You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast, GAIL and Clavio Scott Caulfield joining you. It is still Sunday, December 1st. If you haven't listened to our football recap show, go do that. It's that's more fun. It's a that's a that was a joyful podcast. We went for over an hour, talked about IU bashing Purdue's train in there and winning 66 to
nothing. What we should do, we should just we should compile all the stats in every podcast from here of the next year. Just tell a fun stat from that game. Even if we're doing a podcast about like NIL collectives, it's like, hey, but did you know Purdue only had two first downs, which is just. Anyway, I like where your thoughts are on this. This is good. So anyway, we are now here to talk basketball and you know, we've we've not done an official basketball podcast yet this year.
We're very yeah, this is and this we were planning on podcasting prior to Atlantis on men's basketball. We didn't the schedules didn't work out. The holidays are always a little bit tough with family. And then Atlantis happened. So now I'm going to start off like right at the beginning by acknowledging this looks like we're jumping in and now talking about a situation that's gone bad. And that has not been the
intention. It's been more like what is the inflection point to start talking about this team this year and where things are AT. And so that's. We both did previews with Alex Bozich. So maybe, maybe he's like the connector point. We both did our previews. It it literally was. We both have busy schedules. Alex Bozich the the Michael McDonald of the the pot, the IU podcast scene here.
Like he works with everybody. And so yeah, I see all of our thoughts were there individually, but we need to start doing basketball more regularly because that's part of what we do here. And so we're going to talk about where the team's at, kind of what the expectations were and and where things are trending. I did AVIP subscriber only video on this couple of days ago. I'll, I'll probably be treading over some similar ground. So I apologize to those of you
who have heard that already. We've got some different aspects and different angles though. But first, before we dive into that, just a reminder, we are brought to you by Home Field Apparel. Your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabric, the coolest designs. You know, the we've been talking so much about football stuff with home field, but basketball has always been like right there. If if football's the bread, basketball's the butter for home field apparel.
I don't know if that coat totally worked, Scott, but I'm going to go with it. And I think basketball's the Turkey, football's the gravy. Perhaps that's that great basketball for Indiana. They have the shooting shirt like the they wear. I mean, unfortunately O'Connor was going to do the three win Atlanta shirt, but that that didn't come to pass. But no, they have they have great basketball stuff. And I'm with you.
It's it's some great vintage like shooting shirts and a lot of the basketball shooting shirts are awesome. Yeah, it's it's just a cornucopia of awesome things and, and what I. I love the most very seasonal cornucopia. What I also like is the amount of small school shirts that they have for college basketball. You know, I mean, I, I one of my favorite shirts still is the heavyweight Fairleigh Dickinson tee that I got in honor of them
beating. Did you know that they beat Purdue in a 116 matchup in the NCAA Tournament, Scott? Is this the same Purdue that lost 66 Nothing in the bucket game It's. The same school, yes, it's the same school that that that school produced both a 116 loss as the one seed and lost 66 nothing in the bucket game. You're absolutely right, yes, so, but there's there's so many good options. To choose. It's a horn of plenty of Purdue. Lost plenty. It's extra pie. It's just.
And that pie is Purdue losing. How did how did this get into the home field read? I'm not entirely sure, but the point is whether you're looking for IU apparel, whether you're looking for small town college basketball apparel, home fields got you covered. Head over there. Use the code home 23 get 15% off your first order and check out the ever expanding variety of things that they have available for purchase. Again, home field apparel.com go check them out. Follow them on social.
They do a great job on Instagram, great job on X and I'm sure they're on blue sky. Everybody is now over the last couple of weeks. So also just a reminder, we're on Substack. If you were in our Substack mailing list, you you're probably watching this video right below the football video because I will have sent both of. These out at essentially the same time you can get podcasts delivered right to your inbox. You get access to the video files as well as what we do in
terms of our audio stuff. So go to crimsoncast.substack.com, subscribe, it's free. Join the over 1100 people now that have subscribed. There is also a pay option if you'd like to help financially support the podcast, help keep the lights on and whatnot. It's $5.00 a month, $50 a year. We'd love to have you in that tribe as well. So again, crimsoncast.substack.com, go check it out. All right, Scott, well, let's dive into this.
One of the reasons we hadn't done basketball podcasts up to this point is, frankly, we've had so much fun with football, right? And there's been so much content to cover. This is one of those things where in the past we always made this transition point. It was generally a a resigned, often times wistful transition point in late October when our football season is essentially dead and we realize, OK, now it's time to turn our attention to basketball. And that hasn't happened this
year. Obviously, football continues to provide us with great moments over and over again. We did, you know, 3 or 4 podcasts about football over the last week. We did seven or eight in the Ohio State week. There's so much to talk about with football. So it has kind of slowed our production on basketball, but it's also just been kind of an awkward feeling start to the season.
And you could feel that in the the preseason, like even before the first ball was tipped, just a lot of antipathy on the part of a lot of people in and around IU basketball. Certainly the narrative coming into the season was one that you could get excited about if you wanted to look at it in a certain way. You know, Indiana had a a disastrous season last year, but it ended on a a semi OK note, at least in terms of the the last few games of the regular season.
They went out, spent a ton of money in the transfer portal and got some talented players. And we heard commentary from Mike Woodson throughout the course of the offseason that there were going to be changes and how the team played stylistically that they were, you know, at one point in October, I think he said they were shooting like 2728 threes a
game in practice. And so, you know, when I went on inside the hall, I don't remember exactly everything you said, but I think it was a similar vibe. But it was like, you know, I was talking to Alex. I was like, if all of these things happen, if, if these players hit the ground running and if they gel as a team and if there is actually some stylistic change and if Indiana can do some things on the recruiting scene, well, suddenly, you know, things look a lot better than they did.
And, and, you know, a lot of the the problems in perception for IU weren't just the losses on the court last year or the way the team was playing, but it was also losing at the time. You're only committed recruit Liam Mcneely. And then even into this fall, you get one recruit in Trent Sizzly, but you lose three or four other targets. You got people saying we'll just do everything in the portal from now on. You don't really need
recruiting. But you know, the idea was if all of the chips fell where they were supposed to, this could have been a special season for Indiana. And I'm not here to say that it can't still by by some trajectory get to that point. But the road is now incredibly hard. And I think we've got enough of a sample size to get a sense of how this team is playing and is likely to play as they move through the rest of the campaign. And and it's got a lot of people
on edge. So, Scott, that's kind of the backdrop to things. I don't know. Did you have anything else to add in terms of your thoughts coming into the season? Yeah, I mean, when I when I was with Alex, you know, my my feeling is, and unfortunately it's still kind of the same. And I think I speak for a lot of people, I was coming into this year and kind of like, let's just wait and see. Like let's just wait and see how this team does. I'm cautiously optimistic.
