You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Casket
and Clavio Scott Caulfield joining you.
It is Groundhog Day. It feels that way with IU
basketball every day, but it's officially Groundhog Day.
I, I thought Groundhog's Day was always on a weekday, like I
guess it is just February 2nd. I, I, I don't know, I was just
like, why isn't this on Tuesday? And I was like, maybe I, I don't
know, I just don't ever remember being on a weekend.
But, and anyway, that's, that's my lack of knowledge of
Groundhog's Day outside of the movie, which is great.
I just one of those where I would have lost that Jeopardy
question. I don't know that there's much
else to Groundhog Day besides the rodent and the fact that
it's always on February 2nd. I, I mean, really, that's like
there's not much else for you to know there, all right?
This is why I'm not starting the The Groundhog Day podcast on the
The Back Home network will not be starting by me as the host.
You know, we've already sold ads for that.
We already have a sponsor, no? Poxitani Phil is overrated.
Yes No. What do you think?
I mean, yes, yeah. And that's it.
That's there's a show man with the whole problem.
Watch Sunny Talk, we'll see you guys next year.
It's like, it's like the old SNL sketch of, you know, we're in
the world of San Diego, CA and, you know, they get it on the
first answer and they're like, well, that that's actually all
that we had for the whole show. So anyway, all right, we would
like to talk about IU basketball, I guess.
Well, maybe like might be the wrong word, but we we feel
compelled to talk about IU basketball game.
What obligated, obligated. No, in all seriousness, we're
we're back at a very critical and interesting juncture when it
comes to IU. And it's one that we saw coming
down the tracks a while ago. And we had an interesting game
on Friday. Indiana played pretty well
against Purdue, maybe not as well as everybody's patting them
on the back for, but but still very good.
I it might have said more about Purdue frankly than necessarily
about Indiana on the whole, but I think there's some interesting
things to talk about within this and just kind of where the
team's at right now. So we're going to dive in, talk
about that. But first wanted to talk about
home field apparel. I present standing sponsor here
on the back home network, your place to go for the finest in
college fashions and non college fashions.
I've got my old men and Blazers courage crew neck on.
Figured we'd need it for this conversation.
But you can go to home field apparel, check out everything
they've got going on. They just released some hockey
hoodies, which really looks smeller.
They really look great. Indiana's 1 you get the script.
Indiana, you get the little state flag emblems on the sides,
on the sleeves, and then they've got thirty of those.
Like they've got a bunch of different schools.
Yukon 1 looks good. The Arizona State 1 looks really
good. They got a couple of different
Minnesota ones. Just finances, we're getting
back to where they should be. My closet, it's like, all right,
I've trimmed some stuff out, I've roomed my closet.
Then it's like, well now I need 3 or 4 soccer.
I mean, got hockey hoodies. You know, like, well, so like in
the video game world, Civilization 7 is coming out I
think 2 weeks from now. And, and they have like very
helpfully provided a road map of additional content that's going
to be released over the course of the next year.
And I'm like, that's great, 'cause I know I'm gonna buy all
of that downloadable content and I need to budget.
And what we really need is like Home Field to give us a preview
of the next nine months, like Big Drop coming in July.
So be sure to give extra plasma in June.
And you know, only eat iceberg lettuce for the first couple of
weeks there. That's the kind of thing I think
we need from from home Field apparel.
I hope that they will provide that with, it's just so we can
budget properly. That's all we're asking for.
Yeah, so use the promo code lettuce 23 and get 50% no home
23. Home 23 get 15% off your first
order Home field, apparel.com go check them out.
Also follow them on social media.
They are a great follow across the board.
Also just a reminder, we are on YouTube, back home network
YouTube channel. We've got over 7000 subscribers.
We upload pretty much every podcast that we do as a video
file in addition to the audio file that perhaps you're
listening to now for some reason, people like seeing us
talk as opposed to just hearing us talk.
Who knew Scott? But I'm, I certainly am grateful
for those people that are on YouTube and we'd love to have
you in the mix. You can still download and
listen to podcasts regularly, but the it's a nice community on
YouTube. We've enjoyed being on there so
far. We will continue to be in all
those spots, but just search back home network on YouTube and
you should be able to find it. Also.
Check us out crimsoncast.substack.com.
You can get podcasts and videos delivered right to your inbox.
All right, so Indiana on Friday night, not many people thought
they were going to compete in this game and they did.
And really from from the beginning of the game, they were
in this one. It was a back and forth game.
It had ebbs and flows as we're used to seeing with IU and
normally with IU pretty you get those anyway.
I mean, we're used to seeing ebbs and flows with IU, period.
This is, you know, one of the streakiest teams, good and bad
that I think I've ever seen. And this was an example of one
of those games where Indiana had a couple of chances to fold and
they took the opposite Rd. They ended up going the other
direction. They put together a big run in
the second-half that got them the lead and then just could not
hold it together. Foul trouble ended up doing
them. Some bad plays ended up dooming
them and then some end of game situations that were really
unfortunate. At a minimum, we're going to
talk about all of that, but let's talk about the overall big
picture 1st and then we'll dive into some of the specifics of
the Purdue game. So Indiana now finds itself at
14 and 8, five and six losers of five out of their last six.
And you know, this is the scenario we talked about at the
beginning of the year when we saw the schedule.
It's the scenario we talked about at the beginning of
January when we looked at how Indiana was playing and what the
projections were. And the concern was always that
you were going to get past that USC game and things were going
to start to fall apart in terms of the wins and losses.
And it's different than last year, I would argue, or
different than Woodson's first year in as much as Indiana has
only really looked terrible in two of the games.
So they were two in a row, the Iowa game and the Illinois game.
But you know, they won at Ohio State in overtime by a point.
They lose that Northwestern 7970, but they were in that game
for a large stretch of it. They lose barely at home to
Maryland. And then they play Purdue really
tight. If this was any other team,
you'd look at this and say, wow, they're about to breakthrough.
They really were putting it together.
And yet when you examine how they've been competitive in
these individual games, it's really not sustainable given how
they've chosen to coach and play in the past.
