You're listening to the Back Home network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cask Ale and Clavier joining you. It is mid-july, mid January. It's not mid. July. You've walked outside. You know it's not mid-july, but no, it's 23rd of January. Big day, a podcast here on Crimson Cast. We've got a podcast coming up
today right now. This one you're listening to Zach Osterman of The Indie Star, where we talk about the general My ways of IU basketball and what exactly we should be thinking about it and the historical perspectives and so on and so forth. We'll also have Jared Morris coming up on a future episode to talk about much of the same topics. It's by week for IU Basketball, so we might as well delve into the big stuff, right? This is the good time to do it. So we'll have all of that coming
up here soon. But first, just a reminder, we're on sub stack. If you haven't subscribed, crimsoncast.substack.com free For those of you who want to subscribe, get all of the podcast that we produce about Indiana Basketball, Indiana Football, Indiana Women's Basketball. We send them all out.
We're going to have a big digest coming up this week, which will have not just the two shows that I referenced, but it'll also have The Crimson Cast Women's Basketball Show with Amanda Foster and Kevin Vera. That'll be coming up relatively soon. You'll get that for free in your e-mail. It'll have links to iTunes or I think whatever it is. Apple Podcast these days. Spotify. There's also AVIP option.
We like to record extra material for the folks that want to chip in a little bit financially for the podcast. So we sometimes will do things about IU, we'll sometimes do things about the Pacers, we'll sometimes do things about restaurants, a little bit of everything. It's added value, but you're no no obligation. We just want you to subscribe to the free community so we can get you our podcast without you having to go to social media to
find them. So again, crimsoncast.substack.com be sure to check those out. Also, I would like to remind everybody that we are part of the Back Home network and the Back Home network is brought to you by Home Field apparel. Your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest designs, all kinds of good stuff coming down the Pike right now from Home Field apparel. And they'll be new stuff coming
out for IU very soon. They just dropped the first ever King Spud T-shirt which commemorates the short lived trophy between Idaho and Idaho State which you know, if you're in just a casual college sports fan, I'm you might hear me speak those words and you'd say, what is this guy on like? Seriously, why would I want a picture of a potato statue? And yet, when you see the T-shirt, it immediately becomes clear why you want a picture of a potato statue.
It's like if Marine Layer started making college sports apparel for Idaho like that. That's the level of design cool that you've got going on with this. The folks at home Field Apparel, they just don't miss. So be sure to follow them on social media. Go get yourself that King Spud tea. Go get yourself that refresh for IU. Go get some Nevada stuff. Go get some Auburn stuff. Whatever you're looking for. They've got it.
All right. We're going to go ahead and get to our guest for this episode, Zach Osterman from the Indy Star. We talked with Zach at length about a variety of things. I don't know if we necessarily settled on anything definitive, but some good comments, I think about both the micro and macro issues regarding IU basketball. We also talked a little IU football at the end. So here we go. And joining us on the show is Zach Osterman, IU Insider for the Indy Star.
It's been a while since we had you on Zach. Good to see you again. How you doing? Am I going to get in trouble for not wearing home field? No. Can I just go grab some home field and is Connor going to pull his sponsorship or what are we doing here? I think we'll be OK. I I can't speak for your own situation, but will be since I am indeed actually wearing home field while we do this podcast, as I am contractually. Obligated to do. Not really good. I don't want to get you in
trouble. I would. I can. I can handle. I can handle it. I can handle at home field apparel on Twitter. I really. Do appreciate the concern. Thank you. So anyway, let's talk. We're going to talk to some IU basketball, might touch a little bit on some football developments as well, but it's been a rough season for Indiana in some ways. Indiana coming off that loss at Wisconsin? That didn't really make anybody
particularly happy. Coming off the loss to Purdue, which definitely didn't make anybody happy. And facing a week off for everybody to talk about those things before they travel to a revitalized Illinois program which probably won't make people happy either. You I'm. Not sure I'd use that exact word describing what's going on in Illinois, but we'll leave that. Well, I wasn't even referring to that 'cause they were playing pretty well without Tara Chan Junior.
But your point is well taken. No, it's it's certainly a a curious situation over there. But no, Indiana looks like a team that is a few notches below the actual tournament caliber teams in the conference. So we wanted to talk a little bit about where that leaves everything because you had a piece in the Star last week in the aftermath of the Purdue lost that talked about, you know, what are fair expectations for
this particular team? There's a lot of cultural items that fall into this in terms of what Indiana basketball hasn't done over the course of the last 25 to 30 years that certainly filter into it. So let's just start there. I mean, your take on how people are reacting to this Indiana basketball program right now. And as we sit on the precipice of a remaining January and February that might not go that great for this program, how do you see that atmosphere kind of
playing out? Yeah, I mean I've seen it before. You have two it, you know it, it can get. I think toxic is a fair word. I don't think, I don't think that's an unfair word. It's difficult because there's there's the micro and there's the macro in this and and in both I think you have some real tension. So in the micro on the one hand you have a team that has some undeniably talented players. You know Kalel Ware is probably going to be a first round draft
pick. Malik Renew I would say is trending toward maybe second team all big 10 kind of you know status if if we're talking about just where he falls in the firmament of the league. McKenzie and Bako I think is is starting to hit that ceiling a little bit more and and there's you know it's it's not perfect but I mean you look at it, the only two games he hasn't scored in double figures since Thanksgiving are Nebraska and Ohio State.
