during the Big 10
tournament just because of the way that it's set up.
And I mean, do we really want to watch Penn State one more time?
I understand the idea that, well, you got to let everybody
in or not, but a lot of smaller conferences have changed their
approach on this because the more you make your top teams
play during this time period, the more chances they have to
lose. And I don't know that we
necessarily need that at the conference tournament level
because there's just not a good like most of these conference
tournaments were invented or created or conceived at a time
when you had 891011 teams per conference.
They weren't built for 15161718 team conferences.
And, you know, I would feel bad if it was like a small
conference, but only to a certain point with the large
conferences. Like you've, you have 20 games
in which to demonstrate your worth.
If you can't win more than four or five of those 20 games, like
that's not a scheduling error. That's just you being a bad
basketball team. So no, I have no no qualms with
it whatsoever. And I'm I'm a guy who, as you
all know, supports expanding the NCAA tournament field in terms
of the total number of teams. So it's not like I have a
problem with teams, you know, with with tournaments being
larger, but I don't really see a great argument for letting the
bottom three teams into the Big 10 tournament any more than I
would see it in the SEC or some of the other conferences that
are this size. Fairpoint And I guess you know,
like my, my thought goes to the year like Illinois was the worst
team in the Big 10 and made it to the finals.
But like, that was they were they were the 11th team, whereas
Penn State is now the 18th team. That's the thing.
Like the? Greggs are getting more
draggier. So anyway.
Go. That's just, that's kind of my
point. It's like I think you could make
an argument with the 10, you know, 9/10/11 team conferences.
Yeah, everybody in and that was easy to do.
But like, what are you going to have six days of conference
tournament? That seems kind of pointless
really. Like you lose, you lose people's
attention by that stage. Because they're also student
athletes. Well, you know, you can bring
the tutors with you, right? So anyway, so we've got that
much time left in the season and, you know, from the
standpoint of what to watch for moving forward, I I just don't
know with Indiana, what like what do you get excited about
that? There's normally here, it'd be
like, all right, well, let's see how the younger players are
playing. Let's let's not that a lot of
them are getting a lot of minutes at this point, you know,
but you could see like, well, maybe maybe your, your backcourt
duo that you brought in, in the transfer portal can continue to
gain chemistry. And then you look at them as
like, well, they haven't played together hardly at all with Rice
being increasingly unreliable and and Carlyle being injured.
And I think playing for the first time in a couple of weeks
in that UCLA game, you know, Bryson Tucker's been spotty at
best. And then the rest of the guys,
even even the guys I just mentioned, with a looming
coaching change, you don't know if those guys are even going to
be back, you know? So it is a real tough spot
because I don't even know that IU fans have a clear sense of
what to be watching for. No, I mean it's because that is
that is the the other side reality of the new nil world is
and I'm just I'm using names of players.
I obviously know nothing, but like in a 10 years ago, it'd be
like all right, well, you know, Mackenzie and Baca, we've seen
him grow up. Can he take another leap?
You know, you've seen renew turn into a solid, you know, great
post player. Can he How can he look when he's
healthy all year? But I would assume both those
guys are in the portal like they, they might come back, but
I would have, if they're, if they're doing their due
diligence, they probably should at least put their name in the
portal with a coaching change and see what they can get.
They might come back. But I mean, that is I would
expect everyone to go into the portal and like you said, you
know, our backcourt, you know, maybe it's Miles Rice and
Carlisle, but they haven't played together and Miles Rice,
but why would he not at least test his options?
So I mean that that is a trouble you have and you're hitting it.
You're hitting it perfectly. It's like I just, I don't know
what there is to grab onto because that is one of the that
was what college basketball, like the NBA has.
You can tank and you can look for draft picks.
College basketball had all right, let's look at our young
freshmen and sophomores and who's going to grow.
And that has been ripped out of college basketball because now
they're all going to be in the portal as as they should be
given the circumstances. No.
And it's it's less about like that because you're right.
I mean, players need to do what they need to do.
It's more just like you, I think with if Indiana wins the UCLA
game, there's 7 and 8 and 16 and 10.
And you can make an argument like, well, hey, you're still in
this. And and even though I just said
like they're going to be on the fringes of it, it just you lose
that game the way that you lost the Michigan game, the way you
lost the Maryland game, the way you lost the Purdue game,
essentially. And it's like, I don't even feel
like we're making progress towards what could be considered
a satisfactory end of the season.