You know, I've been saying for a while, you know, this offseason was great. You get, you know, great transfers, you get some recommits. It it was good. But I I was on record saying I thought last offseason was really good. You get Khalil Ware, you get McKenzie and Baco A live star. I know he's not transfer portal, but you, you know, in that offseason, you got a lot of talent last offseason and it didn't get you into the tournament.
And so that's where I'm like, well, the the answer just can't be to continue to get more talent. Like, OK, you Got Talent, but I, I think you also had talent the year before, you know, and I also think that the one thing you didn't mention to set the table, which which was real and happened was, you know, some of Woodson's comments at senior night, kind of the, you know, the true fan comment.
We don't need to dig into that deeply, But you have this kind of a bit of a divide in the fan, you fans that are kind of annoyed and just, you know, it's not quite going where people want it to go. And I feel like a lot of people just said, OK, that that that's fine. Like I'm not, it's not awesome. But like, and then, you know, there's also the truth of football kind of just swept everybody up and it's like, all right, we'll wait and see and I will wait. And you see how IU basketball
does. And as you've mentioned many times, it's true. It's kind of like, all right, well, there's not a lot of great non conference games until Atlantis. So you know, they're going to beat SIU, they're going to beat Eastern Illinois. I mean, hopefully they they do and they did. It's like, all right, well, I'll kind of check in when Atlantis comes out because that's kind of the first real test. And we'll see are some of the things that I'm cautiously optimistic about going to happen.
And and we're hitting this kind of again, a little bit of, you know, we're hitting this at an odd time because it's already all happened. But that's how I was coming into the year feeling that, you know, I, I, I, I want things to work out, but I was very dubious on a lot of the things I was hearing because it's stuff we've heard years before is that, you know, this was all the things we heard last year is like, all right, without trace Jackson Davis. Now we can see the real offense
that Woodson wants to install. You know, he wasn't able to do it because you had such a skilled big man. He had to run a big offense and they didn't do anything and they they kept the same offense. It's like, all right, well then why is it going to be different? This year was kind of my question. Like we've had three years now. Like most coaches, especially in their mid 60s, don't just start tinkering with the offenses that they run. And then it was like, what we brought in so much talent.
And my counter was we brought a lot of talent in the year before. Like this is back-to-back years. You brought a lot of talent in, you know, how, how is, and this is, you know, last year, not only do they disappoint, they seem to have a hard time coalescing that talent and kind of creating a team atmosphere. How is that going to work this year? And so I, I, I think that's the
feeling that I was having. I feel that with a lot of the IU fan base and people that I talked to is kind of just like, well, I'll check back in when it seems like they're they're kind of on the right track or things are going the right way. And thus far it it isn't quite there.
And so I worry how this season is going to go just from a vibes point of view, because it does feel like a lot of the fan base is kind of like, all right, well, show me like, you know, show me why I need to be excited about this team. Yeah. I mean everything you said,
absolutely. And I really do think so much of the perception of the of the program right now amongst regular everyday fans, like people that I talk to, people that I sit next to, people that that follow the podcast and, and people that I've seen commenting on Assembly Call. People are just sitting next to just like Galen is going on a bench and like, you know, how are you basketball? Talk to me. I don't need I went so it's
funny you say that. I was at the UNC Greensboro game and was sitting in not my normal seats and just sat down and this older IU fan next to me. Just starts going off about, you know, well, we got some problems on this team and it was and it went it went for quite a while. But you know what I sense really. But real quickly I was the South Carolina game and I saw somebody at half time like, oh, Scott from Crimson cast. OK, we're sitting by Galen.
Our seats are open. Do you want to come sit with us? I'm like, it's like people are trying to connect us on a date and it's. Like we're on the opposite sides of the stadium for a reason, guys. No, I'm kidding. That's not true, Scott. Scott always invites me over to his seats one time a year, which is great, so I find. You to halftime. You didn't show up that time. I, I, well, I was, I was with, I was with my kid and, and she wanted to do a lap. No, I'm totally derailed. No, it's fine.
But the the the commentary I hear from most people is. Is kind of. Split in a couple different ways. There's the people who were really put out by Woodson's comments and the timing of those comments. It's, it's really one of those things, I think where you, you had a bad year and OK, you felt as the coach, like you got unfairly blamed. You didn't like the fact that people were talking negatively about your, your job. I get all that.
But you got to have, in my opinion, a little more of a sense of the audience. Most people that are at games and most people that are following along with IU, yes, they're frustrated because you follow up a couple of tournament appearances with a year where you're not making the tournament, where your team looks like all of the bad memories that everybody had of the Archie Miller era.
And you know, you've got your athletic director actually still having to apologize for your comments as late as may, like, whatever the, whatever the, the purpose of the comments was. And I've heard people argue, oh, it was just intended at the online audience that was aggressively calling for Woodson's job. Even if that was the intent, the way it was taken was, wow, this is kind of arrogant.
Like this is not a season where you need to be proclaiming yourself is like, I'm going to be the coach here for a long time. And you know, the true fans understand and are rooting for us like you. Just that that creates the potential for division and that's it was it was the wrong time to do it. Or, you know, it was, it was not not the right venue, especially senior night when you're supposed to be focusing on on
the players. And so it did set the table for a bunch of IU fans who I think otherwise would have groused about the year, but probably wouldn't have thought any more of it other than what they got to figure all this stuff out. It kind of created a little bit of an internal referendum on, well, does Woodson really know what he's doing here? Like is, is this plan going to work? And the, the refrain I hear over and over again and, and I think
it's a, it's a fair argument. It's like, can you really trust Woodson to make all these changes and do the things that he's that we know that Indiana needs to do? And, and for many people, they didn't trust the idea that Woodson was going to be interested in making those changes. The talent that they brought in, in the portal was certainly impressive. And I think people rightfully got excited about the idea of Miles Rice and Omar Balo and Kane and Carlisle.
And, you know, how are these guys going to plug in? Bryson Tucker was an intriguing pick up at the last second from a recruiting perspective. And you had, of course, Malik Renew coming back. You had Trey Galloway coming back. You had what looked like all the right pieces. Mackenzie Mbako was likely to take a leap, and he looks like he kind of has, at least
offensively. The problem, though, is that so much of the excitement that people should have been feeling about this year was largely tempered through this idea that we don't think Indiana's actually going to be able to compete at the level that we'd like to see Indiana compete because of the system that's being utilized and because of the lack of likelihood that that system would materially change.