And then that Nebraska game if remember he serves part of that was a little bit of foul trouble. He's shooting the ball a lot better. He's looking more and more like an offensive mismatch. It's just taking him longer to get there than we expected. And then if you even look at you know for example at Trey Galloway probably playing some of the best basketball of his career certainly at least at the offensive end of the floor the shot coming around a little bit he's assisting a lot better
etcetera. But on the other hand the results are not going well And and I think it is worth saying and I heard you say this and I I'm. I know you heard me say this in the preseason that this was always a possible outcome for this team that that you know a lot of teams. You know very few teams get better for losing what Indiana lost after last season particularly all at once, that much production, that much experience that much institutional knowledge.
I've gotten some weird blowback at times for saying Indiana's a young team, they're 220th on Ken Palm and Division One experience under 200 and 63rd and minutes continuity that that qualifies as young. And I think we always knew that there there was the capacity for this team to be something like this, a team that wasn't very good away from home, a team that wasn't very connected defensively.
There have been some things that have been surprising or or at least you know, probably from Indiana's perspective, disappointing. And I'm, I'm confident we'll get into some of those. But in the micro, you kind of have this push and pull of a team that when you look at it on the floor, you say there is a lot of individual talent here and yet it cannot sew itself into something cohesive and productive and successful consistently.
And there's no arguing that. I mean you know, they've lost four of six since the turn of the year. They have one true Rd. win all season or just one. What I mean I guess two wins away from home. If we're talking about, I know Gambridge Field House it's technically a neutral site. Kim Pom categorizes it semi home because it's basically a homecourt advantage for Indiana, especially in a game like Harvard. The only team they've beaten away from homeless seasons.
Michigan, Michigan's terrible just to be quite frank. They, you know I mean if you want to talk about teams that that have managed to kind of fall further below you know maybe preseason expectations in Indiana and Michigan's were probably lower than Indiana's. But the two and five in the conference there's 7:00 and 11:00 that they don't look good
at all. And so there's the micro push and pull of this team where you you watch it and you think I just think there's more talent than what this team is performing at the moment. And I I, I said this to our good friend Mike Glass got on his radio show last week. I think this team is closer than maybe the general perception thinks it is to realizing some of that potential.
I'm also pretty convinced it never will and so that like so it's kind of like again this is that that weird push and pull where I think they're because I think part of the issue is and again this is the micro and then I I I do want to get to the macro because the both of these color the discussion. I think the issue is that it's it's like the team.
It's like the the problem is this team is like 5 to 10% away on like 8 different things rather than 25% away on one thing or 15 to 20% away on two things where it's like, hey these are big time flaws. But if we can spend an intensive short period just drilling down into either how to fix this or how to mitigate it, it'll be OK. Like 3 point shooting.
Not so much last year but a couple years ago where Indiana district figured OK what we do is we just build an offense route not taking them and then we just defend for our lives and that will get us over the line. And it did barely, but it did. I think this team, the problem with this team is there's too many shortcomings, not all of which maybe are as far away from sort of an adequate level as they need to be.
But the problem is if you have too many things to fix, it just kind of becomes overwhelming for a group that is young, that is is younger. When you consider, I mean again, you talk about their their their lower ranked nationally and minutes continuity than the Art of Vision One experience. So they're not, they're not just young, they're young together. Obviously there's questions about leadership and it just feels like, you know, midstream this stuff just isn't going to
get fixed. Then there is the macro, which is kind of the, the thing that maybe I find a little bit more fascinating as somebody who did not grow up with IU basketball but has certainly observed it lived in this ecosystem in the the the IU sphere for a very long time. And and as a very sort of engaged observer, obviously, which is sort of the the surprise, for example, that Mike Woodson has not earned more benefit of the doubt because of what he did over his first two years.
From what I perceive anyway to be at least the more vocal, the more engaged sections of the fan base. Especially in a season where I think everyone would have recognized in let's say May or June when nobody's blood is up about Purdue being ranked #2 in the country and coming into Assembly Hall and everyone's just looking at things in a very sort of 10,000 foot way and agreed, yeah, it, it might be a a bit of a rebuild year a bit of a re like a starting of a new
cycle. So there's in the macro, I'm I'm surprised that there's not more sort of, hey, this is the this is trending to be a tough season. But there's still been some good work done and maybe given time that foundation can support further, you know, building upward against what I completely understand, which is the fan base. People always say to me, people out, people in the Big 10, people in the national media.