That's. What's quite wild about this
team is like when you go back and look at they're not losing,
they're they're losing a lot of close games.
They're finding different ways to lose close games.
And they did, they won Michigan State, they wanted Ohio State.
So they've had a couple, but that's kind of.
Law of average, I mean, really they they've lost more of these
close games. It's just there's been a lot of
close games. Well, and this is where if you
remember earlier on in the season, Indiana's luck rating on
Ken Palm, which again, just a quick reminder is the, the how
much better or worse your record is based upon what it should be
Statistically, Indiana was in like the 60s in luck.
I think about a month and a half ago, they've dropped to 149,
which is how luck should work. Like eventually that regresses
to the mean. So you can kind of say, well,
it's not that Indiana's losing close games, surprisingly at
this point. It's that they probably should
have lost games earlier. And the record is finally
starting to show how they've been playing.
And if you buy 100 scratch offs and you win the first five,
you're probably not going to continue winning, right?
So, so anyway, this will be a challenge, I think, for the
diehards that are trying to keep their focus on this season and
this team, again, I think Indiana's going to win at least
a couple more games, probably against teams that you wouldn't
expect them to. And and yet I just don't think
anybody is going to get real excited.
Even after that Michigan State game, it wasn't like people went
nuts and were like, hey, things are turning around in the right
direction. It was like, oh, that's
interesting. Indiana beat Michigan State.
So it's that's that's kind of where we're at with all of that
the Big 10 tournament this year. Is in Cambridge.
It's in India, correct? That's right.
You're you're going to go. I don't.
I might. I might.
Honestly, it depends. On who we play, I might go just
for kind of what, what's it going to be like, Like not going
assuming we're going to win. But I mean that in a weird way,
the Big 10 tournament has had some some moments where, you
know, Archie's team gets booed off the court.
You know, I'm just, it'd be curious to see how the fans
react 'cause that is a, that's almost more of a, forgive the
political reference here, but like the Assembly Hall is almost
like the, you know, the, the Democratic National Committee.
Like it's the insiders of basketball.
Like once you get to game bridge, it's more the popular
vote. Like that is a lot more, you
know, party outside. It's people who are just coming
in. And I, I could see a lot more
angst at game bridge because those are just fans who are not
as invested and not willing to be like, all right, let's not
Boo our home team on the homecourt.
Like it's just kind of your average fan coming out and be
like, this sucks, Boo, you guys suck, get out of here.
So it could be I I might go. It might just be interesting to
see. That's him.
Yeah. Let's let's pivot.
I might go too, so I might see you there.
We'll see. But I'm I'm with you.
I have no idea. Who we could play like?
I don't even know what seed I mean the last if.
There's four buys. Like the top seeds get a quad by
yeah. I've seen, I saw a projection
yesterday where Indiana plays Iowa in the 1213 game, which
feeds into playing UCLA as the five seed, which then would feed
into playing Maryland as the four seed, which as tournament
pathways go, that's not that bad.
Although that that has Iowa hitting like 28 threes in the
first game written all over it. So, you know, we feel like we've
been down that road before, but we'll we'll see what happens.
The weird thing is we have no games to talk about this
upcoming week. Indiana's got a nine day break,
which means we have to talk coaching search stuff.
So we are going to talk coaching search stuff kind of in the in
the macro. But there were some things that
came up in in one of the more recent podcasts that I did with
Tony Adronia that caught your attention about which is an
awesome. Yeah, Tony does a great job as
always. But but we talked a little bit
about like kind of I use place within the larger landscape and
whether it's a good job or whether it's been a bad job for
a while or whether it's just been bad hiring decisions.
But you had heard some things in there that you wanted to bring
up. So let me have you start off by
kind of giving your perspective on things.
Yeah, I know it was. It was a great.
Pot, as I said, I I was thinking about how, you know, it kind of
keyed into the 9290 like 87 to 94 stretch, which obviously I
know we didn't have a coaching change.
I'm not losing cognitively that bad yet.
But it was like I kind of called you and was like, that was in my
mind kind of a seismic change in college basketball that you went
from kind of this era of, Hey, you're from the Midwest, you go
to Indiana or you're from the West, you go to UCLA.
Like recruiting was very regional recruiting.
