You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cask, Galen Clavio, Scott Caulfield joining you. It is the 18th of January 2024. Happened to be podcasting to you folks once again. You probably perhaps just listened to the podcast right before this. We had Ben Portnoy from Sports Business Journal on some interesting commentary on a bunch of things that was actually recorded before the Purdue game.
This is being recorded after the Purdue game through the miracle of technology. They're in your feed at the same time. So we'll have more how? How's that work? Well, time like happens and then time continues to happen. There's this whole like continuum thing that people talk about. It's great. Anyway, Scott, how are you doing? I'm doing great, but you drink some coffee, I'm doing fantastic.
That's great. Yes, I am happy to be talking to you folks and we are happy to be sponsored by Home Field Apparel, our presenting sponsor here on the back home network where you get a full cavalcade of podcast covering Indiana men's basketball, Indiana Women's basketball, IU football which is largely us at this point and a bunch of other things as well.
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of the community. If you would like to be a part of the community With us, Scott, we are contractually obligated to talk about the game that occurred earlier on this week, and we're going to do that. Indiana comes out and lays A gigantic egg at home against Purdue. They lose 87 to 66 in a game that felt like a game for a solid 4 minutes or so. Felt like Mackenzie Mbako might have his huge breakout game as an Indiana Hoosier, and he did
for about 5 minutes. Actually ended up being second leading scorer for Indiana in the game, but Indiana quickly demonstrated they were nowhere close to equal to the task in this one. Purdue looked awesome. Purdue was aggressive. Purdue was physical. Indiana struggled a bit due to the same kind of paradigm that we talked about a lot in in football as well as in basketball, which is that officiating tends to reward the aggressor and it tends to reward the more talented team.
And that's what happened in this one. Purdue kind of got to do whatever they wanted to do and Indiana didn't seem to have a clue what they wanted to do after about the 1st 5 minutes and they end up losing to Purdue. Which in and of itself isn't that much of a surprise. But what was a surprise to me, Scott, was how lifeless and indifferent Indiana looked through most of the last 35 minutes of game time. You got a chance to watch the game as well. What were your thoughts? All the above.
So thanks for listening to Crimson Cast bring back the bison As long. No, that joke's gonna come in handy the rest of this year. Maybe many more times. No, I I agree with with a lot of that maybe. So I'll kind of break up a couple of those thoughts like to to the Fowling and Mackenzie and Baco. So Mackenzie and Baco comes out hot. I think scoring 7, the first seven or eight of Indiana's points gets too early fouls and then you know assembly call talk
about this a bit. But it it also drives me nuts. You kind of like you end up fouling out your own player when you take them out for for having fouls. And you know, it's it was annoying because on the other side Edie got one foul, which is nice to see, but then you saw the rest of the first half, he just didn't foul. Like, I mean he he's playing physical, but like guys would drive into him like Sparks was trying to drive into him and he would just pull back, pull his arms back.
And like you can play basketball without fouling, you give up points, but it can be done. You know this, this is where at times you can't just have this rule like 2 fouls you're sitting because like you basically just fouled him baco out of the game yourself. Just say hey Mackenzie, stop. Just do not foul, give up points, just don't foul.
So that's annoying. The, the fouling piece, you know, it makes this Indiana team hard, hard to watch at times because I I do think they, they really fell into something in that game that drives me annoyed. It makes me annoyed when teams are kind of like fake aggressive. So like you know that they were, you know, hooking Edie with their arm, pulling, pulling them down. But then would kind of stop and like, they'd flop at the end and be like, you know, why didn't I
get the call? And like, they, they kind of got wrapped up in the bitching and complaining about refs. Like, I'm, I'm not a fan of the Big 10 refs at times. I also think that teams can sometimes take a little bit too much of that mentality of the fan base. Like, hey, we're getting screwed. We're not getting the calls. And like, they start looking for calls and then Indiana starts like, you know, causing they start, you know, starting to be physical and then looking back.
And then why didn't he get the call when he get a call there? And then looking at bitching. And like sometimes I was telling another friend this, like sometimes you know, when the fouls are 9 to 1, you look these refs like you're not calling it fair. It's like, no, they're actually, we're calling it fair. Like we were fouling Purdue a lot and then we're looking at the refs to call a foul on on Purdue and like it just it's annoying.
It goes to the, you know, we can talk about Xavier and the the shiver. It's just all of those kinds of things where it's like this kind of fake toughness and then like you said that the lifelessness part of it, you know if you take the 1st 5 minutes at the end of that five minute segment, Purdue is up 9:00 to 7:00 and then you take the, you know there was a let me pull up the exact number here. There was a 13 to two run that Indiana had to start the
second-half. So about four minutes there. You take that 9 minutes out of the game, Purdue wins 76 to 46. It's just a complete 30 point drubbing the rest of the time. And I think that's, you know, there's no, no shame in losing to a good Purdue team. You kind of had this coming. Consider we've, you know, owned them over the last 2 1/2 years or so, like they were looking to take their revenge. But it was just tough seeing, you know, Edie diving for balls.