And that that's what made Atlantis worse to me, I think, is that you had not only did you have, you know, the a bad game against USC Greensboro. And then you come in and you get blown out by Louisville and it was not as close as the final score indicated and you lost by 28. You get severely outclassed by Gonzaga. I wouldn't say that you got blown out by them, but it was essentially a 20 point game from about the 10 minute mark of the
first half all the way through. And then you win a meaningless game against the Providence team that does not look very good this year at all, the way that you lost the Louisville. Game and the Gonzaga game. Put on display most of the offensive problems that haven't been fixed that are going to haunt the perception of Mike Woodson and his Indiana teams probably for as long as he's here, unless there is a demonstrable change in the way that they approach the game.
And then there's the added problem. And again, this was a problem that was under the surface all last year and it rarely got specifically talked about, but it's starting to rear its head again is that the defensive effort does not appear to be there. Whether it's the effort or whether it's the the plan or some combination of both. And it's probably some combination of both. IU let's guys drive the lane on them all the time. They let wide open threes, they
move the wrong direction. There was a breakdown that I saw of that Louisville game that was done by a a YouTube commentator who focuses on teams not playing well. He just ripped Indiana apart. And every piece of video evidence is like I he's yeah, he's not wrong here.
So you've added these additional issues of perception to to what's going on. And you've also, as you alluded to, left yourself in a position where you now don't have any good non conference wins and you have no route to pick up good non conference wins. And as we know, that matters a lot when it comes to the tournament. And the tournament was always what people said was like, it's it's this or bust. It's like Sweet 16. Like we have to see some tangible progress as far as
that's concerned. So it's just a bunch of things all at once right now, Scott, and none of it's good at this stage. Well, what what Atlantis also leaves you with is another season where you're not going to have a a kind of a signature non conference win, which is something that Indiana was, you know, in the heyday when you and I were growing up was known for. You know, you had non conference
games. You always have the game against Kentucky. You know, you you obviously would get big Big Ten wins, you know, in which was beaten Purdue with was that gedy when they were ranked number one. But but part of, you know, what's important and also, you know, what's been talked about is, you know, getting the non conference schedule up. And that was one of those refrains like, all right, the first thing Woodson did is he upgraded our non conference schedule, which he did and he
gets credit for. But it was, you know, middle of last, you know, beginning of last year was kind of the discussion. All right, he's done a good job of getting the games back on the schedule. Now we got to start competing in those games and maybe, you know, moving toward possibly, you know, hushed tones, winning one of those games. You know, we're not even at the competing level. And and that's that's the scary part. And you know, it, it it's it's
very frustrating. And sometimes, you know, coaches are coaches are always in spots where the post game stuff, there's nothing good they can say, you know, they can't come out and just say, you know, hey, we suck. Like no one's ever going to say that.
But it is frustrating and just again, kind of goes to this lack of understanding how your comments are going to be taken when you just get boat raced by Louisville and you come out, you know, a Louisville team that I I think brought zero points back from last year, a complete team of all new players. And your post game comments are, you know, we really got to figure out how to gel together as a team.
We have a lot of new pieces. It's like, well, Louisville doesn't seem to have that problem. And they have a first year coach and you're in year 4. And then this is from a large picture. This is something I've talked about ad nauseam. You know, when you look at coaches, wherever they are kind of is where they are by year 3 or 4, you know?
And so if you're looking at any of the coaches at the top echelon of college basketball by year three or year 4, you have a pretty good idea of where they're going to be. A, A coach who takes a team to a national title in the last 1520 years, it's very rare that they're still having a hard time competing in big games in year 4 of their program. Normally by year 4, you're seeing those things happen.
That's what's concerning. But. This season specifically, you know, you mentioned this in the VIP video, but it just we will rephrase it again because it's going to come up over and over again. The problem we had last year is that we had no good non conference wins. And you know, people can look at it and I've had friends like, Hey, it's it's November.
You still have all the big 10. It's like, well, but the big 10 comes around, unless you're going to go like, you know, 15 and two in the big 10 or whatever number of games is, you know, you're you're going to win some, you're going to lose some, but so is everybody else. And you're not going to be able to really gain anything on your metrics.
Your metrics are kind of going to be mostly locked in once you get to the big 10. And what's going to help you is those non conference games, much like in 2023, we had that road win Xavier, which just kept giving dividends throughout the entire year as they stayed highly ranked. And then that helped us with our metrics. I, I don't know, man, it's, it's tough.
And you know, for a program that builds itself on trying to be at the top level, to have another non conference where you're not going to have any real, not even competing with the big boys is, is tough. And, you know, I, I think it's going to continue to be something that hampers us throughout the year as we get into the meat of the Big 10 schedule because you're just going to have a real hard time showing where are those tier one Rd. wins. I mean. But let's let's.
Look first at style of play a little more in depth and what's what we're seeing in terms of the numbers. And then let's talk about the schedule 'cause I think these are two separate issues. And it's like, again, I wanted to, I think leading by talking about kind of the atmosphere around this is important and, and I think 1.
Atmosphere thing just in a word that you talked about was just it it is interesting to me you said you know division, those kind of division, the fan base it is really interesting for years was always the talk of we got to bring an IU guy back it it's interesting that you know people weren't happy under Archie. It didn't feel like there was division. It was just like hey this guy's not doing a great job we probably need to move on.
It's really interesting that you get an IU guy in who you feel like would would understand what the culture is and all that and then. Now you're, you're, he's the one kind of causing division. I I think that's interesting. It's, you know, I, I've thought about that a lot because you're right. And it's actually kind of an
underrated aspect of this. I mean, Mike Woodson has done a lot of things that have helped to restore some aspects of traditional IU basketball culture and I think he deserves credit for that. I think it was something that was needed in terms of smoothing out the remaining ruffled edges that still exist from the night situation and everything that fell out over the the 20 years after that. But I think what's increasingly true is that is no longer important to the level that it used to be.
And instead what is important is the style of play and the roster management like that has become so paramount. And if if you think about the. The teams and the coaches that are really faring well right now in college basketball, it's, you know, coaches that have created a style of play that really works for what they're doing and they've been able to recruit to
that effectively. The way that they're approaching the game is a lot more modern in terms of either their defensive performance or their offensive performance. And I think the big problem that I've. Seen out of Woodson is, you know, so much of what gave the what gave the Knight era basketball teams the moral authority to be viewed even in seasons where they weren't playing as well as they could have was this idea that, hey, we
know this system wins. We know that what Indiana does on offense works when it's worked to perfection. Indiana's really hard to beat. They win championships. We know defensively the same thing. And I would say that Woodson is simply not demonstrated in any of the years so far that this system that he's tried to play on both sides is actually sufficient to winning anything other than a middling level of basketball games in the
conference. And so I think a lot of the way that Woodson tried to address the crowd and tried to address himself within the context of of that and a lot of Woodson's defenders, that's the piece that's missing. It's like you, you can't act with that approach unless you've got the results to back it up and those results just haven't materialized. And yes, there have been good individual moments. There's, you know, there's been the wins over Purdue, there was the win over Kent State and the
tournament. You know, there were there's been other little things like that, the win at Xavier, But if that's been undermined, not just by the overall lack of high end wins and and competing for championships, but it's also been undermined by these particular types of performances where you get a bunch of really highly committed, highly invested IU fans flying places to watch your team play games and you get embarrassed in those games.