Became a thing, you know, with the Fab 5 and a little bit of
UNLV too. UNLV was a, was a, was a team
that I think get they lost their, their luster with the Fab
5, but you had recruiting AAU stepped in shoe contracts became
a big thing and that just wasn't what IU was doing.
I, I joke with people all the time.
I lived through that era. We were a converse school.
I I swear we were like LA gear one year.
We just did not have good shoe contracts.
We didn't have those relationships.
And it felt like Indiana as a whole kind of just missed that
window for a couple of years and then it feels like we've been
trying to get back ever since. And my thought was that it does
feel like you're having a seismic change now in college
basketball with NIL and, you know, all the things that are
happening and it feels like we are way more well positioned
this time and we understand the landscape changing.
And I can see other programs like maybe Michigan or other
teams that are they're not doing as good of a job.
So that was kind of the overarching thought that I had
as you guys were kind of going through the historical thought
is, you know, it feels like we've been playing catch up for
2530 years from kind of missing that last seismic change well
and you know. My perspective on it is that
there have been a couple of key changes in terms of how the
college basketball landscape and the sports landscape in general
has happened. One of them was you.
You hit the nail on the head. Like mid to late 80s.
There was a change in how you know how talent got funneled to
teams and it switched from being a high school centric thing to
an AAU centric thing. Shoe company started to get
involved 'cause they looked at the long term ramifications of
being able to essentially lock in talent from an early age and
then profit when they made the big time.
And they looked at the colleges as an important conduit on the
way through. And you know, it's interesting
because even though IU really didn't participate in that to
the same degree that like Michigan did during that time
period, or or Duke or Kansas or Kentucky, it it didn't hurt IU
necessarily because Knight was a good enough coach that he could
still pull in top level talent when he wanted to.
And you know, to me like it, it fitted with a lot of the rules
changes that started to make college basketball more similar
to professional basketball. The institution of the
three-point line, the institution of the shot clock,
the reduction of the shot clock from 45 seconds to 35 seconds,
you know, some other smaller rules involved in all of that.
And just this idea that college basketball became less regional
and became more national, IU was still relevant in that era.
But you, you know, and even you know, obviously IU had their
last great gasp under night in that 91 to 93 range.
But that was almost in spite of those currents.
And in the mid 90s, as you saw top level talent clearly being
funneled to the Kentucky's, the Dukes, the North Carolinas,
Indiana, even though they were getting what was on paper highly
rated talent, it didn't match what needed to happen in Indiana
in terms of winning basketball games.
And we've we've obviously mined that quite a bit historically on
the podcast. But it also meant that, you
know, IU looked like they were under Knight kind of standing
against the grain. That was changing.
And, and this is something that I always remind people of like,
you know, Knight, I think realized too late at the end
that they needed to modernize the way that they were doing
things. And they started to modernize,
you know, to the point that IU signed that Nike contract that
that put them under under Nike's brand for a few years.
That was a Knight initiative. Like that wasn't something that
IU did, you know, against his wishes.
It just that he wasn't around to, to see that take place.
And I remember that being such a big deal when you were and I
were in school. Like it was a point of pride
that, you know, Michigan's using a company that uses sweatshops
in Asia, but Indiana isn't. And and then Indiana was like,
no, we need to do that too. But and then suddenly we were
like, yeah, sounds great. But it but it LED into the next
era break where Indiana did not keep pace and it was immediately
after Bob Knight got fired. Can I pause there for one
second? Just with I know we've we've hit
on this before too, but with the Knight kind of changing to to
Nike, it's like I I will always still go down that you look at
that O1 O2 team, you know, and this is something you've also
talked about tonight, went through ebbs and flows of kind
of being interested in recruiting and really going at
it. And it felt like unfortunately,
when we were in college, he was in kind of an ebb of just, you
know, like, sure, wrecker come on in and like wrecker get out,
like just all of it, you know, does not really going that hard
at it. But you look at that, the
complexion of that O1 O2 team, it's like you have a bonafide
star and Jared Jeffries, you, you have kind of a really
interesting big man in George Leach.
You have the defender and Dane Fife.
You have, you know, well, Scott May Junior, I'm just going
through the list. But like, you have the shooter
in Kyle Hornsby, you have a well, Jared Odell's like a
perfect night player. I'm 90% sure Kurt Hasting would
have stayed another year if Knight was there.