Like it's just there's so many memories of this game where it's like, I I don't like seeing us complaining for calls, us taking bad shots, us not hustling, watching Purdue do it. You know, it's it's not awesome. And so, yeah, I mean, it's all the things you mentioned, but it's not a great way to end the game. And it does make you realize how far we really are away from being at the level we want to be. At yeah.
I mean I agree with all of that it's I don't know there's there's like a there's a there's an in game strategic aspect to this and then there's just the the vibe of the whole thing to borrow something that we sometimes use in football you know the so the this was the worst loss points wise Indiana suffered to Purdue in a decade and it's not coincidental to me that the the last team that lost by this many points to Purdue with 22 points 21 points in this game 22 points was the last
worst defeat happened in the 2014 season which was another team another vintage of Indiana basketball that had a lot of the flaws and a lot of the disappointing aspects that the one that we're watching this year has it. Like a clearly a roster that wasn't constructed well doesn't fit well together. A a dominant post presence offensively. A lot of immaturity or ineffectiveness at the guard positions and just a an atmosphere around the team that feels like it can go off a Cliff
at any moment. And as we've talked about throughout most of this season, you look at what Indiana has done in the games that they played in the Big 10 so far. They've they've they've lost 111, lost 111, now, lost one in the wins. They've looked fine, but they haven't really looked. They haven't cruised in any of those games. And even in a game like the Minnesota game, where they got up by a decent amount, it always felt like they were one or two bad possessions away from that
being a close game. The Ohio State game very much was like that. And it looked like they had it and then it ended up being a close game at the end. And in the losses they've they've had a key moment where the game has just gotten completely away from them and they've seemed to neither have the attention nor the the the verve, I guess, for lack of a better term, to try to reel it back in and make it competitive. I think you know what? What irritates me the most about this Purdue game?
Yeah, Purdue's a really good team. Edie's very hard to stop. But Edie was really good last year and that Purdue team was hard to stop. And yes, Indiana had some better personnel, but this is the same Purdue team that got blown out at Nebraska not too long ago. It's the same team that Northwestern was also not great from a talent perspective, you know, was able to take to overtime and beat. And I'm not expecting necessarily Indiana to win. I would like to see them win.
And and you know, even with a depleted roster, I don't think that winning against your rival on your home floor is, is out of the question. But Indiana just kind of got to a point where it looked like they had no answers for Purdue. And that was almost entirely from my perspective in Purdue just looked like a they knew what they were doing and were calm on every possession, and they were making passes, and they were just picking Indiana apart.
And Indiana looked completely overwhelmed by the moment. And that's to me the most frustrating thing. Like, you know, you hoped. And we saw this in the Auburn game too, and I think eventually we kind of saw it in EU Conn game. It took a little bit longer there, but this team is so easy to overwhelm by teams that are calm and know what they're doing. And it hurts even worse in a game against your rival where you know, these games are not generally decided by who's the
most together of the teams. Because there's, you know, even in that entire losing streak that Indiana had, the one that stretched from cream to Miller, none of those games were really blowouts. You know, there were a couple of games that were in, like the 12 to 15 point range, but a lot of those games were close, even if Indiana didn't win. And it's like you could be frustrated about the fact that you can win, but it's like that 4846 game from like the 2019
season. It's like, well, that sucked. But they were in the game and and Purdue was clearly the better team. Indiana still figured out a way to keep it close here. Not only could they not figure a way out, they didn't look terribly interested in keeping it close. And I don't like to me, that's where fans start to just kind of turn it off mentally and that's that. I've talked to so many fans over the course of the last 48 hours, not 48 hours, 36 hours.
Who said some kind of a version of well now I can watch this team without having any real expectations the rest of the way and that's kind of how I feel at this point Scott and I think it's how you feel it's it you know it's you're you've got a fan base that's fully moving into the I'm not mad I'm disappointed phase of the season and that's a really bad place to be on the 17th of January. It it that's a that's that's not a good sign for the rest of the season and the overall
atmosphere surrounding the program. Well and one thing that you know was mentioned on assembly call after the game, but as mentioned anybody could have seen is like you know our guard play was just not up to the task in that game and Purdue was was you know it's we were just taking a bunch of shots we shouldn't have. But it got me thinking two
things. First off it's like it's frustrating because like we we treat this as if like there's some alchemy of like Oh my God, how do you get guard play like Purdue does. And it's like, well, you know, look at it, Fletcher Lawyer was a four-star recruit out of Fort Wayne. You know, Braden Smith is a three star recruit out of Westfield who I know I'm here know for a fact would have liked to have been at least recruited
by Indiana, but he wasn't. Some of these are sins of the Archie Miller. So it's not all Woodson's fault. Lance Jones, who had a great game, is an, you know, three star recruit out of Evanston, IL. Who who was in the portal? Almost, yeah. For me it's not. And and by the way, you know, so Trey Galloway was a four-star recruit out of Culver, you know, so we're getting some of these. It's frustrating because a again, you don't need to get all Indiana kids, but it it's always
galling when this happens. It kind of happened when you had that, you know, Purdue run with, you know, hummy and each one, each one more when like who? Robbie Hummel. Sorry. Hummel One more like, you know when when Indiana just kind of ceded the state to other people and then Purdue's like, OK, we'll just take everybody and we'll get a team that beats you. It's frustrating, but then it's like you know. Well, to be fair.