They say that Indiana fans expect too much, that Indiana fans are too demanding or too entitled and that's where like their perception is that that's where what they see as sometimes unrealistic or unreasonable expectations come from. I say I don't think that. I think Indiana fans fear that if they don't try to hold those expectations up, eventually they'll slip and eventually the program will get to a place where maybe it can't get back to that place that Indiana fans
fear. And this doesn't always manifest itself healthily. I understand that. But Indiana fans fear that if they don't constantly sort of remind everyone that this should be the expectation at Indiana, then at some point because of how long it's been since those expectations were consistently met, maybe the expectations will slip and then that suddenly calcifies and then the floor is
lower. And so I understand you know sometimes the more existential concerns I guess if that if that's if that makes sense and that's the macro push and pull of like where the where the program is in like a long term direction versus what I under where I understand the angst and the anxiety comes from in a fan base that has had to adure a lot more of this than history says it should have over the last 25 years. Yeah, I mean, I think there's there's some. Good thoughts in all of that.
I mean, I'll start with the macro and kind of work back to the micro. I I think on the macro front, each of these vintages of IU basketball over the course of the last maybe 15 to 20 years where the disappointments have come in, it's kind of been for different reasons. You know, I think people, people were very patient at the beginning of the Korean era. They had this sudden rush of success and then it kind of went away and there wasn't really a good explanation as to why it went away.
And you know, when you talk about like you're surprised Woodson hasn't gotten more of a reservoir of patience. I think part of the issue is that's a great example of a situation where people were patient, there were some initial dividends and then success just was very fleeting. And that I think has people paranoid about as much as anything else. Because if if a team and a program look I can have the head of steam that that 1213 season
era seem to have under creen. If all of that could disappear relatively quickly, then it kind of feels like everything is temporal, you know, under Archie, I think a lot of people were expecting there to be greater heights reached gradually and again. I think even with the early losses and the embarrassing losses, people were patient until it just became very clear that things weren't.
Going in the right direction that the the recruiting was never going to be good enough, that the on court play wasn't going to be good enough and then things cratered and it's like well now we have to start over with Woodson. You know, it's interesting because I've thought about this a lot. It's it is not nothing to take IU to back-to-back NCAA tournaments at this point, which
in and of itself is sad. And I think for a lot of people it's hard to get their heads wrapped around that from a macro perspective. So for some folks they're like, that's great, Mike, thanks for doing that. That's like the minimum expectation that we feel like we should have here at IU and that we get told that we should have.
If you're going to talk about banners and championships and you know being a blue blood which is essentially the entire marketing effort of of the university surrounding the basketball program. The idea that this year was going to be a step back, you know, a retooling, yes, but I don't think people were prepared for that step back to be. You may not make the NIT versus, well, you might be like a a double digit seed you might have to scrap for an at large bid.
And what you've seen I think out of this team over the course of the season is when they've been on big stages they've mostly crumbled, The Kansas game probably being the one exception. They don't look up to the task
at all. They look like they're getting outplayed by most of the actual good teams that they play and what is happening on the floor for IU fans who are watching programs that were in the dumps not too long ago, like UConn, figure out how to suddenly play modern basketball, how to recruit the right types of players, how to get them to play in a system. I think a lot of those people are just like, why is it so difficult for Indiana basketball
to get to that point? And I don't necessarily think it matters who the coach would be at this point. It would be the same reaction regardless and I think to some degree regardless of what had happened the last couple of years where and I'll I'll let you talk after this even though Indiana has it was a four seed last year was a protected seed was second in the Big 10. That was a season that should
have been celebrated. I think a lot of people forget or or they forget in this conversation that was a tough team to watch. A lot of times they kind of gritted out wins They they were not terribly elegant in the way they were winning. Trace Jackson Davis was elegant in the way that he was doing things, but it often times was a bit of a struggle. I think aesthetically for people to get their heads wrapped around like this is how we're
winning basketball games. So all of those things I think kind of fit into the equation. But it is interesting because it's not just one single factor, certainly. Yeah. And I guess if we're, if we're staying on the macro, like my comparison is or not my comparison, my, my hypothetical is basically where would Archie Miller be in year three if years one and two had gone like that because I don't think he would be here now. I think there are factors that go into that.
I think one of the big ones is, and again this just sort of speaks to a a, a a much sort of more historical context that ultimately no one can control until it is sort of arrested or rebutted or buttressed or whatever. Which is every coach that fails in Indiana is going to leave a tougher job for the next coach because the next coach is probably going to get less time, less, excuse me, less, you know,
patience. Because the again the fear is going to be that at some point if we just if you just keep sort of cycling through and and giving everybody the same amount of time and everybody's saying this and everybody's saying that, then the standards will slip and at some point you will be happy to just say hey great, two NCAA tournament appearances in your first two seasons. That's brilliant. Here's an 8 year contract. With a a God buyout and there's
nothing to worry about. On the other hand, you know and I like No2 comparisons are perfect. Please understand I'm. I'm completely aware of of that. But like you know the flip side kind of conversation is and I'm getting on Kim pong while we talk. You know if you if you hold Jay right to that standard does he make it this season for Ed Villanova which he is when he makes his first Sweet 16 much less.