And then you had Shawn May, who would have come in had Knight
still been there. Like Knight was coalescing kind
of his one last run. Like I think he was like, all
right, I'm going to I'm going to really focus and put this
together. And and you look at it and that,
you know, I think this is also something you had mentioned on
the pod that like that O1 O2 team was kind of thought it was
like, man, Davis really took this ragtag bunch to the final
four. It's like that team was really
effing talented, like he might have underperformed with that
team when you look at the full season.
Sorry, I just wanted to point that out.
But like it's like Knight was making one last push and then
but it obviously didn't happen. 111 detailed.
Note Shawn May wouldn't have started playing till the O2 O
three season but you're rolling out.
Of a really good team that he maybe Jeffrey now I'm playing a
little hypothetically, maybe Jeffrey stays one more year.
Probably not. But like you're he has the
engine running, which probably would have turned into Pat
Knights now the coach. So that's a whole different
third third world. Who knows?
On that front, I mean, anything's possible there, But I
think the larger point is that there had been a correction, a
course correction. But then the next change
happened in college basketball, which was really that what hit
all of college sports, which was this kind of professionalization
of the top programs. And IU was caught flat footed
because IU athletics was being used as a pawn by an
administrator at that point to try to raise his standing within
the academic world. And unfortunately, IUI think is
still playing catch up to some degree.
You've you've seen finally with football, like they finally got
the resources up to where they're competing amongst the
nationals. But the mentality of basketball
never really changed. And, you know, there's still a
lot of people who cling to the values and the morals of the
previous era, not really understanding that those weren't
the things that made IU basketball successful.
What made them successful was having the top coach in college
basketball for 20 plus years. You end up in an era where, you
know, Indiana in terms of a bunch of things, you know, but
but primarily reputation and connection has really struggled
to garner the type of talent that other schools have garnered
over the course of time. And a lot of that's been the
coaches that they've hired. But it was also how how like how
long it took Indiana to put Assembly Hall in a format that
looked modern. You know, it took until 2015 or
2016, whatever that renovation started, you know, for the the
the place to kind of start looking like a modern basketball
arena. There's just a lot of little
things with the athletic department in general that the
the seeds for most of that change elsewhere got planted in
the 2000 to 2005 range. Indiana was just essentially at
war with Excel internally and 10 years late with things.
And so it does, you know, from the standpoint of resources,
like you can't argue that IU doesn't throw a ton of resources
at its basketball program, but it's really like in service of
what? And, and this is where I think
Indiana's really got some soul searching to do in terms of who
they're going to hire as their next basketball coach.
Because for, As for as much as I agree that this is still a
really good job And and that a lot of what Indiana's struggles
have been have been in terms of like they've hired the wrong
coaches. There is a certain like fabric
of the program that just has kind of disintegrated.
And it then when we go back and talk about the apathy of the
fans and the the level of which people have turned off, you
know, the the way that the coaches have managed the
programs and just the fact that assembly holes not that tough of
a place to come in and win at anymore.
At least not what it compared to what it used to be in terms of
the recruiting failures that Indiana's had and the lack of of
effort and going after recruiting.
You really have to get the right person to come in and re
establish the culture of Indiana basketball because there really
isn't one at this point. And I think that's probably the
biggest disappointment is like, if you look at most of these
programs that are out there, they're either programs that
have maintained culture over the course of a long period of time,
or there are programs that have hired people that have come in
and done quick fixes. Kind of like Kurt Signetti did
with IU football, where it's like he imported the culture
that became the culture. IU is going to have to realize,
and I think it's fans are going to have to realize that that's
the kind of transplant that's going to have to happen because
it has to be you have to attach that to a coach, much as you did
with Bob Knight when he came in in 1971.
Like that was a huge culture change that happened in a short
period of time. And, and the last, you know,
this to, to tie it back into the Tony podcast that we did, IU has
to realize that it's a great job, but the job itself isn't a
guarantee that your basketball team is going to be great, that
you have to hire the right people and that those people
have to be able to create a culture and a foundation that
that can stand on its own that ties to the IU brand.
There's nothing intrinsic in the IU brand that guarantees you're
going to have those things. Agreed.
I, I, where I'm positive is when you look at those other seismic
changes, the, the culture of the program was important in that,
you know, in the, in the 90s, you needed to have those
connections to AAU. You had to have the shoe
contracts. We really didn't in the 2000s,
you, you had to have the facilities and the, the
understanding of your turning into a modern program.