So what I mean by that is look at what happened in the Purdue
game is a great example. Indiana's competitiveness in the
Purdue game largely required them playing the same five
players for like 13 minutes and and having to ride with that
group and you know, one of their starters was barely playable.
Actually, two of their starters were barely playable.
It really required the combination of Trey Galloway,
Anthony Leal, Luke Goody, Mackenzie Mbacco and Omar Barlow
'cause you couldn't play Miles Rice.
And as we saw at the end like that, that ended up not working
out very well. Malik Renew fouled out in 8
minutes of play and you had nobody coming off the bench
other than Galloway and Goody who could provide the kind of
consistency that you needed. And you had a similar thing
happen in the Maryland game, this team, Scott, in these
games, you can see the talent, you can see that in an ideal set
of circumstances, you can pick up a win.
And I think you kind of saw that in that Ohio State game.
But it is, it always feels like the team, despite its talent, is
about one or two plays short in most of these games, if not
more. And that's just not going to get
it done in a Big 10 where everybody's within a couple of
possessions of each other. So I'm going to kind of
paraphrase some things they talked about on Assembly call
after the game, But you know, the thing that's concerning for
me coming out of the Purdue game, they they played really
well, which I also want to talk about that, that narrative of,
oh, they played really well And you know, that's that's we got
to give them credit for that. It it's that you would say, you
know, just watching it, that was probably one of the best games I
use played this year, if not the best game they played all year.
And that's good. But the problem is I would say
Purdue played a subpar game. I watched all the Purdue games
like that. That was not Purdue with its
full effectiveness. Purdue played OK, they didn't
play great. Some of that had to do with IU,
but you basically had IU put out the the A+ performance, Purdue
put out AB minus performance and Purdue one.
I don't that's I don't even think Purdue put out AB minus
performance. I mean, but anyway, go on.
I, I, I actually, I agree with Andy Bottoms from Assembly call
like Purdue did not play, did not have their A game or even
their B game in this one. And and yet somehow that they
were still able to win with essentially a 75% effort.
But anyway, go on. No, no.
So that all goes to my point that it's like, that's not
great. It's like, all right, well, you
know, you're not going to play Purdue every week.
But the problem is for the next 5 games are against teams that I
would say are similar to Purdue. You're playing at Wisconsin,
home to Michigan at Michigan State.
You have home at UCLA, which isn't also a slouch, but I'll
take them out of this. And then you have Purdue.
So for the next 5 games are against teams in that same
echelon of Purdue where you just saw A and we can split hairs,
but it's like we played our best.
They played not their best and they still won.
You're going to have some home and away differences, but like
that's, that's a real problem because if you know at its at
its, you know, Indiana should be a team.
When you play your best, you win like all the things equal, you
played the best game of the year That, you know, we've had that
before. Like a couple years ago we
played North Carolina and they weren't quite what we thought
they were, But it's like we played just dynamite and we won.
Was it like two years ago? We beat the living hell out of
Michigan State in Bloomington and she's like, we played great
from start to finish. It's like we won by 15.
It's it's not great because this kind of pretends that you're
going to go, you're going to lose 4 the next 5.
That's assuming you're able to put together a, you know, a
maximum effort in the next four to five games.
And the other teams are and, you know, things don't always work
out that way. But that's that's kind of the
concerning part is it'd be one thing if we made a bunch of
mistakes or we played really good for 35 minutes but didn't.
And, you know, I guess you could say there was that stretch right
after halftime where again, we had to have the either beginning
game or after halftime, you know, run by the other team with
like a 10/2 run or something where Purdue really took control
of it. So I don't know.
I just, I look at that and that's, that's what concerns me
is I'm not sure what the path is to, to get to where we need to
go this year with what's ahead of us based on what we just saw
and that we played really well and Purdue didn't play great.
It it doesn't look positive moving forward.
No. And this is where this kind of a
game is hard to integrate into the overall evaluation of the
team. I, I, you know, I, I can't
criticize the team in general for playing hard at Purdue and
losing a close game. And that really stretches they,
that's kind of independent of, of whatever season you're in.
They played hard. I was really impressed with some
of the individual play, particularly from Omar Balo,
particularly from Trey Galloway, who had had a really rough
stretch of games. Obviously Anthony Leo made a lot
of good plays. Luke Goody was leading the team
in scoring at halftime. So, you know, a lot of people
have been generally critical of the team and understandably so.
But I I think that they're, they should be somewhat immune from
criticism in terms of effort, as that's been something that
people have picked on quite a bit even.
And frankly, even the Maryland loss and the Northwestern
losses, I don't know that effort was necessarily the issue in
either of those games. You know, effort was not the
issue in the Ohio State game, and they ended up winning that
one. You know, so I, I do think that
sometimes the narrative on this team gets a little bit confused.
You do have individual players who are either struggling
because of effort or more to the point, I think struggling
because of confusion and not really being sure where they fit
within this system, both offensively and defensively.
And so when I look at the Purdue game, it's part of a pattern
that's a little bit different from last year.
And I think a lot of times people just look at last year
and this year as one big agglomeration.
Last year's team lacked talent in key positions and often times
lacked effort. And then when they finally
figured the effort part out by the end of the season, they put
some wins together, but it wasn't enough.
This year's team, I don't think that that really applies.
They've got players that are underperforming, but I don't
think that it's a situation where you've got players that
just are playing badly because they don't care.
It really feels more like a system based thing at this
point. And even though the aggregate
numbers are slightly better than last year, they're not good
enough to make you say, well, wow, this team is close to
breaking through. And the end of game situation in
this Purdue game and frankly the end of game situation in the
Maryland game are both really good examples of this where
these are both winnable games. They're games where you play the
other team type and had a lead within the last five minutes and
you essentially got outmaneuvered down the line
between that point and when the game was over.
And I think that's some of it is the system, some of it, it's is
just a real, what looks like a real confusion or a lack of
being on the same page, not the not just between the players
themselves, but between the players and the coaching staff.
And that's really, again, it's one of those situations where
it's a more talented team than the record indicates, but it's
probably an accurate record given the the roster's lack of
connectivity with each other and with whatever the game plan is
supposed to be. And I don't think the problems
with the players there, I think the problems probably with the
way that we've approached some of these end of game situations.