You know how long does he last at Hofstra where he doesn't make the NCAA tournament until year four. I think Tony Bennett makes one NCAA tournament in his first Four Seasons And you want to talk about. I mean like I have. I have. I have an old friend who went to Virginia, a high school friend who like to this day still doesn't love Tony Bennett. Arguing is basically just and I just don't want to watch that
style of basketball. It's like if you won a national title and it was great and it's fun to beat Duke. But like the the the other part of it is it can be a real grind when it's not winning. And so that's like, I'm not sort of saying you just have to be patient.
Although I do probably tend to be one of those people just sort of like like advocate for patience over you know just sort of like let three and change and three and change and just keep throwing something at the wall till it works. But it's it's difficult to sort of say, I mean like for all the world there was nobody thought Archie Miller was going to fail in Indiana. And I include me in that. I was I I talked to people when he was hired.
I was around him. I I watched what he was trying to do with that team when he was trying to do recruiting. I thought this is going to work. There's nothing about this that doesn't tick the boxes in Indiana game four years, and I would argue three of his four years and his team was worse than it was the year before. The only year where I would say they improved was the year that they would have made the NCAA tournament as a probably a nine or a ten seed in 2020.
So it's like it's a hard conversation to have, but it is at very least to me, at minimum. It's sort of reflective of kind of this idea, this, this reality that settles in around a program where I do think that every coach is, is basically, for lack of a better way of putting this, a more artful way of putting this. Every coach is, is not only having to sort of solve their own problems, but they're also kind of having to carry more of the baggage of the previous
coaching tenure. Each one that does that makes like each one that failed. And obviously Tom Crean was the big example. There were NCAA tournament sanctions, but I think Archie Miller had to shoulder some of Tom Crean's failure. And I think Mike Woodson has had the shoulder even more of Archie Miller's. And I think if Woodson goes without success, the next, the next coach will have to do the same thing because it does become, I think, sort of a negative cycle.
I think it can be I. Can be. And look, I think there's some, there's probably some truth to that among certain aspects of the fan base. I do wonder with Woodson, I think part of the angst that you're seeing this year and part of the negative reactions and some of the over to the top stuff is less tied into that baggage and more to the perception, fair or unfair, that Woodson doesn't really have a direction for this roster and the and and the recruiting in the program.
And yes, you know, they've pulled in a higher caliber of top level recruit over the course of the three years he's been here. Or you know, you throw some portal people in there as well then in generally what Archie Miller was pulling in generally. But it hasn't really solved the problems that people are seeing on the floor. You know, they they lose the boogie flamed recruitment, you know, around the same time that they get the Liam Mcneely
recruitment. And this comes on the heels of IU not bringing in a guard in the portal, even though that was a perceived area where they didn't have depth. They don't get the development among guards that they needed in order to be more competitive this year.
People are now looking at the roster and saying I'm really concerned about the direction this is going because it seems to be centered around this style of basketball That, to go back to your friend's comment about Virginia isn't that attractive to watch. Doesn't seem to be having the type of effect that's elevating IU into the top 25 regularly.
And if you're looking at a Khalil Ware likely leaving for the NBA almost certainly after this season, if you're looking at a Malik Renew who might be on the borderline, it's like what is, what is the plan? You know, I I think people were generally predisposed to be patient with Woodson and would generally even be willing to be patient through this stretch of of losses to superior competition.
But there is a real kind of foreboding atmosphere around the program right now that what's being done to address the issues isn't really sufficient. Now there's rumors that, you know, another recruitment that people thought was going well may not actually happen. You know, I mean there's there's, there's the kinds of things that create additional dread around what's already there.
And so I'm having a hard time parsing how much of it is the past and how much of it is a real concern about the. Future based upon what people are seeing in the present. And I don't think all of that is unfair. Although the one thing about like the Derrick Queen recruitment is you can't complain about like this sort of slow, too big court spacing style of play and then also get mad. When no, no, no, your. Front court might be. It's not there.
It's that there doesn't seem to be another plan right now on the recruiting trail. I I I understand that to to a certain extent and it's it is a lot harder. And this is just like a a a general observation like conversations about roster building are so much harder than they used to be because like it's it just it doesn't. And even to the level I had someone make this point to me, you know because obviously Tamar Bates has been playing pretty
well lately. Now that that hasn't necessarily followed wins if not followed in Missouri. But Bates has looked more in the last month or so like the player that a lot of us who you know when he committed when he signed. Certainly I mean anybody who was in the Bahamas. Yeah with with Indiana and the media like travelling party everyone was.