And I feel like we didn't, you know, this time, this seismic
change feels like the, the key component is do you have the NIL
and do you have the money? And it does feel like we have
those things. And, you know, we, I've, I've
had multiple conversations with people about how like, I don't
know how much facilities matter anymore to a point.
And obviously you need to have some level of facility, which we
do. But the idea of, you know, in
that mid 2000s was like, oh, everyone gets a hot tub and we
have APS two in the, in the, you know, in the locker room.
It's like, I don't think that matters.
It's more like, all right, it's awesome.
You have a, you have a court, you have a training facility.
What's my NIL money like? It comes down to money real
quick. And I think that the fact that I
think you are right with like culture from a team perspective,
like the, the groups inside the locker room, there has to be a
culture and an understanding of what this team is and what
Indiana basketball is. But kind of the university
culture, I think is less important.
More important is what the dollar amounts are.
And I, I do think that's a spot where Indiana is well
positioned. The money is there because you
look at a year, like this year, they, they brought a lot of
money and a lot of talent to the table.
There wasn't a culture in the locker room to kind of put that
into a, a system. I don't think it's a culture of
the university, Whereas I would say the last two times the
culture of the university mattered because it kind of
mattered who as a program, like who are you connected with on a
shoe contract? And like, what is your, what is
your university stand for in those kinds of things?
That, that's how I look at it positively that I do think we're
well positioned this time because we've shown we have the
money, we have that those connections, the NIL level, we
just now need the kind of the, the culture ported to the locker
room, which is exactly what Signetti did.
He didn't. He ported a culture of the
locker. Room.
Not really. In, you know, Memorial Stadium
at large. Well, I think this is.
Where it's worth bringing up something I believe I brought up
in the last coaching search, which is, you know, when I look
at the, the, the hot boards, when I look at the stated
desires of a lot of IU fans, like they're, they're insistent
that we have to hire a top coach right now from another program.
That Indiana's got to stop playing around, that they need
to throw serious money at somebody who's having success
right now. And I get that perspective to
some degree, and sometimes I dabble in that myself.
But I, I do think it's worth noting like let's take the Ken
Palm top 30 and let's kind of go through and look at the coaches
that were hired in each of these places and where they came from.
And then let's think about what Indiana's actually angling for
like so, So what do you want if you're IU, if you're an IU fan,
I'm I'm assuming you want IU to be a successful championship
contending team. I'm assuming that you want
Indiana to be winning conference titles or at least competing for
them. I'm assuming you want IU to be,
you know, going deep into the NCAA tournament, competing for
top recruits, getting top recruits, all of that.
So, coach, who does the pregame interviews?
And a coach who does the pregame.
Interviews so but I I would note like go down the list of the the
top teams and let's look at where their coaches came from.
So I'm just going straight off the the Saturday, February 15th
update for Kenpom. So you got Bruce Pearl with
Auburn and they are clearly the best team in the country right
now. And I'll note, like Bruce Pearl,
when you know, he was he was at Tennessee, he made the
tournament all six years. He got hired there from
Milwaukee, you know, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where
he'd had a successful four year tenure.
He, of course, gets busted for violating recruiting rules at
Tennessee, gets a show cause put on him, is gone for four years,
and then gets hired at Auburn. And his first three years at
Auburn, they didn't make the NCAA tournament.
Who is second right now? It's Duke.
Who's their coach? It's John Shire.
Was John Shire a head coach anywhere before he took over
Duke? No, he was a career assistant
basically with Mike Schefsky. It's a bad example cause and
none. Of our assistants, I think can
coach, but go ahead. Houston is coached by Kelvin
Sampson, who we we, we know him very, very clearly and he was on
a show cause penalty and got hired out of oblivion by Houston
after sitting on an NBA bench for a few years.
Todd Golden, the head coach at Florida.
Where was Todd Golden? Was he a top?
This is a guy who's got his team in what, the top five of the
NCAA? They're fourth in Kent Palm
right now. Was this a top level coach
somewhere else? No Todd Golden coached three
years at San Francisco, did a great job his third year.
They end up in the first round of the NCAA tournament as a A10
seed. And that's an accomplishment at
San Francisco, who doesn't have a lot of success, gets hired
from there, from Florida, and now has that team in a really
good spot. You know, Rick Barnes is a coach
that IU fans have looked down their nose at for decades.