And much like, I mean, the previous games, it's been kind of one offs, you know, you, you, you go to Vegas, you get blown out by Arizona, you go to Kansas, you get blown out by Kansas, you go to New York, you get blown out by UConn. Fortunately of the second game here, it's like 2 games in a row. The style of play that you have chosen to play with your chosen roster, the roster you went out and spent multiple millions of dollars on in in NIL was looked
inadequate. Like looked looked like a a second tier team compared to not just Gonzaga, who everybody expected, but Louisville, who brought in what 13 new players and a new coach that that is really hard to come back from. And and so I think about that and it's like Woodson is still, if I'm playing, you know, our amateur psychologist here a little bit. I think he's still proceeding from the idea that, hey, this system works.
I know it works. And what's working against him now is a lot of IU fans are looking at it and saying we're not seeing the results. So how can you be this dedicated to this system that isn't working and speak, you know, like when you're talking about the kinds of things that were mentioned on senior night, those resonated with fans because I think the fans were like, well, we might listen to that if we were seeing more results. And now this season starts the
way that it has. And I think it didn't take very much. For a lot of fans to get upset really quickly because that was the base level that they were coming in with. When the last thing before we move on Atlanta. So I, I look at like my father-in-law, who is, is a sports fan, but not deep in the weeds of IU. And you know, we're up in, you know, we're up in Fort Wayne for Thanksgiving and I turned the game on just to watch a little bit of it. And he's like, oh, man, IU still having trouble.
And it's like he's done like he, he's like, he doesn't have to win my father-in-law. But like that, you know, you and I are a different breed. People listening to the show are very invested in IU basketball and we're going to live and breathe in and out. Part of what made IU special was people would check in and be like, oh, wow, they're good. Like you, you'd get this kind of ancillary fan base that kind of builds up. And that's what gives you the power to to be a major blue blood.
Those people check in like these Atlantis games are really important, even the Vegas ones, the New York ones, like they're important because over the holidays, people start to kind of check in and those, you know, passive fans kind of look up. It's like, oh, Nah, we still are getting blown out by Louisville, man, that sucks. All right, well, I'll check in
later. It's like then they won't check back in and you, you, you, you start to lose the momentum And, and it's just, it's a bummer that again, you had another high profile and you weren't even able. To compete anyway. No again, yeah. So when we look at the numbers, here's what's disturbing to me. And you know, when you hear all this talk about, you know, we're going to change the offense, shoot more threes.
I mean, let's start there because that's that's become is something that really you clearly separates Indiana offensively from what other teams are doing, teams that Indiana would like to aspire to be as a program in terms of success. Maybe not necessarily like be exactly them. Indiana is shooting better from three. I talked about this in the in the podcast that I did the other day. They're shooting 35.8% from three. That's 89th in the country. That is significantly better
than what they shot last year. Last year they were shooting 32.4% and you know, 35.8% is about a percentage point less than what they shot in the the year that they went and and beat Kent State in the tournament. Trace Jackson Davis is senior. So you you do like to see that. And the free throw shootings gotten better after three straight years of the free throw shooting being bad, they've actually jumped their free throw shooting by 12%. Last year it was 65.4 or 66.4,
this year at 78.1. So you you are seeing some positive changes in terms of shooting. The problem is that is the rate the, the three-point average that Indiana is shooting in terms of the amount of threes that they're shooting in relation to the overall points that they're scoring is 29.9. The three-point attempts to field goal attempts, that is 300 and 48th in the country. And Scott, I, I got news for you. There's only 364 teams in Division One.
Their assist rate is still high, but that's always very high as a very assist focused team. But just that right there to to be after seven games, 300 and 48th in the country in field goal or three-point attempts as a ratio of overall field goal attempts that I mean, it's a, it's bad strategy in an era when so many teams get so many points from the three-point line. But B, it just looks so out of step with the teams that Indiana's trying to compete against.
And that has a direct impact on recruiting. It has a direct impact on just the overall perception of the program. Yeah, I mean, I I see it with my son who who I coach in basketball. He just loves to shoot threes. And it is something that kids like to do. Is it something that's been brought up a couple of times that, you know, when you watch this team, it's like, man, does that look like fun to play? It's like probably not. And and that's what a lot of
recruits see. But here's the thing, you know, the a couple a couple points that you brought up, you know, the what's odd is the years that we've shot better from three. You know, like Woodson's first year, we shot 33% from 3 wasn't awful. We were taking more. Sorry I'm messing this up. His first year we shot 33% from three. We took 31% of our shots were from three. The next year, Trace Jackson Davis is senior year, we actually shot better from 336%.
We were 39th in the country, but we shot less. We shot 26% of our shots from three. So as we get better shooting threes, we take less of them. And and the other argument that that always kind of I roll my eyes is the idea of like, well, there's a lot of ways to win basketball games. Like, OK, there is you, you can.
But if if you're going to be 350th in the country in any aspect of any of the metrics, whether it's rebounding or two point percentage or free throw or steal, like if you're going to be this off the mark of everything else, you have to be elite somewhere else. And if so, if you're not going to shoot a bunch of threes, fine in that scenario, as you and I have talked about, knowing basketball, you probably need to
rebound at an elite percentage. You need to be unbelievably efficient with your two point shots. You're probably going to go to the line a lot. You got to be really good at free throws and you need to be really good defensively. And you got to pick one of those things and maybe be in the top 20 in the country. And I think that's the problem is this is being wrapped up in like, hey, man, the group think everyone's got to do the same thing. It's like, no, but then then
where are we elite? Because if you're going to be this hyper deficient in one area, you know, that's the problem. And the last thing I'll say is where it is really frustrating is it's just so unmodern with the way basketball is played, but it also just is the way it's played. You know, you get down by 7 to 10 to Gonzaga and it's like you, you can't come back when you're just hitting. You know, it's two and they hit a three and then two and then they miss and then it's like 2
and then a three. Like when other teams are shooting threes at such a higher clip than you are. You really have to find a way to get ahead in every game and kind of grind teams out 'cause once you're down by 10 or 12 it becomes unbelievably hard to get back into the game when you're just taking twos every time. There's another aspect to this and it's something that's become a big problem now it's it's a
recoverable problem. But you know, when in Mike Woodson's first year Indiana turned the ball over on 17.2% of their possessions, which was actually top third in the country, that in good like you know, it was 101st in the country was the ranking. The year that they were the four seed, they only turned the ball over on 78% of possessions, which was better, excuse me, a 16.8% of possession, 78th in the
country. Now, what's interesting to me is that last year Indiana turned the ball over on 17.5% of possessions, almost the same number as Woodson's first year, but instead of ranking 101st, that percentage now ranked 208th. And what you can take from that is that a lot of teams across the country got better at taking care of the ball. Indiana got worse. Now, of course, well, it, well, Indiana got worse relative to
everybody else. Now you can attribute that to OK, well, OK, you lose Xavier Johnson, you've got Gabe Cups and Trey Galloway doing most of the ball handling. That's a rough spot. You would, you know, you'd be like, OK, fine. This year, Indiana's turning the ball over on almost 20% of possessions, 19.7%. Both real and relative, right? Right. There's 275th in the country and that is a disaster.