And so I was, I was, I watched the end of the Maryland game
with my buddy Robert, who I've talked about his his wife is a
Purdue grad. More reason to probably I
shouldn't, you know, be friends with the music.
You say, what are you? What are you doing to yourself?
You know, it's, I mean there's. A lot it's I've, I'm, I'm, I
like my friends. I like my neighbors a lot.
I don't like the colleges they went to.
I'll just put it that way. But you know, you've got to,
hey, you got to cross, cross the aisle in these tough times.
Anyway, so he watched the Purdue game.
He was obviously invested in that with his wife.
He he called me afterwards. I've watched those two games and
he's just like, it doesn't look like you guys are practice in
the game situations at all. And I'm sure they have.
This is something I was thinking about going back to our time
doing Crimson cast under the crane years, is that there was a
lot of talk of man, this guy's a great practice player in, you
know, post game press and also that and deflection.
So the two things I remember talked a lot about, though, I
remember you and I used to joke about that.
It was like, all right, that's awesome.
Like I'm sure he's fantastic in practice.
He doesn't show up in the game. And there comes a point where
I'm sure they have practiced end of game situations, but it
doesn't look like it. And that's the real problem is
whatever you're doing in practice isn't moving forward to
the game. And you know, what's funny is
the end of this game against Purdue, there was all this talk
of like, should you take a time out or not?
And to me that's not really the, you know that to me, that's a
real, that's a coaches feel. And I'm I'm fine with that.
The the thing. That I have in the, the analogy
I was talking to my buddy Robert about is, you know, when, when
Bob Knight was coaching, he had this, you know, his philosophy
was early in the season in the Big 10 when other teams would go
on a run, he wouldn't call time out.
Like just figure like play through it and teams would
figure it out or they wouldn't. But like Knight's philosophy was
kind of, I'm not going to call a time out to stop a run.
You got to stop a run on the court.
Now he, he would not always break that, but like that's kind
of, it felt like was always his philosophy.
What's wild is these two games, it's like, what is Woodson's
philosophy for end of game situations?
Because you had two completely different like 2 back-to-back
situations. 1 he calls time out and then he also Subs people in
and like tries to change the play.
It's like, all right, so maybe Woodson wants to like, you know,
micromanage the end of game. That's fine.
But then this one he doesn't. And that's where I have the
problem. And, and again, it's it's 2
little spots, but like, what is your ethos?
What are you teaching your team? What are you trying to do it?
And the fact that it looks so disjointed and it's like you're
you're trying to micromanage and you're trying to be hands off.
It's like the the pendulum swings so much around.
It's kind of like that would be the question I would ask
Woodson, is it what is your end of game ethos?
Like what do you want to do? Because you have two situations
where you took two totally different tax, both of them
didn't work. I would think you just kind of
want to do the way you want to do it.
And I think back to like the Rob fantasy shot against Purdue.
I think he called the time out there like time out seemed to be
anyway, I'm I'm I'm rambling now, but that's that.
Those are kind of my thoughts of like the.
End of game, just to summarize, there's an inconsistency in
approach, which feels weird given that you would probably
have some kind of consistent if you know what your team is and
especially in this game. And this is where, you know, in
the in the immediate aftermath of what happened at the end of
the Purdue game and, and frankly, even a couple of days
later, I don't, I'm not bothered by the fact that they didn't
call a time out. I am generally of the school
that if you've got enough time and you've got options, you go
ahead and play it out because calling a time out allows the
opposition team to get their defense set and allows them to
make substitutions. What's concerning, I guess, is
just that, as you said, like there wasn't a whole lot of
difference in the scenarios between the Maryland game and
the Purdue game, yet they were dealt with very differently.
There does not appear to be the evidence to support Mike
Woodson's assertions. That he tried to call time out
or tried to signal to Rice to call time out or whatever on
that video, like I had it. But if you watch the video, he's
just like doing like the like the assistant coach in football
during a punt return, Like let's go, let's go.
I think my, my the only thing that's consistent.
And it's no not 'cause like Miles Rice has taken the shot on
both times. And it's like you have Mackenzie
and Bacco against Purdue playing a really good game.
You have Trey Galloway, who at the time is playing really well.
You have Miles Rice who's played what, 3 minutes?
Like he hadn't played since the 17 minute mark came in at like
the 1 1/2 minute mark had had not not really done anything
statistical in the game. No points, nothing.
You know, you have to, you know, you have big guys for the
Maryland game. You have Ballow and Renew down
there, big man. Like you have so many options.
Why is Rice the consistent 1 taking the last shot in both
times? Well, I think part of it here,
part of it's a problem that exists above and beyond this
game, and it's the lack of depth at guard and the fact that, you
know, Miles Rice wasn't able to really contribute.
He wasn't doing his job, as, as Andy Bottoms noted on Assembly
Call, like you just couldn't put him on the floor.
And they were getting much better production out of Trey
Galloway and Anthony Leal at the guard spots, despite neither of
them being a point guard in the traditional sense, neither of
them having anywhere close to the athleticism that Miles Rice
has. And then Leo fouls out.
And so now you have to have Miles Rice in there.
And and again, this is where we can quibble about whether a
timeout needs to be called or not, But I don't think that you
can quibble with the idea that it kind of feels like a free for
all when it comes to some of these end of game items.
And the excuses from Woodson have been weird because in the
in the Maryland game, what he essentially says.
When being asked afterwards is that the guys screwed the play
up. But you know, he he on his radio
show on Monday of last week. First he tries to take the blame
for, you know, things not happening and then immediately
turns it around and says, well, the players didn't understand
the play call or or didn't, didn't execute the play call.
It's like, well, that's your, that's on you.
Like that's a problem where you, you clearly haven't worked on
this enough, or it hasn't been worked on in a way that
resonates with players or you brought in players that are
incapable of executing what you want.
I mean, this is where, like Mike Woodson, you went out and chose
to bring Miles Rice in. You went out and like you,
you've made all of these roster decisions.
This is entirely your roster at this point.