This is a guy who had a very successful run at Texas.
If IU had hired Rick Barnes in say, 2017, people would have
flipped out. I don't necessarily want Rick
Barnes as my coach, but that's the the 5th ranked team in
Kenpom right now. And that's a guy who took his
team to the Elite 8 last year, the Sweet 16 the year before.
Let's keep going down the list. Nate Oates.
Nate. Oates So imagine after Archer,
you hire Nate Oates, who's coming off of four good years at
Buffalo, but you know, one year it didn't win 20 games and also
never made it to the Sweet 16 at Buffalo.
So you hire a guy? From Buffalo, a Mac school to go
coach there. And I mean, he's clearly done
very well. Grant Mccasland at Texas Tech,
This is a guy that was at North Texas for six years and got take
it and it was very successful. Like his last two years at North
Texas was 25 and 7 and 31 and seven.
But the number of people who I've seen now say we, I, you
can't get a mid major coach, they have to go big time.
Iowa State. TJ Otzelberger, this is a guy
who was an assistant at Iowa State, went and coached at South
Dakota State. Another successful run at South
Dakota State, but that's a really good program.
Had two years at UNLV in the middle of COVID where they
didn't really do anything. Got hired after going 12 and 15
to come back to Iowa State to be the head coach and has been a
revelation. I mean he's 2 sweet Sixteens in
three years and and a top ten team so far this season.
Greg guard at Wisconsin, replaces Beau Ryan after Beau
Ryan steps away. Had never been a head coach at
the Division One level. Matt Painter we've already
covered. Had been a head coach for one
season and, you know, gets hired at Purdue in his early 30s Mark
Few had been a career assistant at Gonzaga.
Tommy Lloyd had been a career assistant at Gonzaga before he
gets. Hired at Arizona.
You know, Buzz Williams has bounced all over the place, you
know, and and had AI think your point, I mean.
I'm not going to go through all of them, but my point.
Is my point ultimately is as you go down the list of most of the
coaches who have the top 20 teams in Kenpump, Dennis Gates
at Mizzou, they just had a big win at at Georgia last night.
He was at Cleveland State for three years.
So my point is. The only one that I think would
meet the criteria of what IU fans want would be Pitino in
Saint John's or It Works but or the 15th ranked team in in Kent
Palm, which is Bill Self in Kansas.
But you know, he just has an identity and.
Has an ethos, right? Well, also there's there's,
there's a thread on the college basketball subreddit about
whether Bill Self's done. Like, is he?
Is he cooked? Does he, as he reached his peak
and receding now since he had his heart condition a couple of
years ago? Like so the my point is this I
and I have said this is me kind of speaking out of both sides of
my mouth, admittedly, where it's like, well, IU needs to try to
grab a top level coach and bring them in because you you can't
afford to miss on this coaching hire for all the reasons that we
laid out in the last podcast and for some of the reasons we
talked about earlier in this one.
But if you look at the pattern going and getting a a, a top
coach from another program and bringing them in is just not
something that happens that much.
I mean, you just you don't see, I mean, Tennessee, yes, they
hired Rick Barnes, but Rick Barnes was done at Texas like he
was his his time was over. I don't, you know, there aren't
that many excited Texas or just Tennessee basketball fans.
But I'm sure like all those people wanted to hire Bruce
Pearl again, they didn't want to hire Rick Barnes.
It's worked out for both parties.
But the the point is, ultimately, it is very rare to
go and find a program that is going to just import success at
the top level. You have a better chance in many
cases of finding someone that you really believe is going to
take your team to the next level.
IU got burned with that. Like that was what the Archie
Miller hire was supposed to be. It didn't end up working out
that way. But this idea that you can only
hire a top coach at another program is, is not necessarily
the the sole answer. And I think the problem right
now is that IU fans have been convinced, either by their own
recognizance or by the words of people that cover the program,
that, you know, IU needs to swing for the fences.
I think a lot of IU fans will stop there and will not be
particularly patient or particularly excited, might even
just be very angry about hiring somebody from the lower tier.
I'm not. So much worried about the fan
reaction there, Scott, but I do think the donor reaction is
going to be weird because I think most donors were like, all
right, we're going to move on from Woodson.
We cannot afford to miss on this.
Let's go get the very best there is.