To be fair, Calvin Sampson got himself fired in part trying to recruit Robbie Hummel. But anyway, keep going. But you know Purdue gets these guys and then they develop them. We sit here and it's like, well, I've you know, we got to get more guys. We got to get more guys in the portal. We need more five star recruits like or we could just get the guys we have and make them a
little bit better. It to me that's also very frustrating that you know, it's not like Purdue has five Jalen Hood Shafinos in their backcourt and it's like oh man, how do you compete with that? These are all guys theoretically Indiana could have been competing for. But the the larger thing that kind of got me thinking is, you know, during that game you see Purdue, you know, packing the paint and just daring us to take threes, which we do when we
don't. We step in and take a really dumb long 2, which is also another topic that's super annoying. But you know, we're we're for a team that plays to the post and our two best players are post guys. We just got out of our game really quickly, which got me thinking, you know, what is our
identity? Because in this game it's like you need to, you know, you see it slipping away and then we just continue to shoot a bunch of long twos and threes, like that's not what we do. And then I started, this is where I got kind of you know sad and existential as I started thinking well you know what is this team's identity been for a couple of years and it's like you know what Scott, this is, this like this is not only this teams identity, this programs
identity of really not having an identity and like just when big games happen for the most part we don't really have something we lean on. And year over year it's like this is kind of what we've been for 20 plus years as we don't really have that. Whereas you look at Purdue, they have a identity year in, year out over a long period of time and that was that was sad, man, that was a depressing like 10 minute just identity thought in my head going on.
I'll push back a little on something you said, which is the recruiting piece. Because, you know, I'd like to note that in the middle of that stretch where Purdue beat Indiana, whatever, nine times in a row, Indiana had guards from the state of Indiana that were pretty highly regarded that they recruited onto the roster. They had Rob Fennessy. They had Armand Franklin. They Demisi Anderson was a swing man but he was from the state of Indiana as well.
It's but I think the the bigger point is that Purdue has a system that they have figured out under Painter. And really since Purdue missed the tournament in 2013, Painter has to his credit figured out a way to make a an Uber competitive team pretty much year in and year out in the
regular season. You know they've you you go back to those two years in a row, back-to-back, they missed the tournament Purdue in 2013 and 2014 and those teams statistically actually were very similar to what you're seeing out of Indiana this year. They they were teams that were in the the upper 90s to a hundreds in offensive efficiency. They were around the same in defensive efficiency. They were clearly teams that could win a game here or there but weren't going to be able to
compete at a high level. Then you look at what happened afterwards, you know, Purdue went nine seed, five seed, four seed, two seed, three seed, COVID, 4 seed, three seed, one seed. Like that's that's been their last decade. And a lot of that is continuity. A lot of that is we're going to pluck these players, we're going to put them in a particular system and that system is going to work really well. And Painter deserves a lot of credit for that. Purdue deserves a lot of credit
that for that. In that same time period, Indiana's had three different head coaches and so you've had three different types of systems. And I think you've also with Indiana, you've got a you've had bad luck to some degree with the recruiting, but you've also had poor development of players. Simultaneously, you've had players not take leaps that other players have taken. What is the cause of all of that?
You know, it's it's not like Purdue didn't want to grab some of the recruits that I just mentioned when I talked above, you know, So you could say, well, Indiana got unlucky because they chose Indiana in some cases, or they just got unlucky because they got here and there was something wrong with the way Indiana was developing them. These are all kind of interesting things and I think it's probably a different answer for each.
But the the The upshot or the downshot, perhaps you would say in regards to this rivalry is there's few things more frustrating for Indiana fans than watching a well oiled machine take Indiana down. When a lot of Indiana fans, that's their brains are trained to think that that's what Indiana's supposed to be doing because that was the calling card of the program. But it hasn't been for 1/4 century. And that's the thing that people
seem to not grasp. It's it's you know you can be upset about Purdue doing XY and Z and Indiana not you could and and I think that those are all reasonable things and and look I think you run into danger by taking too much out of this game. When you look at what Indiana has been able to do the last couple of seasons with Purdue and and beat what we're probably superior teams on balance than what Indiana had. You can't just throw that out.