It's a disaster for a team that doesn't take a lot of threes because if you're turning the ball over on two or three additional percent of possessions throughout the course of a game, that is two or three possessions that if your opponent hits a three, you've double whammied yourself on. And and so you put yourself in a position where your possessions
have to count even more. And unfortunately for Indiana, it it, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they would be having this many turnover problems because they got a point guard like they brought a guy in at point guard who was supposed to be, you know, the, the answer there that was that was what was going to fix the issue that Indiana was having. And, and if you look at Miles Rice, like his, his assist rate's been really good. He's he's got an assist rate of
22.6. He's 300 and 17th in the country. His turnover rate is 25.3%, which I mean, that's, that's wildly not good for a starting point guard. Last year, by comparison, Gabe Cubs had a turnover percentage of 24.8%. And in the games that he played, Xavier Johnson had a turnover rate of 25.6%. So the reason I bring this up is. It almost feels like the offensive discipline that Indiana was playing with those first couple of seasons under Woodson.
And maybe a lot of this had to do with the fact you had Trace Jackson Davis drawing players in defensively. He could. He was a very good passer out of the post. That's gone now. Indiana doesn't have that aspect of their game. And so it takes what's already kind of a tenuous offense to win games with and makes it even worse to win games with because you're you're just missing those extra possessions and that's points that you can't afford to not score.
Yeah, no, I I completely agree. And it won't again, it just goes to a team that looks kind of undisciplined. I mean, it's something we talk about in football, a lot of team that turns the ball over a lot. It it it oddly, it's oddly they they look disciplined and undisciplined. And what I mean is like they turn the ball over a lot.
They miss defensive assignments, but yet they look disciplined in a way that Archie's team look the same way where it's like they're they're so in their head of trying to run whatever system they have to run it. It's almost like at times they're not playing basketball. Like I remember there's something Tony Adrani and I talked about, you know, with like Rob Phenisee, like just kind of looks like dude, just go play hyper. Like he looks so in his own
head. And you see it with the way they play these Woodson teams the same way. It's like they're so focused on trying to play whatever this style is and get to the right place that they're not playing basketball and they look both disciplined and undisciplined at the same time. Defensively, this was one of the things we talked about a lot at the end of last year.
And you know, as much rightful attention was paid to how bad Indiana's offense was at times down the stretch last year, defensively they were pretty deficient as well. You know, they finished last year going off of Ken Palm, 84th in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency. You know, so the idea was, always, and this was where I was a little skeptical about how good Indiana was going to be this year, but I was going to give them the benefit of the
doubt. It's like you were 105th in offensive efficiency and 84th in defensive efficiency. And if you're going to be a team that's going to compete for a Sweet 16, both of those numbers probably need to be in the top 20, at the very least the top 30. So, so far this year through seven games and you still got a little bit of leakage from last year in the stats. But according to Kenpom, Indiana's 48th in adjusted offensive efficiency and 71st in adjusted defensive efficiency.
Even if you take Torvic, which is generally a little bit kinder to Indiana for whatever reason, through these metrics, Torvic's got Indiana 37th offensively and 65th defensively. Still not good enough in either category. The the defense is a real issue because you've obviously got much better rim protection now with Ballo than you had last year where wasn't quite the same type of rim protector.
I mean, last year Indiana was 54th in the country and block percentage, they blocked 7.6% of of shot attempts. This year, the block percentage is lower, but Indiana's 18th in the country. So they do have a legitimate rim protection right now, but it's not translating into defense. And the reason why, Scott, if you look at the numbers, it's not shooting percentage. Indiana is actually doing a pretty good job of holding their opponents. Their opponents are only shooting 29.9% from three.
They're only shooting 48% from 2. Indiana is doing fine in those areas, but where they're getting killed right now is on the offensive glass for the other team. Indiana is allowing a opponents to get offensive rebounds at a 33.5% clip. That's 200 and 91st. And for those of you who've been following along, you know that an offensive rebound surrendered means an extended possession and a greater chance for the other team to score. So that's what worries me.
It's like you've got 2 bigs, and unlike last year, you've got two bigs who are pretty much in vicinity of the post. They're not rebounding, they're not getting good rebound performances out of their guards or their swing men, and so they're undoing themselves there. Now, is that a system issue or is that an effort issue? It's probably a little bit of both, but it's worth noting.
Indiana was bad last year. At that, you know that where Indiana really fell down last year defensively was they didn't force turnovers. Well, they're forcing more turnovers this year. They're forcing 4% more turnovers, but their offensive rebounding allowed has gone up by 4 percentage points. So whatever gains they've gotten in the turnover forcing, they've lost in the offensive rebounding. It's it's all true.
Here's what's wild in Woodson's four years, you had Trace Jackson Davis, who we can all agree was, I mean, a little bit undersized, but just a unbelievable post player at IU. The next year you have Khalil Ware who had a phenomenal year was lottery pick or a high first round pick, if not a lottery pick. And then this year, by the way, you also had Malik renew there in over, you know, overlapping,
though growing as a player. This year you have Malik Renew, who's a a very solid home grown post player and you get Balo, one of the best portal post players, you know, a 7 foot beast of a guy. I'm looking at the offensive rebounding, both defense, you know, against the defense and our own offensive rebounding. The only year we've ever been in the top 100 in the country, it was Woodson's first year. Our defensive allowed offensive rebound, we were 64th in the
country every other year. I mean, right now we're 200 and 91st in the country on giving up offensive rebounds and us getting offensive rebounds. We cracked it at 99 in the country. To have that string of big men coming through this and kind of becoming big men, you and running your entire everything as a big man centered offense and defense, to have these really sub optimal rebounding numbers is kind of wild. And and that's, you know, just taking a step back. That's what's so frustrating
with all of this. Galen is this is on the heels. It's not like we lost recruits or we've had it. Yeah, yes, Xavier Johnson was injured last year, but this is coming off of back-to-back years where I continue to say you give Woodson an A or an A+ in what he brought in talent wise in the offseason in both, recruit in both. Sorry, not recruiting, but well, some recruiting, but mostly in flipping, flipping recruits and in the transfer portal.