Well, at high D1, like that Maryland game, sorry, just
picking on that one thing. It's like you're coming out of a
time out and the ball gets tipped away, Maryland resets,
and then you look like you're completely frazzled and you're
changing it. Like that shouldn't be something
that frazzles your team. Like you should at least have
two options out of an inbounds when you're coming out of a time
out anyway. Well, and, and the idea that,
well, we didn't have a time out and we then we subbed and, and
everybody was confused. I mean, that does happen
occasionally. It's just that with IU, it seems
to consistently result in the team not knowing what they're
doing. And then it shows during the
actual execution of the play call, which I again, I look at
that Purdue game and the end of that and Miles Rice gets the
basketball and isn't looking anywhere else.
He's like, I'm going to drive this to the basket.
That's not really, that's not a great play period against
Purdue. Driving's fine, but the idea is
that you're driving to kick the ball out to somebody that's open
one of the hot hands, whether that's Luke Goody or Mackenzie
Mbacco or Trey Galloway, all of whom would have been perfectly
reasonable options. And if one of those guys gets
the ball and misses, you kind of shrug your shoulders and say,
well, those guys got us to where we were at in this game for
Miles Rice, to think I'm going to take this myself demonstrates
a really unfortunate philosophical issue with the way
that IU has played. And again, I don't think it's
just this this late game situation.
We've seen it elsewhere, not just this season, but in prior
years as well. It it does work out
occasionally, but it's one of those situations where the
balance of what we've seen over the four years of Mike Woodson,
I feel like I've seen this movie before more than more than I
should. If everybody's aligned in terms
of coaching and playing and how the strategy is going.
And you know, that's, I don't know the what the answer to that
is other than just there's a clear disconnect between the
coaching staff and the players. That's again, not breaking news,
but it is disappointing to waste a really good effort at Purdue
because again, you don't seem to have everybody on the same page
at the end of the game in terms of what they're doing, whether
you're practicing it or not. The outcome on the floor is
always the thing that we judge these things on, not whatever
the original intent was, and that's been the case for every
coaching staff that we've seen at IU.
If you can't execute in the clutch that those are the teams
you used to point at and say, well, gosh, this is the
advantage that we have if you're Indiana and you just don't have
that right now. And you, you brought up a great
point earlier about this is nothing new.
This Tom Crean's teams did this all the time.
The talent sometimes was overwhelming in Indiana's favor
to the point that they were able to still win those games.
But we everybody that watched IU during the Crane era, there were
there were plenty of circumstances like that.
So this isn't necessarily to point the finger and say, well,
Mike Woodson doesn't know what he's doing alone, but everybody
else has. I would argue Crane and Archie
Miller, both their teams struggled from a similar problem
and that wasn't good. And it's not good now.
And again, it's nothing that's breaking news to any IU fan, but
it's disappointing that IU continually finds itself at a
spot where it's squandering its talent and it's squandering
games where it's played really well because it can't figure out
things at the end of games when you actually have to make the
place to win them. I want to circle back.
Agreed yes, I'm on a new paragraph circle back to kind of
something you talked about earlier, just about how suddenly
one of my favorite things that seems to always come up on this
podcast is the it's it's like the the gift that gives every
single year that, you know, we start season and we immediately
have the look of like, man, how are we going to get playing time
for all these guys? Like are we going to be able to
get enough time? You know, is it going to be
enough room? And then we get to February and
it's like, man, we have five guys.
Like we have five guys. But I, I'm, I'm more concerned
about it this year that I have been in the past because you
have, as you mentioned, we have limited guard play.
But on the front court you have Malik Renew, who obviously is
still suffering from whatever injury he had and he's still not
100%. But you mentioned the minutes.
I just want to bring this up with Ballo who is playing really
hard I think, but playing a ton since he didn't play Winthrop
here his minutes from games Rutgers on 323233243440363935.
You go back and look at his career.
He's had a lengthy college basketball career.
I I, I did this kind of skimming through I only see one other
time he played three games in a row with 30 plus minutes and
that was last year when he played Purdue, Alabama, Ford
Atlantic 333033 and then the next couple games like 21/24/21.
Like I would equate this to you have a car and you're like
running it in the red. Like you are just revving this
thing up. And I, I think the whole team is
running in the red. And, and again, this is where my
concern comes is like this is not sustainable.
You just can't. And you see it.
Balo looks exhausted at the end of games.
I don't think he is AI have a hard time believing he's going
to be able to keep up this pace running 35 to 38 minutes a game.
And if you're having the team put this kind of effort like
this is where I get concerned. Like you say, you throw all of
this effort again at Wisconsin, maybe you come up short.
Are you going to continue to like bang your head against the
wall and have the energy to do this?
This is just another concern of mine is I just, I don't think
that I'm picking, I'm not picking on Ballo, but his his
minutes are astounding and it's really not something that it can
keep going this way. No, I think it's a valid point.
And it's funny because we're a month, five weeks removed from
people being convinced that Balo didn't care and wasn't giving
effort and, you know, got suspended for didn't didn't get
suspended. But it looked like he got
suspended because he was there was a picture of him out at the
bars during winter break. And yet you look at what he's
done since the Iowa game, you know, Illinois 34 minutes, had
an offensive rating of 120. That's real good.
Played 40 minutes against Ohio State, had an offensive rating
of 122, real good 36 minutes offensive rating of 118 against
Northwestern, 39 minutes offensive rating of 118 versus
Maryland and 35 minutes against Purdue with an offensive rating
of 114. And really was into that game,
like was really pissed at the end of that game.
Rebounds each game. And so this is it's this is
probably the biggest frustration I have right now about the Mike
Woodson era. You've got, in this case, a guy
who has NBA potential, big body type of player we've always been
interested in seeing. And you couldn't get him playing
consistently well when Miles Rice was playing well.
Well, now Omar Ballo's playing really well and Miles Rice is
not playing consistently well. But you've also got this
situation where I think you're right.
It looks like you're overusing Ballo by a significant margin
because if again, if you Scott you, you, you go back to Arizona
and rarely would he get over 29 minutes a game.
There would be occasional games where you would see that happen
and then I would like. Throttle back down the guy,
we're going to keep him under 20 for the next two.