But in a season like this where everything's kind of gone wrong for Indiana, whether it's player development, whether it's recruiting, whether it's a bunch of other things and everything's going right for Purdue, it stings even more. I'm just not sure at this point, other than trying to get some stability in place and trying to like, finally just chart a course and say this is what it's going to have to be, I don't.
I think you're going to constantly have this issue when you're facing up against Purdue because Purdue's not going anywhere anytime soon. With the way that they're approaching the game and they can just plug new pieces in every year, Indiana's a long way from being on that runway. That's that's the thing I, you know, the problem is there's no quick fix. There's not going to be a way for Indiana to fix this overnight. And I do worry a little bit about the trajectory.
But I also look at it and I say, you know, Indiana looked as as bad as they look this year. They're not going to make the NCAA tournament. I feel pretty sure about that at this point, and if I'm wrong, I will apologize later. But the last time Indiana looked this bad was probably 2014. Like even those Archie Miller teams I think looked better than this team does. And two years after that 2014 team, Indiana won the Big 10 title.
You know, Purdue, as we just mentioned, missed the tournament two years in a row a decade ago and within three years they were in the Sweet 16. I mean it's it's not unrecoverable. But I think when you hit this point as an Indiana squad, you have to re evaluate what you're doing and that's going to be the real question mark.
Because I got to be honest Scott, the words that are spoken in the press conferences and the actions that we're seeing on the court and the strategies and like the foul stuff, you talked about a ton of other things that have been complained about. I'm just not seeing a lot of adaptation to the moment by this coaching staff about how they're approaching their jobs and how they're approaching this team's mentality.
And that does concern me because I don't think you can be so rigid in a season where even getting to like a halfway decent postseason tournament and playing well and playing consistently seem to be such tenuous things. So I'm, I'm just going to go back real quick to something you said because I think it's a a piece that IU fans are getting stuck in is that you know, you mentioned that you know like our players are not having those like massive developments that
we're expecting. And that's I think what the, the the fallacy or the issue that we've kind of fallen into is, you know we got used to that like Oladipo type growth chart where like some guy would just come back and like Oh my gosh, like this is unbelievable. And and those are really, you know, the outliers when you look at Purdue. Like Fletcher Lawyer is better this year than he was last year but it's not like you're like, Oh my God, like he's like you
know top ten pick. He's just incrementally better. And you know, like Lance Jones, you look at his stats year over year, it's not like there's one year like, my God, he popped. It's just he got incrementally better. And that's also part of a larger machine thing. But it's like that's where, you know, we're waiting for OG and Anobe to have that one year, you know, Trace Jackson, Davis last year to kind of go up a huge level.
And those just don't happen. Those are a little more anomalies and all the point to what you said. It's frustrating and this is where I am worried about the course because you know just looking at it a little bit, big picture again not calling for anything but just you know you like you said we've had three coaches in six years and like this is that's not going to give you that continuity.
That's something that a Purdue of Michigan State those teams have that we just don't and you we had to do what we had to do for those reasons. But you know what did you get like a stock option come due or what was going on there? I'm sorry, just a phone call coming in. But do you have a do you have a pager? Scott, what the Hell's going on? Scott brought to you by Nextel and Motorola. Wow. I got. I got a cool. Yeah, it's a double edged. Sprint has a great pager feature
on my phone. It's awesome. It's really cool. But, but you know the the thing with the Woodson Higher was always like this is going to be for the most part plug and play and like we can get going relatively quick if we're not going to make the. What I'm concerned about is there is a hard ending at some point coming, you know whether he stays as long as he wants like if we don't have 12 more years of Woodson just based on
age. So it's like we're going to be redoing this again in a couple of years and that's where I get frustrated. Like we we do need some longer term continuity to build this up and kind of like have that
vision, have that focus. This is kind of my fear is that A, I'm not sure we're going there now, but B, if it does, if the ship does get righted, it kind of feels like by the time we get it righted, we're going to be back to kind of all right, we got to make a change again, just just based on age. Well, I don't know. I'm, I'm still, I'll say this, I think that this is a lull. This is a clear lull.
This is you know on track to be the worst by numbers team that Indiana's had since 2010 And you know, which is crazy to think about, like even the 2011 team right now is tracking better statistically than this 2024 team. And and that's that is a that is a point where you really just had to have to stand back and say what the heck's going on. What it's what's scary is it could get worse.
Well, it could, although I think what you've seen out of Indiana, like I don't think there's going to be any huge fluctuations in terms of where they're at. They're going to be around 100 in Ken Palm for the most of the rest of the way, I would say. But, you know, look. Ken Palm, if you look at the like the rest of the season, we we win at home against Penn State. I know there's no other projected wins. Well, there's yeah, but I mean
they are projected to win. You know what the 8 by 8 games overall but but the I mean I think the larger issue at this point is OK, this season is is rapidly heading towards lost and unrecoverable. So then what do you do? Well now you have to look at recruiting and you have to look at who Indiana can bring in because clearly there's going to have to be some roster change and some approach changes if you're going to get the natural bounce back.