I mean every he was talk kind of the team on that trip, it was like whoa, like this kid looks real and he never really found that in Indiana. He seems to be finding it at Missouri. So like there's kind of this conversation too between like like somebody made this and this is a bit of a tangent but it's it's a separate example of I think the same general sort of conversation of Indiana made a conscious choice to bring back Miller Cop for a fifth season
and start Miller Cop when it could have started. Tamar Bates Let him play, let him work through some kinks and maybe find that level that we thought he had when he signed at Indiana rather than transferring to Missouri. But then the flip side is we're sitting here talking about a team, one of whose greatest weaknesses is probably its
experience. And Miller Cop was what, you know, whatever anybody thought about, you know, maybe some of the the times, some of the stuff he was asked to do defensively at times or whatever. Miller Cop played 1000 Big 10 games. He was that team's most effective 3 point shooter by I mean, you know, at times by some distance. And so like this is like the.
And then the other part of this too is there were people who after the 2122 season, I mean, I can remember this being part of like the discourse on social media and probably in message boards. I don't really go on those anymore. But you know, like, does Indiana really want Race Thompson back for a sixth year or would Indiana be better off elevating Jordan Geronimo? Well, Jordan Geronimo's gone somewhere where he's getting regular minutes this year. Indiana didn't do that.
They took Race Thompson back. You know, he came back. He was more or less probably the same player, broadly speaking, last season that he was two seasons ago. Jordan Geronimo never really got that opportunity in Indiana. He's since moved on somewhere. He's getting that opportunity and I'm not trying to pick on him. Please understand. But it's it's it's clear that just getting Jordan Geronimo more minutes has not sort of allowed him to blossom into some substantially better basketball
player. So like there are all of these new sort of like ripples in the current when it comes to roster construction and and and not just construction but like development over the course of several seasons of you know do you take a freshman and develop him here. Do you try to solve that problem in the portal? What do you what do you want your identity to be? Do you want to be a more experienced team? Do you want to just try and be more of a, you know, a a portal
heavy team? We've seen some teams that have had success with that, you know, fairly consistently since the portal kind of became a mainstream thing. You know, I think history's generally told us that trying to use the portal as a quick fix doesn't work great, but it can provide you key pieces, you can provide you guys the start guys that change your dynamic etcetera.
It it's, you know, sort of this. The last piece of it is I guess and I was the one who was hammering this in the summer because I thought it was fascinating and and I don't, it's hard to tell if like it's something Woodson's really tried because you know, on a grand scale not a lot has worked consistently for this team. And maybe this is a maybe that's a symptom of this, maybe that it's just, you know, a weird
collision of things. But there was also kind of this undercurrent of Woodson over the first two years, basically saying I don't normally play this way. Just this isn't, you know, this is not the offense that I ran in the NBA, but I just had an all world right, you know, four or five hybrid that could do what Trace could do. So I had to build my team around him.
I wasn't just going to go out there and ask him to be Tyson Chandler. I had to make him that team's Carmelo Anthony. But I'm not going to do that going forward. And yet at times this season it has felt like Indiana has kind of run back to that. When when things have gotten when it started to struggle, it's kind of run back to that sort of like well, we're just going to, you know, we're going to run floppy actions that create post up opportunities and just sort of circle the floor
from there. And I don't, I don't disagree with anyone who says this team needs pieces it doesn't have, particularly from an offensive perspective, although obviously they haven't been great defensively. It is interesting to me. They're still 5th in the Big 10 in league games alone, despite allowing like 1.4 points per possession at Wisconsin, they're still 5th in league games in in
adjusted defensive efficiency. So the defense hasn't actually been, I think, as bad at times as is perceived. The offense though, in eight Big 10 games, 12th in the league in efficiency. I don't dispute anybody who says this team doesn't space the floor well enough. You know, I think they actually make enough threes, but they don't shoot enough threes like that.
They need to make what they shoot, but they need to shoot basically at least half again as much as they do, so that they're making nine to 10 a game rather than five to six a game there. But like it it is. It all folds into like a conversation that is is so much messier than it used to be with regarding how you manage this, especially when if you're Mike Woodson and I do think this is an important part of his tenure,
you know, wherever it goes. You are also kind of trying to hammer this idea of making Indiana a place that elite recruits look at again because frankly history says to get to where Indiana wants to go. Most programs that are already there recruit at a level and and develop to the NBA at a level Indiana just had not had stopped doing for 20 years.
So like it's it's I don't know if the right way to phrase it does I have some sympathy with Woodson or not but it's it's more kind of just this idea that like this conversation used to be a lot clean it it was not clean 10 years ago but it was much cleaner than it is now and I can see the shortcomings of this roster and I don't I don't really I won't argue with anybody who complaints about those.
The wider piece, again micro versus macro is is a is a more complicated and nuanced discussion. I think it's reasonable. And look, ultimately nothing's changing, nor should it. In the immediate future in terms of, you know, Woodson's job is not in jeopardy. The program's going to continue on with some kind of trajectory. But I just think at this point, people are not going to be comfortable with the trajectory until there's more wins.