And you know, IU has been forced into this by injury, but again,
it's it's less injury as it is bad roster construction, you
know, so you, you, you poured all your eggs into the we're
going to have Balo and Renew out there all the time and they'll
play off of each other. And when you've gotten to the
point where you haven't had Renew or games like this Purdue
game where Renew's just simply not ready to contribute because
he's a foul machine. And he he he either doesn't have
his rhythm or he's just kind of regressed.
I can't really figure out which one it is.
You're locked in now with your whole offensive system to having
Omar Balo out there. And even if you've got a few
minutes where you're not playing Omar Balo and you've got a
smaller lineup, you nervously are putting him back in as soon
as possible. Because the way that you want to
play basketball from a coaching perspective relies on you having
a big out there, who's in the post and doing what Omar Balo
does. One, and I'll just say like I
started those minutes and I started like, you know, at the
Rutgers game on January 2nd. Like that's part of the way he
was used at Arizona was he would have those moments in big games
where they play them 3536 minutes.
But then like I'm just, you know, randomly they played UCLA
last year. He played 18 minutes and they
won. Like you had a stretch against
Rutgers, Penn State, USC, three games where you played them 3232
and 33 minutes. Those are games he probably
should have played 21 and you should have had it.
You should have been able to win those games comfortably.
This is where I have issue with this team is like you're, you're
running this team so hard to win those games against Penn State,
USC, which I mean, they had to do was like you look at the you
look at the schedule, it's like, all right, right now should be
the time like, OK, starting this Purdue game, this is where you
can run him hard for four games and then we'll scale it back.
But they didn't they weren't they needed him for 30.
The problem is they needed him 33 minutes to beat USC.
And that's that's that's part of the problem.
Yeah, I mean, it just the whole thing feels mismanaged and and
the game plan, the game plans feel like they're they're just
not getting results. You know, you could quibble
about whether or not it's the best approach or not, but this
is really solidly an NIT level team right now and it's got a
second weekend roster. And I did this.
Sorry to interrupt but I I. I played around on Torvik a
little bit. Oh my God, where is it?
Where? Where is it, Scott?
I played around on Torvic and you can do a compare this team
to other like teams with similar resumes from previous years and
I did it Big 10 only there's a couple of other Big 10 teams,
but do you know the number two team?
This this current team comps with is a previous Indiana team,
the 2017 Tom Crean last year team.
This is this is where this team currently comps most likely to
in Indiana history is the 2017 team.
And, you know, there, there's some crossover there, obviously.
I mean, people forget that team had Thomas Bryant, who you know,
is is still playing in the NBA, that he met, that he met Juwan
Morgan. That team met James Blackman for
you know what, I think the whole season that year, you know, that
that was a talented team, really underperformed.
Rob Johnson was on that team. Yeah, that team lost a
Ojiananobi, but but it's a similar kind of thing where
you're just like, they should be playing better and more
consistently. Now.
That team was still really good offensively, comparatively
speaking, and just really, really bad defensively.
This team's just kind of mid in both of those categories.
You know, they're right now, if you go by Kenpom, they're
they're what, 56th in offensive efficiency and 66th in defensive
efficiency? And that's just.
Just be mid. Like you're right, you should
just say mid. Like Ken pops just mid.
It's a it's a very mediocre set of outcomes for a team who's got
a roster where the ceiling or maybe the floor should be higher
than what it is right now. And nobody's surprised like
you're none of us are surprised. Nobody's just watching.
I'm actually, to some degree, given what we saw last year, the
the hope was maybe last year was just a bad confluence of events.
This was the argument for those of you who've, you know, who've
tried to argue he should have fired Woodson last year.
That wasn't going to happen for a whole variety of reasons, but
there's always the chance. Well, gosh, maybe that was just
a bad combination of people and situations in terms of like just
the the chemistry was off. And Xavier Johnson, like that
injury just killed our back court so.
It's it's like you had a whole offseason, you threw a bunch of
money at the problem, but you basically got the same set of
issues. You're playing marginally better
than last year, but not enough to get to where I think you
know, you're not. You're on the still on the
outside of the tournament looking in right now and you're
staring down the barrel of what could be a really disagree or
like a really bad outcome in terms of the the conference
itself and what you do there. So all that to say, I, I don't
think we learned anything new from the Purdue game other than
I feel like we've seen this before under Woodson where you
have the the random game where the team plays really well and
then loses and everybody's a little bit confused.
Like, well, what, what does that mean exactly?
Like does that mean that we're back?
Does that mean that I use in good shape?
It kind of reminds me, if you remember last year, you know,
Indiana was at Illinois at almost the exact same time of
the year. It was January 27th and Illinois
was a really good team last year.
Obviously Indiana goes on a 13 nothing run and is leading by 7
points with about 12 minutes to go.
Immediately let's up an 11 to one run and and Indiana kept it
close the rest of the way. You know they it was I think
tied at 62 with two minutes to go and then they let a bunch of
points up at the end. They end up losing by 8, and I
remember coming out of that game thinking maybe this IU team is
going to be all right after all. Look at the effort that they
gave. And at the time, that loss
dropped them to 12:00 and 8:00 and 4:00 and 5:00, which is not
too far off where they're at right now, Scott.
And then I'm sorry. Then they proceeded to lose 5 of
their next seven games. And they they won their next one
and then lost at our watch party.
And it's like it's, it's, it's lining up.
Perfectly to this year as well. So it's just, it's like I've
almost gotten too jaded. And look, I just want to go out
of my way to say if you look at Torvic game score, which we
talked about on this, on this program a lot, that was one of
the best games Indiana played all season against Purdue.
Their game score in that game was 94.
By comparison, the Minnesota win at home was a 95.
The Providence win was a 95. The South Carolina win was a 95.
You know, it was actually a better game score than Indiana's
wins against USC and Penn State. So I I reject the idea that
Indiana played badly in terms of like their overall performance.
There are certainly some things that were concerning, most of
them on the defensive side. But offensively the team played
well. The team played tough.
All the things that you would like to see.
And the ironic thing is if Indiana had lost the Iowa game
or the Illinois game looking like they looked in the Purdue
game, I think there'd be a lot less concern.