And look I I think that there's there's you can look at what choices were made in terms of the roster construction this year. Some of that was bad decision making. Some of it was probably sound decision making that turned out poorly. You know it's easy to to be overly critical at this point and say well everything was awful and and how could they do XY or Z. And I don't think that that's fair. That doesn't mean that you're removing criticism or absolving blame from the folks in charge.
But I do think you can look at it and say, well they had a thought, they had a plan, The plan ended up not being a good plan. It didn't work out. Now what do you do, You know what what's, what are the changes that you make. And and I think ultimately where a lot of people are concerned is that they take what we've seen of the roster construction for this year and they're like well that's how it's going to be moving forward and that's just not going to work. And I think that that is a
reasonable concern. I don't think it's a it's not a reasonable enough concern to make like argue for pre emptive action or anything like that. What I am saying though is all lies now end up being on all right, this roster didn't work. The coaching staff was responsible for piercing it together. What are you going to do
differently next year? And from my perspective I think the the bigger issue for me and I keep coming back to this is I am less worried right now about the overall record at the end of the year than I am about the clear deficit in effort and intensity that I see from Indiana versus good teams.
You know that is. And that to me is I don't care what players you go bring in next year, whether that is recruits like Liam Mcneely, whether that's we're going to go get a couple of guards in the portal. What's starting to really concern me is that it feels like and I I felt the same way in the Archie Miller era and it and it felt like it had turned around and now maybe it hasn't. But it feels like Indiana is playing about a notch below its opposition in terms of intensity.
And you see it in the rebounding numbers. You see it in, you know, not turning the opponents over, you see it and letting opponents doing rebounding, you know, Jared wrote a really nice piece in Assembly call on the newsletter. If you haven't subscribed to their sub stack, you need to you know where. You know it's clear Indiana's trying to do certain things, but they're just not doing them intelligently.
You know this is one of the most profligate teams in terms of shooting from long twos, which is like the worst thing you can do analytically right now, and it just doesn't seem to register with this squad that you can't do that. That's both not smart statistically and also they're just not hitting the shots. It's a team that's built around getting to the free throw line, yet it's a terrible free throw
shooting team. It's a team that's really built around trying to make life difficult on the opposition defensively, yet they're not actually putting the effort in throughout the course of the entire defensive possessions. It's a team that should be built. Things like. It's a team that should be built around, hey, we have two guys that are close to 7 feet tall, Why don't we rebound the basketball and live on the glass? And yet they do awfully on that
on both ends. That's that to me is less about scheme and more about how are these guys being told to play, What is the energy, what is the vibe? And whether you want to say that's on Woodson or whether you want to say that's on the leadership, on the floor, like on the roster. Either way it's not where it needs to be and you and that's the thing that stands out when you play a team like Purdue or you play a team like Auburn.
Those teams play hard every possession and Indiana can't measure up. If that can't get changed, then I don't think it matters who you add to the roster moving forward, and there were already some signs of that at times in the last couple of years. I assumed that would be the least of your concerns under Woodson. It actually seems to be maybe the biggest concern thus far.
Those statistics you were talking about, like one of them is like we shoot 98% more than any other team in college basketball along too, which is just a bad shot, shouldn't be doing. But the galling part is when you hear the post game press conference, like Woodson saying we don't want to be doing that. We want to be doing more of this like well you're you're saying that but it's not being done.
So like again, like there's a massive disconnect with what you want to do and what your team is doing and that has to be figured out. No, I I agree with you on the effort. It is. It's concerning because it's like why you know and you don't get like you say a lot of times you'll get bonus points for playing hard at home, but you should be doing that. We should be doing that all the time. It shouldn't be in these little spurts.
The other thing that it's not like so much pushing back that I'll just come to is, you know, we started this pod. We talked about how, you know, we don't have that well oiled machine. We need that continuity, need that growth and I I agree with that. But it's like we're turning also under this mindset of like, oh, we got to get a bunch of more guards in the portal. We need to get more guys in the portal. It's like, well, that's not going to be continuity.
Like that's bringing it. Like that's hoping you're getting really good guys in the portal who are just plug and play ready, which would be nice. Like it's funny, I hear that a lot this year where it's like, man, Woodson should should have gotten one more guard in the portal. It's like, well, we did get 25 stars in the portal. Like last year's portal haul was really pretty good.
You can't go into every year saying, well, all we need is a center, a forward and a guard who are all five star and just get those out of the portal like it's not a Kroger where you can just go and get stuff off the shelves like other people are competing for this. You're not always going to get the best. And this is where I go back to like, you look at this roster and people are concerned with a
guard play. I'm concerned that it's like we need to start developing some of our own players and you know like like him, you know for for all his issues at times like Gabe Cups, we've got to turn him into a better player. Or if not like CJ Gunn or like we we can't. I don't like the idea of like we're just going to become a portal team because one of the issues this team has, like we mentioned is just lack of continuity, lack of identity.