Because, I mean even last year, as good as that year was and you you sweep Purdue. But there were several moments in that season including the last game of the season where Indiana got run off the court by a team that had superior athleticism. They got run off the court at Kansas. They they mean there were there were several instances where you're like, well we're we're
better if you're an Indiana fan. But we're not anywhere close to where we hoped to be. And this season was a nice way to say, well, OK, we're going to drop the floor a little bit because we have to because there's not the same level of talent. The collapse of kind of the the defensive pressure of the team and and the offense having as many problems as. I just think it's got a lot of people very concerned because you had a chance to fix the
roster a bit. You've got the ability to kind of go back to what you said with how messy it is to make hard personnel decisions to get people out, to bring different people in. And you have to do that if you're going to have a successful program at this level, especially if you're not building off of a long standing base of success, which that's part of the macro issue is that Indiana doesn't have that long standing base of success. They missed the tournament for so many years in a row.
So you, you know, But to to take such a step back and to look bad, doing it in a lot of ways, even taking into account the individual players getting better, like Embako, like Khalil Ware, I just think that's got people on edge. And I don't know that that gets solved anytime soon. A lot of it depends on how this team finishes out the season. I mean, at this point, they need to win four games to get themselves to a guaranteed 500 record. Can they do that? I I would hope that they could.
But if you're if you trust the metrics, if you trust Ken Palm, they're going to just barely do that 'cause I think in both Ken Palm and Torvik, they're only projected to win four more games all season. No, that's right. I I would I, I'll turn this back on you for a second too. And I'll ask you to remove to some extent your background as an IU alum who grew up in West Lafayette, OK? Like I I grew up or well, my dad married into an Auburn family
when I was 11 years old. So the Iron Bowl has always kind of been adjacent to like my like like my dad and my stepmom still get sling at the end of August and cancel it after the bowl season. Like that's like that's that's, you know, they don't watch TV, they don't watch cable, all that. They get slinged for Auburn football and then they cancel it. Either if Auburn doesn't go to a bowl, they cancel it after the Iron Bowl, or if Auburn does go to a bowl, they cancel it after
Bulls season's over. And I think back to where Alabama football was in 2003, four, five. And I think people would look at Alabama football now and Indiana football now and say how could you possibly make that comparison? Alabama football spent a lot of the 25 or so years between Bear Bryant's retirement and Nick Saban's hiring in the wilderness. You know that they had God, I can't remember his name. Thank you. I I would just say Ray Vincent. I don't know why who's? Ray Perkins.
Mike Dubose. It was Mike Perkins. And then Bill Curry, who actually did well at Alabama, but I don't think he ever beat Auburn and he was he didn't do well enough essentially. Then I think from Curry, they went to Gene Stallings, who obviously had success and then it went to Mike Dubose and then Dennis Franchioni and then the the Mike Riley misadventure and then they took Mike Shula.
And this may not have been the case, but this is what I remember from Shula. Must have been hired around 2003. I would think it was thereabouts. Yeah. What I remember in my mind's eye was almost just kind of this idea that Shula was a program alum.
They knew some pretty stiff NCAA sanctions were coming, and it was just kind of like bringing a guy who's going to be a safe hand at the wheel, who's not going to embarrass us, who's going to, who's going to conduct himself in the program's business with a certain level of gravitas and pride. And we will go, we'll get the other side of the NCAA stuff and
figure it out from there. But by the time all that happened, Alabama had lost six straight games to Auburn, which, like those, you know, down there, that's nuts. That's that's not at all common. And there was an extraordinary level of pressure on Mal Moore who was the AD at the time, if I'm not mistaken, and and just the the the hierarchy at Alabama to get that fixed the the program's direction.
But the Auburn piece of it became so like such an intensifier that it all it, it made it and it made it an incredibly tense thing. And then obviously they have, you know, the the, the fortune that Nick Saban decides to step away from the NFL. They put on the full court press. They give him a lot of, you know, he comes in, you know, the the way the legend goes, he basically came in was like, this is all the stuff you're doing
wrong. Like, it was almost like he was interviewing them, not the other way around. And some people were put off by it and the adults in the room were like, this is exactly what we need. Just deal with it, swallow it, because this is exactly what we need. And of course, history tells us what happens. My question to you is basically if Purdue we're not at one of like its all time high tides and I have, I'm not picking a fight with Dana at all.
I thought. I thought Dana's article about Indiana and Purdue was a little bit harsh frankly on Purdue because it sort of treated Purdue like Purdue's. Never had any golden generations before this one. But this is undeniably one of the best stretches, at least in the regular season Purdue has had. How much do you think that basically colors the discussion?
Like if if Purdue was just middle of the pack in the Big 10 and Indiana was struggling and obviously the, you know, the rivalry was a bit more back and forth, maybe everybody won at home all the time for five years or whatever. Do you think that the angst, the pressure, the tension would be so great? Or do you think that some of this is intensified right here and now, not just by losing by
21 points at home to Purdue? I recognize it's the biggest home loss to produce since 1934 or whatever, but more the wider idea that Indiana's really struggling to find its feet and Purdue is maybe the best team in the country. I'll be honest, I don't think it has as big of an impact as you might think. I think it certainly doesn't help. But look, we've been through
this and that. The, the, the Dana O'Neal piece was funny to me because it's like this could have been written in 1999, you know, because it was a similar kind of thing where it seemed like, you know, they all the arguments was well, Purdue as you know, superseded Indiana as the premier program in the state and they're winning all these Big 10 titles and so forth. And look, ultimately Purdue's always had the ability to do that. They've always had the ability at times to.