But going out playing hard and losing when you've already had
games where you went out and didn't play hard and lost or
where you've already lost some close games, it just feels like
you find different. It's like connect the dots with
losses. It's like, well here's our bad
loss, here's our good loss, Here's the loss where we should
have executed better at the end. They all essentially count as
losses at the end of the day. And since we've already been
through this drama once before last year, it's hard to really
get too fired up about playing good at Purdue and losing.
Because I can almost guarantee you they're probably going to go
get curb stopped in Wisconsin because that seems to be the
pattern. Like you, you play real hard.
You have a let down at the end, you lose.
Now you got to go back on the road play at Wisconsin, which is
not a place that Indiana's won in decades, and Wisconsin's
going to be loaded for bear. Wisconsin's like an extreme
version of Purdue in terms of what they do offensively, and
you just let up essentially 1.2 points per possession against
Purdue, and that was a Purdue team that only hit two threes
the entire game. I'm pretty sure Wisconsin's
going to be better from three than that.
It just everything sets up for this being another regression.
And that is a concerning thing because ultimately the morale
around this team and the morale around the program just
continues to sync with every one of these losses.
And we've again, as with last year, we've seen how that plays
out. Well, and I'll, I'll again,
assembly call has been on this for a while.
Like the word they keep using and there's just no other word
to use is inconsistency. And I think that's something you
could we all leave this game and you can ask 100 IU fans how how
is IU going to play against Wisconsin?
It's like I, I really don't know, like I'm with you.
They're probably get curb stop. Like they could come out and
play hard together. I I really don't know what this
team and I think that's part of I I know they're probably going
to lose, but how they get there, I'm not sure.
And I think that's the problem is you're not and you've seen it
the last couple of years. Unfortunately, you've seen it,
you know, even before Woodson. This team is just very
schizophrenic. It's just very up and down and
like a good performance doesn't really equate that we figured
anything out. It just might mean we had a good
performance for one night and then maybe we'll have two good
performances, but then like it they're always it doesn't seem
to be building on anything. So that's that's the issue.
The the last thing I want to say and I'm going to get through
this, but you know, I I'm going to answer my own question before
you. I'll let you answer it.
But like all of this talk about the, you know, the kind of the
the overarching feel after this game was like you Indiana played
really hard. Like that's, that's something we
should be happy with. Like, you know, in, you know, in
the micro, like Matt, it's never good to lose to Purdue.
I hate losing to Purdue, but it's like, hey, in this, in this
case, give it everything we know.
Like it's, it's a pretty good outcome.
And I was I I don't disagree with that, But I was also
thinking like, this is how a a program slides into mediocrity
as you just start having these moments where it's like, all
right, well, I obviously can't expect to win.
So I'm just happy they played hard.
When you go macro with it, it's like this season, obviously we
can't expect this team to go to the Final four, but it's like at
some point you do. And like when you start just
kind of sliding those expectations, it's like it's
it's just frustrating and it's sad because I was I was telling
somebody like, this is how you become Minnesota basketball.
Like I don't want to be there. Then I'll stop because I'm like,
I know what Galen would say. It's like for the last 10 years
we've been to Minnesota basketball and we are there.
So it's like I, I had a whole conversation with you in my head
yesterday because it's like, it is, it's just sad to think like
it's not just that we're sliding expectations off that stoop.
Like we're, we are just there. I mean, it's just, it's there.
And I, I understand the sentiment for everyone who's
like, I can't get just unbelievably pissed right now
because we lost to Purdue because I wasn't expecting to
win. But but it's like, we all need
to take a breath and be like, that's part of the problem.
And we're probably going to lose at Wisconsin.
I'm, I don't think anyone's going to be pissed.
No one's expecting us to go in there and win.
No one's expecting us to win for the next 5, but it it is just a
macro. It's just sad that we're there
and it's not just that we just got here.
It's like open our eyes. I've been we've been here for
five or ten years and I don't know there's there's no happy
end of that. It's just it.
It's a bummer. It, it is, I mean, and again,
it's, it's not for a lack of, I mean, there's been talent
brought in that's significantly higher than a lot of programs
that are outperformed Indiana. But now Indiana struggles
sometimes to get the talent as well because they're not
recruiting. I mean, there's just so many
things that we've been through before.
I, my thing is this, I understand your arguments about
program expectations. I don't think anybody has been
satisfied with the expectations of or the the outcomes with IU.
The it's, it's one of those situations where ultimately
everybody understands that there's a problem.
I think the problem that we run into is that there's not a clear
idea of what the problem, what's the source of the problem.
And it's it's easy to point to the fact that Indiana has
struggled mightily to even live up to average expectations of a
contending Big 10 team over the course of the last 15 years.
They've done it occasionally, but most of the time they're not
even in the mix. They're they're a 500 or worse
team. I mean, you look at the records
of Indiana in the conference over the course of, I mean,
let's go back, go back. If you go back, you know, 11
years, 7 and 11/9 and 9:15 and 3:00 seven and 11/9 and 9/8 and
12/9 and 11/7 and 12/9 and 11:12 and 8:10 and 10:00 five and six
this year. It's this is like Indiana is
middle of the pack is almost like it's not inaccurate, but it
almost feels too kind because to be consistently between 7:00 and
9:00 wins for so many of those game of of those seasons in
conference. It's like, wow, you really
aren't measuring up to your competition and the fact that it
stretches over multiple coaches. The logical thought process is,
oh, it's a program issue. There's something wrong with the
Indiana University program over multiple or.
Athletic. Directors, right, That's the
thing it's like to me like, and people have heard me argue this
before, it's just Indiana hasn't had the right choices at the
top. Like ultimately, and again, it's
not a personal thing, but if you listen to the X's and Joe's
podcast, Bob and Mike do a great job of talking through the
historical precedence and the the 10 years of coaches and what
when it works, it works really well.
When it doesn't work, it's not like it generally starts working
later on. And when you generally when it
is going to work later on, it's because there's a dynamite
recruiting class like that. That was the example with Mike
Schefsky. Everybody points to Schefsky
being like, oh, look, he, he failed for his first four years.
And then in today's day and age, they would have fired him.
And it's like, well, I don't know if that's necessarily true
because what kept him alive there was this amazing
recruiting class that he had brought in.