So you I have a really hard time saying, well, it's talent OR we're not rebounding because we don't have the big men like you. You had a generational big man, you had a lottery pick, big man. You know how maybe the best portal big man, it can't be
talent. So that's why the the spotlight continues to turn toward the coaching staff because in the system, because you've had probably the best two years of talent acquisition on this team and you're still seeing these numbers that don't make a lot of sense given what you have on the team position wise. Yeah, I mean, that's where I keep going back and forth because there's clearly moments when IU individual players just aren't doing the right things.
But it does kind of feel more systematic. And and and it's it's a problem that it can get fixed, but it needs to get fixed fast. And this is where, you know, to some degree the lack of good non conference opponents may be a silver lining to some degree, but it may also be fool's gold.
Because I could see Indiana going out, winning the next few games, coasting into the, you know, the start of the, the, the, the real Big 10 schedule in January, thinking they've got this stuff solved and then having it fall apart. And that's kind of what's happened to Indiana over the
course of the last few years. If you think about it, like go back to Woodson's first season and you had a situation where Indiana, they were 16 and 5:00 and 7:00 and 4:00 at the end of January. And then they lost five in a row and seven of nine. And they managed to pull themselves together in the Big 10 tournament, but they were very close to not making the tournament at all the following
year. It kind of worked out, but still, you know, Indiana lost four games down the stretch from January 31st to February 28th and and only won five in that stretch. You know, last year was obviously a real problem and that happened earlier from the beginning of January to the end of February. They lost what, 12345678 of 11 games? And so I do worry this year with the amount that needs to be fixed, either in the game planning or in the effort or
some combination of both. You don't have a lot of live ammo experiences really with IU going up against good competition. And while there's nobody stellar in the Big 10, you've also got a lot of teams that are solidly in that kind of 15 to 50 range. And those are the teams that Indiana has tended to struggle with in the Big 10. Those are the teams you've got to figure out how to beat
consistently. And I don't know, and I don't think any of us are going to know until they actually start playing those games, whether Indiana will have fixed all of the problems that we've seen pop up here over the first seven games. I mean, I'll, I'll ask you this in kind of a roundabout way, like based on where we're at now, what do you think Indiana would have to do win wise to get
into the NCAA Tournament? And, and I, I ask it with this caveat, is it right now on Ken Pom we are projected to go 17 and 14 and 9:00 and 11:00 in the Big 10. That's a projection, right? Things can change. That's not going to be where it goes. But I've you and I have been looking at Ken Pom for 20 years now. I will say this, it's normally not far off. Like normally you don't see a team projected to go 9:00 and 11:00 that goes 15 and five.
It could happen, it probably has happened in some spots along the way, but most of the time you're looking at maybe a two to three-game variance and that's pretty extreme. So looking at that as like, you know, if you say that twelve wins is probably everything going right for Indiana, maybe 13, is that enough to get us, you know, solidly in the tournament? What do you think? So a lot of it depends on who the wins are against, not how
many wins there are. And this is where Atlantis, I think we're going to look back on it and say this was a real problem. And, and look, a lot of it is bad strategy, frankly, in terms of scheduling because I, I mentioned this on Twitter. I also mentioned it on the. The the the. Podcast I did earlier, let's say Indiana beat Louisville. Let's just say they won that game. You're you're so right on. This they would have played West Virginia and Oklahoma. They wouldn't have played Gonzaga.
They wouldn't have played. They actually kind of got lucky, you know, in terms of a shot at playing a good team. Gonzaga lost that first game, yeah. And then we, you know, they of course, Indiana loses that game anyway. But you know, you can't take bracket style exempt tournaments and just count on the idea that the best teams are going to advance. And that's been extreme this year. I mean, look what happened in Maui with UConn, Iowa State
losing in the first round. So you look at the schedule now, Indiana's best win is a home win against South Carolina, who's not going to make the tournament. They just beat Providence, who's also not going to make the tournament. Their remaining non conference schedule, they have four games left. They have Sammy Houston State who's 126 in Kenpom. They're not going to. That's not going to matter. That's not going to help. Miami of Ohio is 185th in Kenpom, that's not going to help.
Chattanooga is 171st in Kenpom, that's not going to help. Winthrop is 165, that's not going to help. And the problem with these games, and this is where we've talked a lot about the ideal approach to scheduling, you've got to beat those teams by at least the margins that you're being projected. And that's hard against those kind of 100 to 200 style teams, especially if you are not totally clicking as a a roster yourself.
Because right now Indiana, according to Kenpom, in order to get positive benefits metrics wise going to have to beat Sam Houston State by at least 12, Miami of Ohio by at least 15, Chattanooga by at least 15 and Winter by at least 15. And this is. Or this is a team this year and last year that it looks like they have a hard time locking in for 40 minutes, which is what you have to do to put some of
these teams away. And I mean, all you have to do is look at that UNC Greensboro game, right, which was another one where they needed to win by more points than what they won in that game. Now, they did give them credit. They beat Providence by significantly more. So they do have that gear. My point, though, is that you take those games out, none of those four games are going to help Indiana make the tournament. And in fact, they could all hurt Indiana's chances of making the
tournament. If they don't win convincingly in each of them, then you get into the Big 10. So right now, Torvic is projecting Indiana with an overall record of 18 and 13 and 10 and 10. Ken Poms got them at 17 and 14 and 9:00 and 11:00. Prior to the Providence game, the projection was like 16 and
15 and 8:00 and 12:00. So if you look at the schedule that Indiana's got right now, first of all, I'll note that if you take the Ken Pom probabilities right now, it has Indiana losing 6 games and eight of their last ten in a row, six in a row and eight of their last ten from the end of January to the end of or to the middle of March.
Looking at the Kenpom projections, January and February would be a We might need to get the Counting Crows to redo their song along December and make it long. January and along January you have loss, loss, loss, loss, home win against Maryland and then loss, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss. And then win, win. And then two more losses to close out the season. So what are the marquee games left on Indiana's schedule? So you've got there, this is where you first look at Rd.
games. So here's the road games that Indiana's got the rest of the season. They've got to go to Nebraska, a place that's been a joy to play in for Indiana recently. What you said before and it's like it's 100% true. It's just like take a period it, it shouldn't be that way. Like that's insane that we just like Nebraska, like we keep adding these. We should be getting rid of like Wisconsin being a house, but we just keep adding houses of horrors to our Big 10 schedule.