And I think becoming just always looking to the portal solve the problems is not going to solve that problem. Like there has to be some growth. I'm just talking just fans seem just kind of give up on everybody real quick. It's like like, no, we we've got to get guys and turn them into functional players and you have to be recruiting and you know growth needs to be like 60 to 70% of your roster. CJ Gunn was a four-star recruit, Trey Galloway was a four-star recruit.
Gabe, Cubs was a four-star recruit. Like there there's the I, I, you're everything you said is correct. I just think it's interesting like the idea that you need better players either through the portal or recruiting development. No, but no. I'm saying people are arguing, oh, Indiana needs better players and it's like you're getting waxed by three stars, by a bunch of different programs who are
just playing harder than you. And that that cultural piece is really starting to concern me. And I'm. I know it concerns a lot of the people in the audience and. You bring good players into a culture like that and they're going to start playing lackadaisical. You're going to turn five stars in the three stars.
And and again it it's it's as much the tone that's set by the coaches as it is the tone that's set by the players and and and I think I look at last year like last year's team showed some grit. We didn't think that they were going to have given what we'd seen out of them the previous three years when they went on that streak where they won, you know five of nine or excuse me, eight of nine.
It was because it really felt like a corner had been turned in terms of how that team played and the aggressiveness with which they they did the things that they did. And that was not just Trace Jackson Davis. It was also Miller Cop. It was also Jalen Hoochaffino who really grew into that role. It was, I mean there were, there were a bunch of players on that team that kind of carried that attitude and that just doesn't seem to exist on this year's team. And you'll get seasons like
that. But that's where to me, it's like the there's always has to be a personality transplant plant with this Indiana team because right now they look like a team that that just isn't aggressive enough, isn't confident in what they're doing, gets easily kind of put off by things when when they don't go their way.
And that's a just a recipe for disaster in a big 10 where everybody can win a a game here or there, you know, And we've seen Maryland who look like they couldn't get out of bed in the morning a month ago. They just wanted Illinois and they almost won it. Northwestern, like they look like a functional team. You know Michigan has moments, even as bad as they've looked where they look like a functional team and so does Indiana. But you don't you can't be in the Michigan and Maryland
category this year. You you know Indiana even taking a step back in terms of well there was going to be a rebuild and a restructure on the roster. This is still a roster with a lot of talented players that is playing significantly below where they should be. And again, and I just, I'll close on this, it feels yes the systems could be better, but a lot of it's effort, a lot of it is attitude and that is really
something. It feels like it's dominated a lot of Indiana basketball over really the last 20 some years, maybe even going back 30 years where it just doesn't feel you. You when you look at the Purdue's the Michigan State's, the envy often times comes from how much effort those teams give consistently time after time. And and yes, there's exceptions. Michigan State doesn't look like that good this year. But on the whole, Indiana hasn't looked that way for a long time,
and that is really frustrating. Why? I mean, let me ask you this. Why? Why do you, why do you think that is? Because it's been over multiple coaches and like you get guys like I I continually always like, I don't want to do an Archie debate here, but it's like this was not a problem at Dayton. Like at Dayton, it was never, there's never an effort problem. You add more, he comes here,
it's more resources. Then suddenly the team looks like, I mean, just looks like it has an effort problem and it's kind of like it's been unshakable. Since you have a new coach in Woodson, you still have the same issues. Like what? Why do you think this is? Seems to be lingering with us. Man, I think if I had that answer I or if anybody had that answer, it'd have been solved by now. I mean I think it's a combination of things. You know, I mean I really and I think it's, you know, the VIP
answer, The VIP answer, right. Yeah. VIP's bad news. We don't know anything. Sorry. No, the no, I I think it it actually to me varies a bit from from era to era. I think with Cream the problem was the lack of focus on defense and and Crane's inability like Crane seeding the state of Indiana and recruiting at the time when there was a lot of talent that if you haven't listened to Exes and Joes, the podcast by Bob Motes and Mike Weemeth, you absolutely need to do so. There.
This recent episode that they had, they brought up something I'd forgotten, which was like that last year, coming off of that Big 10 title, Crane offered like 19 of the top 50 players in the country and got none of them. And you know, there was, there was so much talent in the state, got none of them. I think with Archie, it's it always felt like Archie never found an actual leader who could enforce what he wanted on the floor.
And it felt like to some degree that was partially Archie's fault for not recruiting the right types of personalities to run his system. But it was also to some degree a developmental issue because nobody really grew into that role with Woodson. Who knows, I mean, at some point it when it works with Woodson and we saw this last year, it's because the team is kind of unflappable.
Like they could they would take runs and they wouldn't be bothered by. But they had a lot of experience and I don't think that that works on this year's team. That mentality of well we're on to the next game kind of thing doesn't really work as well. I used to not believe this, but I've slowly been turned around on this. It doesn't work as well in college as it does in the NBA.