And they're like, well, we're going to let this mature.
And that group ended up taking them to a Final Four in 1986.
But, you know, even, like people point out, you know, John Wooden
didn't win a championship till he was 10 years in.
And it's like that. That's such a different era.
It doesn't really count in the big scheme of things, by and
large. And again, it's not just Mike
Woodson, it's also Archie Miller.
It's, you know, really quickly with most of these seasons and
that the coaches have whether or not it's going to work.
The hinge point on the Woodson era was, was last year just a
fluke, as Woodson argued. It was, it was.
We didn't, you know, we had an injury and we didn't realize
that Jalen Hutchofino could possibly go to the pros.
I, I mean, the injury part, you can't get around the the Jalen
Hutchofino part I'm really dubious about.
It's kind of like. To you mean Jalen Hutchofino,
the the linchpin of a Luca Anthony Davis trade?
Well, I guess more what I mean by that.
The idea that what we were certainly gonna have him for two
years. It kind of reminds me.
It kind of reminds me of the, the argument what we were trying
to, to call time out and, and you know, nobody paid attention.
It's like the, the evidence, if you go back and actually look at
the evidence, it doesn't really support what you're arguing
here. So it just feels like we're,
we're fully in the excuse mode right now for IU basketball and
this is just going to be how it is the rest of the season.
And we talked about this what, 3 weeks ago and you know, a lot of
people have not a lot of OK, not a lot of people.
A few people have been critical of us, I guess not talking more
about the coaching situation. I don't know what else we're
supposed to say besides what we said a few weeks ago on this,
which is this isn't working. This isn't likely to start
working. And it's unlikely that either
Woodson is going to walk away or that IU is going to fire in mid
season. Like none of those things are
are likely given the people involved and giving the given
the circumstances involved, which just means that again,
we're going to be stuck in a February that's likely to not be
a lot of fun. There will certainly be random
noise in there. You know, one of the things that
we're used to seeing out of IU in these late season items is
there's always like one game that they win randomly where
it's like, how the heck did we win that game?
You know, it's like. We we could win our last four
again. Well, like.
Eyes cast, then we'll come on strong and be like man.
I mean, it's like, again, I keep going like the 2019 season under
Archie Miller, you know, that that team that lost 12 of 13,
that team swept Michigan State, who was the number three team in
the country according to Kenpom. That year.
That team beat Wisconsin, who was 16th in Kenpom.
That didn't make them a good team.
It it just meant that they won some games and that's going to
happen. And so this is where you know
the back and forth about where this team is at.
You can't almost you almost can't get caught up in the
individual games unless they string a bunch of them together
for a victory or for victories. Because when you go back and
look at the statistics that tell you the overall picture, this is
a team that's essentially a two or three seed in the NIT,
probably at best, given the way that their talent plays and
given the approach that the coaching staff has taken.
And it just, again, if you look at the micro trends of the
statistics, which I do think are important, a lot of people think
that they're overrated. But the problem Indiana's got is
that they fix 1 hole and then another one springs leak.
You know, Indiana finally gets their offense on tracked after
two terrible offensive performances against Iowa and
Illinois. And they start scoring a lot and
then they throw that away because they start playing worst
defense. Now, they played bad defense in
the Iowa and Illinois games, but they've played their worst
stretch of defense of the whole season over the last six games.
And oh, by the way, they're five and six.
Like, why are you playing your worst defense of the season at
the end of January? That is a real open question.
And it again, I think it points back to the core issue, which is
that the plan doesn't work. And the roster that was
assembled is too brittle to be able to win different ways.
And it takes guys playing at their maximum level, which
should happen all the time and clearly doesn't.
But it also takes the opponent having a bad game.
And that's just not a combination that you're going to
be able to rely on for both of those things to converge enough
for Indiana to win at the level they need to, to be anything
other than a fringe bubble team, which is what they are.
So one last thing, just just, you know, we we kind of don't
talk a lot about it. I'm not going to go deep into
it, but you you mentioned the idea of, you know, people, why
aren't we talking more about firing woods and this and that.
This is probably I would throw this out there.
If X's and Joe's are listening, this is I would be a dive I'd be
interested in. You know, there is just that
that's not the way it's done. I'm going to stay here.
It's just they're they're I'm trying to think of how many mid
season college basketball coach firing, sorry, coach firings
there have been over the last 20 years.
It's very rare. I mean, we did have it with
Kelvin Sampson here. That was a very unique
situation. I would say that we are not in.
I would then also pin it down to how many times the team fired a
coach mid season when that coach happens to be an alumnus.
Like it's just it's it's a situation that is just very,
very abnormal and it's not the way it's done in this business.
And it sucks because at least in the NBA, you know, you can be
like, all right, well, we'll get a better draft pick.
Like let's start rooting for losses and get a better draft
pick. Like there isn't that option
here. And I'm I'm with you that
there's, you know, if you're listening to us talk, we
obviously think there are issues with what's going on, but
there's no point in banging right now that we got a fire and
do this. So that's like, it's just, it's
not the way things are done. It's not going to happen.
And so like, how can we get to the end of this season and try
and find some positives and get there?
I think is the way to look at it.
But that that would be my thing is like, just go back and like,
give me if you're wanting to hear us talk more about like all
the changes need to be made. Like, please give me 10 other
examples of colleges that fire to coach mid season because it
just doesn't happen. And so, you know, it, it sucks
because like I said, I, I, this is 20% of my life after college
where February and March don't matter for basketball.
Like I'm, I'm just waiting for the season to be over to see
what the next steps are. And that sucks because I love
March. I love having friends over,
watching the tournament, doing brackets like, and I love when I
can pick Indiana. And I haven't been able to do it
20% of my life after I graduated college.
And it, it, it sucks, but it's like, this is where we're at And
it's, it's going, you know, and unfortunately, I just don't know
if there's, there's no good options.
And you know, to, to say like, man, I, you just got to do
something. You're, and I'm as guilty of
this too sometimes, like they got to do things.
You're pissing away another February.
Like I, I don't know what anybody can do here.
Like besides just look at the effort you put up against
Purdue. And it's like, all right, we're
going to need to continue this effort and we're going to need
to honestly go even better. That just that effort was
awesome. We got to find that extra.