It's like East Lansing now. Nebraska, Really. Sorry, no, you're right. Then then that's your that's your December Rd. game. That's on a Friday. That's that's a great Friday right before finals. Real motivation on the road there. If you're any TI don't care who you are.
Indiana, whoever, then their next Rd. game in the Big 10 is at Penn State, another place that's been just a tremendous trip here lately for Indiana. Then you go down the list, you got to go to Iowa. Again, not a place Indiana has historically played that well at. Ohio State that that's a marquee game. That's the type. And Indiana did go in there and win surprisingly last year. But you've got a new coach. That was kind of the game that got Chris Holtman fired, if I
remember correctly. They have to go to Northwestern, not a place Indiana has played particularly well, and also not a game you're going to get much juice from because Northwestern's 65th right now in Kenpalm. You're that's not going to count as a good win at Purdue, at Wisconsin, at Michigan State, and then you get at Washington, which Indiana is projected to win by a point. And then you got to also do at Oregon on the same trip and
Oregon's legitimately good. So out of all of that, your marquee opportunities are at Ohio State, at Purdue, at Wisconsin, maybe at Michigan State and at Oregon. So I think you got to win two of those games if if you have no non conference victories, I think you need two wins in those types of games. To try to develop a resume that isn't just a. Hold homecourt right and and hold pretty good serve. At home you can, you can afford
a couple of losses at home. I don't think, I don't think you're at a point now, especially with the unbalanced schedules. But it's like look at the teams that Indiana's got coming in. They've they've got Illinois and I'm this is not all of them. This is just the marquee ones. They get Illinois at home on the 14th of January. They got Maryland, who's semi decent on the 26th of January. They're 34th in Kent Palm. They got Michigan, who looks
legitimately pretty decent. They're 22nd in Kent Palm. You got UCLA on Valentine's Day, who's 17th in Kent Palm. You've got Purdue on the 23rd at the Sunday game and then you got Ohio State at home, so that's six games there and you probably need to win five of those four, four. I think if you win 2 Rd. games, you could afford to go four and two in those, but you got to win all the rest of your games as well. Now, again, I'm not saying
Indiana can't do that. I think Indiana's got the talent to do it. I don't think Indiana is playing a style of basketball or playing consistently enough over 40 minutes that they will be able to win all of those games. But that's essentially the road that's in front of them. And oh, by the way, you also can't afford the random stumbles that we've seen Indiana have consistently over the course.
Of, you know, really the last decade, you know, you, you can't afford to lose at home to Penn State like Indiana did last year when they lost by 14. You can't afford to lose at home to Northwestern like Indiana did last year or Nebraska like Indiana did last year. You're just not going to have that flexibility. And and that is something that's really concerning. It's going to take a level of consistency and focus that we just haven't seen on the non trace Jackson Davis rosters thus far.
Where does that where does that stability come from this year? You know, is this where Trey Galloway's able to take the team and put them on his shoulders? I don't know if Trey Galloway's really capable of doing quite. That from where he sits within the the pecking order on the roster and what he brings to the table. But I'm not sure who else it comes from. And that is a real concern as
you think about like gaming out. What would Indiana need to do to even make the field, let alone be in an advantageous seating situation? That seems even more difficult
at this point, unless. You see a big turn around when just making the field does feel and we're just we're talking here, not saying it, but if that becomes it does feel like that's moving the goal posts because it always felt like this year it was like, all right, well, this is this is a roster where you could compete for a big 10 title, No worst be third or fourth in the big 10 and really go for a protected seed in the
tournament. You know, this is I'm I'm sorry, I'm going to take a step back just and and go back to the schedule. But you know, I was also thinking of this, that it it it it it feels like we're losing the thread of of what Indiana basketball was just little bit, little bit. And what what I mean by that is as you're rattling off that non conference, I think back to you did a great podcast couple years ago, one of the the history of,
you know, sports. You did like 93 Indiana basketball and you look at their non conference and it is just banger after banger. It's like just a great, you know, greatest hits album, just, you know, play the top 15 team, top twelve team. But that was something, you know, I remember going with my dad to games, you know, every November in Assembly Hall, like, Oh yeah, Kansas.
No, we got Kentucky coming or not Kentucky, but you know, we have we have Kansas or we have, you know, a spunky UTEP team or just you you'd have a lot of these big games. Now as a ticket holder, it's like, all right, I get South Carolina that that's awesome. Like and that like that is something real. As somebody who pays for tickets, it's like it does suck that all of the non conference games are just kind of garbage wins that we kind of struggle to
get through. And then the other piece is, you know, you mentioned like Trey Galloway, so much of Indiana basketball has. And I, I, I take a minute while, as I say this, I don't want to get too far down this road, but it's been about having a team of, you know, people from Indiana having, you know, and I don't believe you have to recruit just the state to, to be good. But the, you look at the title, the, the really good teams have always had some Indiana kids on it.
Like that's always been something and that's been something unique about Indiana basketball. It's not just UNLV. We're just going to get dudes in and just pay to play and do it. Like Indiana basketball does have an ethos. So I don't want to get into going the right way. But you've always had Indiana kids kind of lead Indiana, even in the last couple years.
You have the Yogi Ferrell team. It's kid from Indiana, Cody Zeller. You know, that team had also had, you know, Jordan Halls and it can work. Look up at West Lafayette like they're doing with Indiana players up there. You kind of lost that thread with this team as well. And now it just becomes all right, man, just win. Like it's like, all right, I'm not paying to see great games in the non conference.
I don't really have players that I've connected with or that have come through the Indiana basketball system, which leads to your point of like, who really is leading this team? And I think this is all part of that Stew where it's like, all right, it just now it's it's a business decision, like just win games because that's all you. You've kind of ripped away all the other pieces of playing some unique teams and not having, you know, that that threat of Indiana players on the team.
Yeah. You know, look, it's, it's one of those things. There's a, there's a cultural aspect to it. There's A and what I mean by that is when you're the, the basketball's changing, college basketball's changing, college sports are changing. And, and so I think it's really easy to get caught up too much. And well, we used to do things this way and we had success. But I think your point is valid because there's, there's clearly we've had good individual players come in.
Khalil Ware was a good individual player that came in and he performed well. He got himself drafted, but there was just like that team was not very good. And so, you know, you've had that in IU history before where you've had good individual performers, but then you've had things not work, you know, well, for the team overall. Walt Bellamy, I mean, he was on teams that were on probation. So it's kind of like, you know, great player, top draft pick and
couldn't quite get it done. But it's Noah. Noah Vonleh is another one. Yeah, absolutely. So these things do occur, but I guess what what's problematic here is you're, it almost feels like you're not giving yourself the best chance to win with those types of players. And as you mentioned, there's a, a gradually less tied in core of, of, of fans because you don't have the this constant success that's tying you to the program. You don't have the development of players.