Let's spend that money. It's just not something that
happens regularly out there. And at most of the successful
teams that we're seeing right now in this business are not
hiring that way. So I am really curious to see
what direction Indiana goes with this.
Because a lot of what IU fans seem to want at this stage
doesn't really jibe with the reality of how hiring happens
elsewhere. No, it's, it's, it's a
fairpoint. I mean, you look at, we keep
saying this, you look at Memorial Stadium as a guide, you
know, Signeti was the perfect hire.
And you look at his track record, it's like this guy wins
at every level. He he's a, he's had a head
coaching experience, But Indiana also was kind of lucky in that
we were looking for a coach at that time, but also that we were
willing to take it. We as a program could take a
chance on somebody like that and you weren't going to get pushed
back. You know, like Auburn, I don't
even know if they were looking for a coach last year, but like
a, a program like Auburn wasn't going to hire Signetti.
And I think that's unfortunately where Indiana basketball is
right now. Is it?
It has this feeling of like we're better than that, But in
reality, you need to go out and get the best coach.
And my, my hope is, is that because Dolson was the one who
went through that Signetti process, he's able to look at
this as like, all right, let's take the Indiana exceptionalism
to the side, so to speak. And let's just be a program
looking for a coach. And if we take all of those
things aside, I'm sure there's a lot of programs in college
football. They're like, damn it.
And I, I was trying to pull up real quick, like who else was
looking for coaches last offseason in college football?
But I'm sure there's programs that are a notch above Indiana.
They're like, damn it, we we should have just put our ego
aside and hired the best coach that's out there.
And and to your point, like this is there's an alchemy here
that's tough to know. It's like sometimes guys like
Signeti have those backgrounds, like Archie had a similar type
background of winning and it didn't work out.
And so you're not always just, it's not a perfect answer every
time, but I agree that sometimes programs put themselves in these
thoughts where it's like we can't hire the best guy.
We have to hire the guy that looks the best for this program.
Well, I really hope that I'm, I'm with you in agreement.
I, I hope we don't do that. The the the struggle is.
Often times it's more it, it's, it's part of what you said, yes.
It's also, I think, an issue of, well, who's deciding, yeah, what
the criteria are. And I think it's to some degree
is that how you end up with Mike Woodson is the head coach last
time around. But sometimes the donors do make
that. Criteria because they're the
ones paying the buyouts and they're the ones paying the
contract. Yeah, because there's a, there's
a perceptional. Issue where if you go get a big
name, people will be like, oh, I'll spend money on that.
If you go get like the up and coming coach, that could be the
next any one of those names that we mentioned.
It'd be like, why are we wasting our time and money hiring this
person? And and you've already you've
already spent around, you know, of of ammunition on Archie
Miller with that process, do you get to have that same luxury
again, if that's indeed the right hire?
To go back to your question about like what were the hires
happening in the last cycle? It was obviously Caitlin De Boer
gets hired at Alabama. In football, Willie Fritz was
viewed as like a top hire. He goes from Tulane to Houston.
Mike Elko gets hired at Texas A&M.
They basically spent a bunch of money to have the exact same
outcome. Jonathan Smith was viewed as a
better hire than Signetti was. Well, that didn't work out
particularly well. You know, and then you go down
Jed Fish at at Washington from Arizona that that didn't I mean
it kind of worked, but not to the degree that you might
expect. I mean, I think you can make an
art. I don't think Washington would
have hired. Signetti it would have been it
would have looked like what are we doing so so you take all of
that and you. Look at this and you, you say to
yourself, Well, there's the reality of what's happening in
college basketball with the hires.
And then there's the perception of what needs to happen if it's
IU and this is where you get into some trouble and it's where
a lot of the names that you're seeing floating around.
I mean, would it be great to get a Brad Stevens or to like I I
wanted to hit that real. Quick, like again, it came up
again. I saw you in the Discord.
Be like, all right, like I've been making the same joke.
I'm not. I'm not going down this rabbit
hole like I'm not. I'm not gonna do it.
Like you can talk yourself blue in the face about I, I know
this. And as kids doing this like
it's, it's not going to happen. It is funny that we had to have
the, the rodeo, the three day Stevens rodeo again, where it's
like it's not going to happen. And it's like, oh, maybe it is
like I'm hearing rumors, like I have a friend who knows a friend
and it's like, oh, no, he's not. It's like it's not going.