And again, though, I think Woodson has not done a good job thus far of finding and instilling a a leader on the floor to operate on his behalf. And I think Xavier Johnson was supposed to be that guy and it just hasn't worked out. Trey Galloway doesn't seem to really be that guy. You know, Malik Renew is a very talented player, but he's not that kind of leader. Gabe Cups is way too young and isn't having as much of an impact on the floor to be able to do that. Who else on the roster?
I mean the rest. Are like great as a player, but doesn't seem like he's the. Leader of the team you know so you know there there does not and and again I think that you're you're in a situation where if the idea was Jalen Hutchefino wasn't going to be a one and done this is probably much less of a concern because I could see Jalen Hutchefino on this team just being like this is my roster we are going to do things this way. I'm going to hold people
accountable. You know it's one of the if you've been following what's been going on in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors and Draymond Green. You know there was Doc Rivers had some interesting comments where he said you know the problem you can't change Draymond because not only does Draymond have to act the way that he acts to be who he is but he's the guy that made the Golden State Warriors actually work. He was the one that held people accountable and.
You know that you can look at some coaches have that ability, like Knight to some degree had that ability, but he also had players on almost all of his good teams who were doing that on behalf of him on the floor. And you absolutely as a coach have to have those people. You have to be able to recruit those people or bring them in through the portal. And I think that's what Purdue does so well. It's like they clearly have a central command structure on the
floor. They and and yes, painters, they're giving instructions and doing all the tactical stuff, but the culture there and the players that are operating within it understand that they have responsibilities and that they have to answer for what they do. I don't know that that's really the case. It doesn't feel that way with this year's Indiana team down the stretch last year. And This is why I think I was so excited about what Indiana could do this year.
It felt like Indiana had figured that out and it was like for the first time in a while, that Indiana team felt like a team that was holding each other accountable on behalf of the coaching staff. And then it just went away. And I think that tells us as much about what the senior leadership on that team was doing as anything. And I think you can hold the coaching staff culpable for not having the right people on the floor to take that mantle.
It also might have just been very difficult to do that with this year's team given who left and when and what was actually left on the roster. And again, it kind of goes back to what you said. You can say, well let's go get more talented players. A lot of people have been like go get a guard in the portal and yes, in hindsight they should have gotten at least one more guard in the portal.
You don't know if that person is going to come in and be able to be the the change agent in terms of culture. I don't know if you can just plug somebody in from outside. That's really the larger point, and have it work here in the same way that it would work elsewhere. So the idea that you just go out into the portal, grab somebody, and that changes the fortunes of this team, I am rapidly of the opinion that that's just not how it would have worked.
This team almost looked like it was cursed from the outset to some degree because of the mix of personalities. There just doesn't seem to be a way to get this group to play with the intensity that they need to. That's probably not changing down the stretch, even though I'm sure they're doing some things schematically. We've seen some better things defensively out of them in terms of numbers, but when it matters, it's not really coming.
Through the the last thing I'll say just haven't fully thought this all out but it's like you know the to to Indiana fans. You know I I, I push back a little bit on the idea of you know well we weren't expecting Jalen Hutchafino to be as good. Like that was a two year pro like 2 year process like it.
You know this is guys getting better and things changing is that's high level college basketball like not the best comp but you know like you know he was a high level recruit but when Grady Dick went to Kansas I'm not sure they were expecting him to be a one and done he was you know it's not just like all right well what are you going to do. We can't make the tournament for the next two years like bad
luck. Like this is something where you know we can't just be fait accompli as Indiana fans like. Well one one player decided to go pro in the late lottery and now it's like 2 seasons are scuttled like this. We have to this is we have to be able to overcome these things as a program because other teams do this like and they continue to compete at high levels year in, year out. Again Kansas has it together. They are a well oiled machine.
I'm not making the comp. I'm just saying it does bug me when it's like we have one or two things happened that basically happened to every team every year. And we we look at it as like, Oh my God, like, will this, what are you going to do? Like can't make the you can't make the NIT this year. Well, OK, I'm going to agree and disagree with you. I'll agree in as much as the following. This Indiana team is very
fragile. Like the the success of the program is very fragile in terms of what, you know one player leaves unexpectedly and it's like well there goes the House of Cards but that's also every program and I think this is important to keep in mind like you know Auburn who looks awesome now, missed the tournament in 2021 entirely. You know we we've seen North Carolina went from being the number one team in the country to missing the tournament in, in
one year. You know you you know Alabama's been OK this year but they've already got 5 losses and they'll they are not the same team they were last year. Arkansas, who was the. I mean everybody wanted to hire Eric Musselman like that's that's a bad Arkansas team this year. That's a team that cannot get out of their own way. You know. So that's when I look at all of this.