And again, that's probably going away just in general in college basketball. But it does leave Indiana in this weird spot where so many of the things that the program was built on just don't seem to be working particularly well. And what's the solution? Like, how does that get
answered? And this is where I my hope, and just to kind of finish things off here, my hope was that we were actually getting changes that that the systems were going to change, that the teams were going to go out and play with a renewed sense of togetherness and focus. And look, that could still happen this year, that the system's changing becomes progressively less likely every time we see, you know, a game go by.
But the the effort levels and the intensity and the focus could still be there and coalesce. I think that's what Indiana needs at this point. And I think as as much as the fan base reacted negatively, understandably so to those Atlantis games, you know, they did react well to like Langdon Hatton playing really hard and Luke Goody showing fire in the in the huddle. That's good. We want to see those things. People like the effort that Trey Galloway gives.
You know, I think that I've liked individual moments with Miles Rice and I'm hoping that he's going to settle in. I've liked some of the individual moments on offense. With Renew and with Balo. But then there's been some things with fouls, with Renew, with defensive effort, with from Balo, where you're just like, OK, I can't feel completely great about that. And you can kind of go down the list with every player on the roster.
There's something to like about all of them, but they don't really seem to be coalescing into something that you can feel confident going into a game and saying, hey, we're going to win this game. That's my big hope for Indiana is that that changes over the course of the next couple of weeks that you really start to get, you know, you you get Mackenzie and Baca rolling on both ends of the floor as opposed to just the offensive side. You get Cannon Carlisle back from injury.
You get Bryson Tucker more minutes and hopefully get his overall offensive performance up. There's there's so many little things that add up to big things. I just don't know what the route is for Indiana other than that that because right now they kind of are who they are. They're going to have to play significantly over their heads moving forward to be significantly better than they currently are right now. And I'm not sure that that's the trajectory that they're on at
this point. Yeah, I mean, I would just I would caution everybody and I have to caution myself too. Like just don't don't get yourself in the in the the thought process. Like, well, they can just start shooting more 3. It's going to be like if this team is not going to do that, like we there's enough evidence now that would be out of the realm. So I look at it as I'm curious to see where they're going to try and become the most efficient in the country at.
Are they going to try and bring their turnovers down? Because I, I think rebounding would be the place to go. And that's what I would be looking at is can they become just an elite rebounding team on either side of the ball? Can they just get more and more efficient on offense or maybe bring their defensive stats down? I would just urge everybody don't get in the fallacy of like, oh, well, they can just start shooting more threes.
Or you have the one game where Mbako, you know, shoots, you know, 6 from 10 from three. It's like, all right, now we're going to start shooting threes. Like, I don't think that's going to be the route because it just hasn't been. You've had these old blips of games where you shoot a bunch of threes and then we go back to either not shooting threes or shooting them poorly. I, I think that's, I think
everyone's in a better mindset. If you just start looking at other places like, hey, maybe and I think hopefully the coaching staff is doing the same thing. You know, they they have this. We've we've railed on the schedule. But the good thing is you do have this moment where you have a nice little basically month runway between now and January 5th where you can be in the lab
and can you work some stuff out? And can you work with your post players to get them to put the effort and the discipline to go out and and rebound at a high level? Because there's really nothing. This team is big. Like you watch them, it's like, dude, this team is big. They're large, They're they're imposing. There's no reason why they couldn't be a top 2030 team in the country on offensive and defensive rebounding.
And if you do that, it covers up a lot of the three-point shooting, It covers up a lot of the turnovers. So that that's what I'm going to hopefully look for over the next couple of weeks because they they do have a runway to get 5678 wins here kind of right. The ship put the Atlantis thing behind them and then get into the meat of that January schedule with hopefully kind of a new identity in those
respects. Yeah, I mean, from my point, you know, from my vantage point, when I look at the stats as we close things up here, like you've got two top 300 scorers from an efficiency perspective in the country right now in Mackenzie and Bacco and Malik Renew. You have a top 50 guy in assists in Trey Galloway in relatively limited minutes. You've got Omar Barlow, who's got one of the best effective field goal percentages in the
entire country. These are not numbers that should be equating to A5 and two team whose best win is at home against South Carolina and who lost by a combined, what you know, 44 points against the two teams with a pulse that they played on their schedule so far. So look, the pieces are there. There's got to be more coalescing. There's got to be a different approach.
I think the rest of the way. I think you hit the nail on the head and I hope they get there because man, the last thing I want is another like war in in IU basketball. The last thing I want to see is is more angst and more infighting and people going at each other.
It's just, it's been so long and look, I think IU fans are are right to be frustrated, but got to just make things so much easier If IU as a basketball team could pull themselves together, figure out how to play as best they can with this system that they're playing. Because when they're all playing at that level, as you said, they are kind of they're a top 20 roster in terms of talent. It's just a long route to get from where they're at right now to that.
And fortunately, they still got 2/3 of the season to do it. So, you know, maybe that's the silver lining or 3/4 of the season to do it. Yeah, no, and I, I agree with you. I don't, I don't want to have another slog through January, February, get to the infighting, have all new factions created like we, we just it it'd be nice to have a season that just kind of didn't have a a massive anxiety point, which I think we've talked about. It's been like 9 or 10 years and it's been quite a while.
It it's really, it's, it's been a while. I'll just leave it at that. Like it's, it's been a while. I would like to have a season where we can just focus on some good basketball, look at the wins and it would be nice to get into March and be solidly in the tournament. Like we were tour, you know, whatever. Two years ago we we had the four seed like that. That would be nice. It'd be nice to be off the
bubble. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens and certainly we'll be back to talk more basketball. Indiana with a big game coming up this week. Two big games in terms of just maintaining the course and starting to get things back on track as they play Sam Houston State Tuesday at 7:30 and then a Friday home game against Miami of Ohio. So all of that coming up, we'll see what happens with it all, but we appreciate you folks.
Just in Georgia football team made the NCAA basketball tournament like they they with three losses. They're good enough to make their they're they got a better protected seat. So there you go. They got a four seat already. So those set those boys. Deserved it, they really did. So anyway, for Scott, I'm Galen. This is Crimson cast. Thanks again for joining us here as we cover IU basketball and we'll continue to cover IU football. More programming coming up later
on this week. Might have a live watch party going for that Sam Houston State game because we've also got the College Football Playoff reveal happening at the same time. Lots of stuff going on. Anyway, we'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the Bison, stay, never daunted. So on everybody.