What was it the Malcolm, the 212° that big management book
like 15 years ago? Like go the extra degree.
Like we got to find to go to 101 percent, 100.
Like we've got to step this up. We've got to have a big home
crowd at Michigan. We've got to do well and and try
and maybe we can just salvage a high seed in the NIT and maybe
you can win the NIT and go from there.
Anyway, that's all I have to say, But it's just I don't,
there's no real historical precedent of of teams doing much
in this situation besides just kind of riding out the stretch.
Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's bad.
And certainly the discourse on social media isn't going to help
anything. And this is 1 and honestly.
You can say that for any, any, any area, any place.
No, no. But I mean, I think especially
with this, like I just, I see so much that is just completely
unsourced crap that people treat like it might be true.
I think it gets people thinking that something's happening that
isn't actually happening. In a lot of cases, it's just not
worth it. We're really at a point where my
recommendation would just be if you are, if you're an IU fan, I
would you, you don't have a lot of reason to really like get
fired up about the team. I still recommend watching the
games. I still recommend going to games
if you've got tickets. I don't recommend booing or
anything like that. But I I also think that IU fans,
pretty much, I would not as everybody, but most of the IU
fans coming into the season were very skeptical about how this
was going to go. And they got told over and over
again that, no, it was going to be different, that this approach
was going to work. And you can't question, I think,
the individual talent on this team, but you can question how
it's playing together, how it's being utilized.
There's not a lot that can be done to change that.
And you know, right now, you look down the rest of the
schedule. There's nine games in the
regular season. You're guaranteed 10 more games
total with this team when you add in the first Big 10
tournament game, It's it's not going to be a fun ride.
They'll be individual good moments.
I wouldn't be shocked if Indiana won one or even 2 of their next
4, but then turned around and lost, you know, some games
towards the end. Like there's it just at this
point, it feels like they've had a few opportunities to
demonstrate that they can rise back into like the top 50 at
Kenpom and, and really put themselves in a position where
they can capitalize on the stuff that they had done that was
worthwhile. And and yet I don't think that
that's really in the cards given how Indiana has played over the
course of these last couple of games.
Even if they get a close, they they essentially Indiana has to
be so far ahead that they can't squander the lead at the end.
And Indiana doesn't play well enough consistently to hold
opponents down to be able to have that kind of a lead at the
end of the game. And you know, I, I, I, you go
back to the Ohio State game like that was a great example of
that. Like Indiana was, was, was
playing really well in that game was up what, 70 to 61?
And that wasn't a big enough run.
That wasn't a big enough lead for them to hold with six
minutes to play. This pattern has, has, has
operated over and over again. And I don't really understand
the nuts and bolts of why it continues to not work.
And I don't even think the coaching staff really
understands it. But that's a real problem.
If if you don't under if you can't diagnose the issue, you
can't get to a solution. And it feels like Indiana's been
stuck in that for the last couple of years.
Well, and with this question for you, obviously I know they can
go 10 and O, So like it's everything's possible the way
that you're talking. I don't disagree, but do do you
feel like at this point that the chance of this team making the
tournament has slipped away? No.
I don't think it's slipped away just just by sheer numbers.
If people, some people are like, why are you doing a show talking
about Indiana's chances for the NCAA tournament, which is what I
did on Thursday night. And the reason I did that show
was to demonstrate that IU is actually not that far away from
the tournament. But.
But given the way they're playing, do you think it's like?
It's, well, I, I mean, I, I'll say this, the, the actual
percentage chances in aggregate, you know, this is the thing
about Kenpom and the projected records and Torvic is the same
thing. It's taking the percentage
averages and it's saying, well, you know, is Indiana likely to
win this individual game? No.
And then you string that together with the other games
and and that's the probability that builds the total record.
It's certainly not out of the question that Indiana could beat
UCLA at home 'cause they're only projected to lose that game by a
point. It's not out of the question
that they could beat Michigan at home because they're only
projected to lose that by three points.
But it's also not out of the question that Indiana would lose
at Washington 'cause they're only expected to win that by a
point. I, I guess I look at it and I
say, because there's a lot of these games that are relatively
close in terms of their their projected win loss.
There's always a chance Indiana could get lucky and string
together a bunch of games and that ends up being what gets
them into the tournament. And you know, you look at the
luck rating, which on Ken Palm is essentially how much better
is your record versus what it should be given your statistical
performance or how much worse is it given what your statistical
performance would be? Indiana's 81st in luck, which
means they've actually won games that they probably shouldn't
have. That Ohio State game being a
good example because the statistics demonstrated that
they probably shouldn't have won it.
So they've they've actually over performed based upon their
statistical performance so far this year.
Could that continue? Could they pick up a couple more
wins? Could they get to 9 and 11 in
conference? Sure, and that might be enough
to get them in the tournament. I don't think it would erase the
fact that there's not a very good team, but that we've seen
not good teams sneak into the tournament before because the
rest of the field was just that bad.
So I can't really answer your question because it relies on
too many variables that don't involve Indiana.
Got it. So anyway, I think that'll wrap
it up for us on this one. We'll be back at some point this
week, probably post Wisconsin. We'll have a something else for
you and we should have another football show at some point
coming up here soon. But Indiana playing Tuesday
against Wisconsin at the night game.
That's we'll see how that goes. And then of course, we'll be
here at the upstairs pub during the Michigan game and after the
Michigan game on the 8th of February.
That's going to be a lot of fun. For those of you who are not
aware, we're going to be the out there Evan Williams sponsoring
the event, The Breakfast Club going to be starting up that
morning. So head over there, no cover at
the upstairs pub and you get to hang out with us and the
Assembly Hall crew and a lot of other folks as they'll all be in
town for the game. And we're looking forward to
hanging with you all you folks as well.
So Scott, as always, a pleasure. Good chatting with you.
You too, and thanks to all you folks for tuning in and
listening. We'll be back with more Crimson
cast later on as Indiana tries to right the ship and get
themselves back into the NCAA Tournament for Scott.
I'm Galen. This is Crimson cast.
We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the
Bison. Stay.
Never Dawson. So everybody.