To put a good group of players together. To recruit the state better than Indiana, To take chances on three stars that maybe Indiana feels like they can't or they don't want to. So I don't know if it's as much that I think the larger amount of pressure, frankly, is that IU fans are looking around. They've seen no North Carolina surpassed them in national titles. They've seen Duke surpassed them in national titles.
They've seen Yukon tie them in national titles and be the odds on favorite at this point to surpass them in national titles. They've seen Purdue certainly have success. They see Kentucky has picked themselves up.
I mean, honestly, I think all these coaches have actually benefited at IU from not having a Kentucky series because I think that that would be the contrast that would be the starkest and put the most pressure on an IU coach not losing to Purdue. You sweep Purdue last year, it's like there's always going to be those opportunities. So I understand where you're what you're saying.
I really think it's more of a general pressure now because it's a generation, like literally it's it is, it is 30 years since IU was consistently relevant in the upper echelons of college basketball. And they've had moments. They've had 2002. They've had 2013, but they've been at, they've been blips, they've been afterthoughts.
And I think for a lot of IU fans, they're looking around and they're saying, and I I say this myself as someone who's who's an IU alum, whose parents were IU alums, who grew up, as you said, in West Lafayette as a lone IU fan. There's a generation of people who, I don't know why they're IU basketball fans. What are they basing that off of? What success are they? Are they? Are they, you know, anchoring
that fandom too? They've been given so little and so infrequently by this program that I think what you're seeing now is essentially the culmination of 1/4 century plus of IU significantly underperforming where it says it is. And I don't know, you know, to me, yes, that is unfair to an Archie Miller or a Mike Woodson in the micro because they're not responsible for what happened and what mismanagement occurred. But they they've inherited it.
It's their job to fix it. And much like I think you would see it other programs that have run into similar situations, there's not going to be an understanding of, well, this will get fixed eventually because you can only get sold that so many times. And people don't walk away. As you know Zach, they don't walk away from their their the college teams that they love when they have stretches of a lack of success like you mentioned with Alabama football.
They just get mad and they're like, God damn it, fix this like this. Shouldn't be that. Hard way. I feel like it feels like every every coaching tenure has less of a half life than like, you know, like like it. Effectively Tom Crane got six years. You know that the first three years, whatever your opinion on them turned into basically just kind of like a total sort of like separate thing. And then Tom Crane got six years of of normalcy to prove what he could do. Archie Miller got four.
I know that some of what we're talking about here is, is just like the natural anger, like when Liverpool loses. I'm always a lot more angry 30 minutes after the game than I am the next day. Like the next day I can see with clear eyes that this happened or that'll be OK or whatever.
Some of this is just that, you know, again, some of the whole like people who recognized in the summer this could be a rebuilding year Now, not wanting it to be a rebuilding year, it's it's it's the it's the practice of not having to live it versus having to live it. But this idea that there's suddenly like this in this more intense scrutiny on Mike Woodson, that didn't feel like it was even necessarily there to the same level on Archie Miller, who'd achieved less, I think
just. Well. It that half life grows shorter every time somebody fails and that's to your point about, you know, Archie Miller and Mike Woodson are having to do heavier lift. I also think look. As as uninspiring as the Archie Miller era was the worst team Archie Miller had in Ken Palm. At the end of the season, they were 71st in his first year. They were a team that was like right on the verge of being in the discussion for the NCAA tournament.
They occasionally were in the discussion they would have made it obviously in 2020, this year's team under Mike Woodson's 96th and Ken Palm. And that's about where they're going to stay. That I I think this is different from being a A-Team that's not living up to expectations to a team that just doesn't look. Good. And I think that's having an effect just as much as any of the other stuff is so. I would only dispute that I do not think that Archie Miller team was ever seriously in NCAA.
They had lost to Indiana State and Fort Wayne at home by a combined 41 points. They had a sub 100 loss on the road in Big 10 play and they lost their last three games of. The season well and and I think there was a honeymoon period for the first year I guess would be the the thing I would throw back
in there. So I'm not saying that they were in contention, but you can't just, you can't avoid the fact when you look at the numbers, whether it's the net or can palm or whatever, this team doesn't look good, like this year's vintage does not in a way that previous years maybe didn't look quite as bad. So anyway, we'll see what happens as we move forward with things real quick.
Before I let you go, any any overall thoughts on what we've seen through this first month and 1/2 or so with Kurt Cignetti and the overall trajectory of this football program? I think the the most overriding thing and listen, you never know how good a plan is until it's it's time to put it into action.