To happen like I'm and I. No problem asking like that's
probably the first call you need to make for the next 12 years.
Make the call, but let's all know it's not going to happen.
Yeah, I mean, I look. I don't believe anything until a
hire is made one way or the other on things.
But again, it's just like the the one thing I'll say on the
Stevens front is there was no reason for Stevens to make a
statement. Stevens is not required to talk
to the media. Stevens is not required to
interact with the media. There's no requirement that an
NBAGM take questions. Even starts doing Fisher's
pregame. Yeah, yeah.
That, that would be quite a twist.
Yeah, yeah. We're out.
Stevens dot dot. Dot to do the pregame interview
for the rest of the year. It's not a bad idea, but it's
like there was no reason, like Brad Stevens wasn't getting.
Hounded coming out of his house every day.
So why go through all the trouble of talking to a reporter
and going on record is saying that you're happy in Boston?
Like the the number of IU fans who believe either that this is
Jeff Goodman pushing something for his own agenda, which is, I
mean, I'm sorry, it's ludicrous, or people who believe, oh, well,
this is just to throw everybody off the scent.
It's like what scent was needed to be thrown off?
Like it was like IU isn't going to answer questions on it and
Brad Stevens doesn't have to answer questions on it.
It doesn't make any sense that you would go to all of that
trouble and draw more attention to it.
It doesn't. It's that that does not compute
to me. So.
But again, like I said, people say all kinds of crazy things
during coaching searches. I, I have decided in this one,
we're going to go through the coaching candidates.
We're going to talk through what, what they look like.
We have a good podcast stored up that that I'm recording a little
later on in this week with a, a long time occasional guest with
Crimson cast where we'll go through some of the candidates
in a unique way. But realistically speaking, that
anything is possible. There's no such thing as a 0%
chance. But I mean, put that to bed for
now. Let's just talk about other
candidates. But and my point though was like
you could, it would be great if IU got somebody of that caliber,
but I don't think it's necessary that IU get somebody of that
caliber. And ultimately, there are things
that we don't necessarily know about how coaches are are like
playing within the landscape of of IU.
There's just a lot of factors at play.
And it's not simply the records and it's not simply the, you
know, oh, there's there's a great coach over there.
We're just going to go grab that coach and bring them over here
because it's just not generally how it happens.
And when it does happen, it happens very irregularly.
Like Roy Williams didn't leave Kansas to go to North Carolina
because North Carolina was a better job.
He left because Dean Smith basically told him he had to
come back because that was where he got his start.
You know, Roy Williams was broken up about leaving Kansas.
And again, once you have a good thing at a decent program, and
especially if you can win at the level that a Bruce Pearl or a
Nate Oates is winning at Alabama or at Auburn, what advantage
does Indiana have in the landscape with those types of
coaches? Is it worth spending all that
extra money when those same coaches would not have been
hired based upon the same criteria that IU fans and and
some IU media are putting on this search?
That's that's really ultimately what I want everybody to keep in
mind. We head off into the upcoming
week here. IU, of course, not in action for
men's basketball. And I'm sure we'll have a lot of
weird discourse about the coaching searches coming up, and
we will be talking about that as well here on the show as we've
got a bunch of different things to talk about.
We've got a lot of different types of candidates that are out
there, A lot of people expressing like their innate
desire that it be this candidate or that candidate.
So we'll dive into some of that throughout the course of this
upcoming week. 2:00 to 3:00. Weeks away from it even being a
warm stove, you're you're still 123 like 5 weeks away from the
NCAA tournament. You know it's.
It's an odd. It's just, it's like it's, it's
obviously still going on, but it feels like we're still, we're
still a long way away from being a long way away now.
The tournament starts in five. Weeks, so I mean, you got at
least that long and probably longer if you're going after a
coach that's in the NCAA tournament.
So we'll see what happens with all of that.
But anyway, that'll wrap it up for us here for Scott.
I'm Galen. This is Crimson cast.
We will be back later on this week with more content,
including a look at what's going on with the coaching surge, some
of the candidates and and whatnot.
Our thanks to our presenting sponsor home field apparel, our
thanks to our friends across the back home network and of course,
our thanks to you folks for tuning in.
We will be back later. We'll catch you folks on the
flip side. Stay never daunted.
Bring back the Bison. So long, everybody.