I say to myself, yes, Indiana needs to be less fragile, but even the programs that are really, really good will hit these these, these spells where things kind of disintegrate a bit. Villanova's kind of gone through that with the retirement from Jay Wright. I mean, it's to me, I don't know, unless you're in a very special situation and unfortunately Purdue is in that situation right now. You know, UConn kind of feels like they're in that situation a bit.
You're, you know, Tennessee's been this way since about 2018. Unless you're in one of those rare situations where you've just got the machine humming, I don't know if you can avoid seasons like this. It's just that the the leash is so much shorter at IU because it's been like this for 25 years. And what what I was going to say is like the teams you, I agree with you 100%, so I'm not
pushing back. But like the teams you picked out like this is, this is unfortunately the problem Indiana has is the weight of past expectations just piling up. But like you mentioned, Auburn like well they have a Final four in the last couple of years. You know, North Carolina has a Final four and a title in the last 15 years. Villanova has titles and final
fours. Like this is the trouble with you know, it's like the the trouble with where Indiana's been in 20 years is our highs just aren't high enough to kind of make up for those lows. Like the great seasons we've had. We're not even getting to the Elite 8. Like it's just it is like you can we can sit here and round the edges like oh it's a good year, 4C in the tournament. Those things are true.
It's like we're not getting the high highs which if you're Auburn, it's like I I I hear everything you're saying. But that that helps ease some of those bad seasons and that's where it's, you know, it's it's the expectations of of years past, but it's like at some point our highs have got to be higher to make up for some of these lows that seem to be as low as the other teams lows. Now, I I agree that's ultimately the issue is you're going to have seasons like this and they
suck. And you should point some fingers and say why was this allowed to happen at a place where you're supposed to have a higher standard, although there hasn't been that standard for 30 years. Basically, you know, not consistently. But again what's frustrating is the way that this has happened. Some people saw it coming and we're like, this is going to be a problem. Others and I'll throw myself in
this mess. I was wrong thought well maybe the culture has been built finally where they'll overcome it. You got to play the games. The games obviously have demonstrated that that's not the
case. And and again if you don't have adaptation game by game to try to maximize what you can do well, which it doesn't feel like Indiana does, and then you don't have players that can go out and execute with the effort levels required and they look like they're getting out efforted by teams like Purdue, that's going to lead to a lot of understandable and justifiable angst and that's where we're at right now. So anyway, it's A and it doesn't
get any easier. As you all I think are aware, Indiana's got to travel to the happy action, fun time spot of Madison, WI this Friday to take on a Wisconsin team that looks pretty damn good, another team that just seems to plug people into the system and play consistently well, they got to travel to Illinois. They've got an Iowa team that has looked better than they have statistically, it's never beaten Iowa. I mean it's And then you get perhaps a slight reprieve against Penn State before
traveling to Ohio State and Purdue. This this is one of those. But I'm sure Matt like they're they're going to be fine. They're not going to be that excited for that game. Like they they already got their win. Like, that'll just be kind of an average game. For them, there's a there's that Calvin and Hobbs sequence where he duplicates himself a bunch of times, and the duplicates all start running around and causing
trouble. And at 1:00, there's one frame where Hobbs looks at Calvin and says I think we should check into a hotel until this all blows over, which is kind of how I feel about the next couple of weeks of of IU basketball. Well, you might just want to check into a hotel until this is all over with. I I for one probably need to move seating sections after my performance in the Purdue game. So if anybody would like me in their seating section, let me
know my like. The the the Galen Auburn meme for the entire game. Well, no, not for the actually. I kind of ran out of energy and and and and ran into apathy. More. Effort we I did my best, but it was probably too much anyway, so my apologies for the people
around me for that one. But man, just frustrating, frustrating, frustrating and kind of resigned to it now, I guess, Scott, this was to me the game where it's like if Indiana was going to change the trajectory of the season, this was the game that was going to happen. We were going to see what they were made of and we did. And so that's where we are now. So anyway, on that happy note, just a reminder that we got plenty of other great podcasts
on the network. You should check out the Doing the Work podcast just had, I think their 100th episode. They did the post game after Indiana smashed Minnesota in women's basketball last night, so go back and check on that if you haven't yet. The Crimson cast Women's Basketball Show will be back talking about that tough loss that Iowa, but also the big win against Minnesota. You. If you haven't watched Film Room with Tony Adrania, check that out.
X's and Joe's nice long episode talking about coaching and chip stacks and all kinds of fun things. And of course assembly call. Be sure to check them out as well. Scott, any final thoughts where we go? No, man, no. Let's look forward to that hotel. We'll we'll catch you all in February. Can't wait? As they say, yeah, I've. I've got a nice spot picked out at the Radisson that No, I'm kidding. Anyway, we will catch you folks
later. Thank you for taking the time and effort to listen and bring us into your your ears. Be sure to stay tuned as we'll have some fun stuff coming up around not just basketball, but also some football talk as well. For Scott, I'm Galen. This is Crimson Cast. We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the Bison. That's all everybody.