But probably the the most overarching sort of theme to me has been that Indiana got what it was looking for, which is someone that comes in with a proven process and a a track record or a, you know, kind of a confidence in saying I know what all the steps are to building a team that can compete and win. I know what order they need to go in and I know how to cross each one off as it goes. The efficiency with which you
know the staff was built. The roster, which at one point I, I, if I'm not mistaken sunk below 50 countable scholarship players is now they're now actually looking ahead to when they would add the both the balance of their freshman class. They are actually now over their limit. But you always expect some guys are going to move on after spring. That's just kind of a natural part of the the evolution of a roster in the Portal era.
The, the, you know, the, the, I would say pretty clear vision for what and where Indiana is, particularly offensively. I think defense is, is a little bit more up in the air. But you know Kurt Cignetti has said many times offense is kind of hit. That's his thing. That's always been his corner of the store. So it's always going to be a little bit different for him offensively compared to you know defense.
I mean he he hasn't quite sort of said like Kevin Wilson's always kind of just like, hey, the defensive coordinator gets to run the defense and Tom Allen always said I'm looking for a head coach of the offense. Signetti hasn't quite said that about his defensive coordinator, but he's always been pretty clear. Like I give Brian Haynes quite a bit of leash. You know, that's that's his defense. I trust him.
He's gonna, I know, you know, I know he's gonna do good things with it. But the offense is that Signetti's background and I think you can see how quickly the vision there when you sort of, especially when you overlay it on on watching, looking at personnel and production and watching some old JMU, you know, sort of film. You can see like what he's trying to do there and how a lot
of this fits. And you know, I'm stealing this from Rick Bozich, but it's a great line and and so Rick deserves credit for it and Rick deserves to have it used. Nobody's a basketball school. We've We've used this line before on the podcast, yes. No, no one. No one gets to say that basketball is their priority and if they can figure out football, they can't, you know, fantastic. They can't wait. They'll keep trying.
You know, we recognize what we are, but we're just everybody has got to try and punch up because that is where all the money is. That is where all the power is. That is where the future is, for better or worse. And I would make an argument in a lot of ways worse in college athletics. You know, Indiana's not going to
make the playoff next year. But Indiana wanted to be more serious in football and when it when it's when it fired Tom Allen and it set out to find a head coach or a replacement. Scott Dolson wanted a a head coach with a proven track record. This is why Jason Candle was in the room late in the day, proverbially speaking. This is why Paul Crist had a lot of traction at different points
in the search. Not because he just wanted to hire something that Tom Allen wasn't in the cycle, that you can go where you you hire the hot young assistant and then the proven head coach and then you know whatever. But because he felt like in this place in time, Indiana just did not have the capacity to hire a coach that would ever need to be a passenger or would ever need time to grow into the job.
They needed somebody who could walk in from day one and say this is my process and this is how I execute it and This is why it works. And there's nothing that's happened through obviously, you know, it's it's been closing in on two months now so let's not get out over our skis.
But nothing has happened that has made me think Kurt Signetti wasn't prepared for that and and was not the right hire based on Dolson's desire to put somebody in that he could just kind of plug into the program and say let me know what you need, I'll
get it for you. Beyond that I'm just going to trust that you have the capacity to do the right things and and you know make the right decisions and take the right steps and build the program towards something competitive and that's you know in in any, in any by any real measure so far Kurt Tsugnetti has has managed that. It's been quite a ride so far. We'll see how things go as we head into spring practice. Anyway, we'll go ahead and get you out of here, Zach. As always, thank you.
Appreciate the time. Alright. MO has. Tape. Go take care of that. Zach Osman from the Indy Star. Be sure to check out his work. Thank you, Sir. And we'll look forward to chat with you again in the future. Thanks for having me, always good to be on. All right. My thanks again to Zach Osterman. Always a pleasure for him. For us to have him on the show, probably. I don't know if it may be a pleasure for him to be on the
show. I don't want to presume anything, but great to have him on board and getting his thoughts and perspective on things. An important perspective, someone who's who's not a fan but is instead employed to cover this team and kind of try to have some larger perspective, which I do think that I and others maybe sometimes miss when we talk about IU basketball. So anyway, thanks to all you folks for tuning in. We really appreciate it. If you haven't, go ahead and
subscribe to the sub stack. Be sure to go to Home Field Apparel. Use the code Home 23. By the way, I missed this at the beginning. I was so excited talking about King Spud. I forgot to mention the 15% off your first order. That's my bad. So anyway, use that Code Home 23 and get 15% of your first order at Home Field Apparel.
Anyway, thanks to Zach Osterman from the Indy Star and thanks to all you folks for listening in. We'll have more podcast coming up soon here on Crimson Cast and on the Back Home Network. Be sure to tune in for Assembly Call Radio. Coming up Thursday night, be sure to tune in for the Doing the Work podcast. They just had their 100th episode covering IU women's basketball. And be sure to tune in after the game. On Saturdays, Indiana takes on Illinois and men's basketball.
Also come to Bloomington on the third. We're meeting you folks in person. Until then, catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the Bison. So everybody.