You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast. Alan Clavio, Scott Caulfield joining you. It is Sunday, January 12th, 2025, and we're back with more IU sports talk as we get towards the middle part of January here and continue to wind through the Big 10 schedule for the men. And well, Scott, 2 steps forward, one steps back or one step back with this basketball team again. And we're going to dive into what happened in that Iowa game.
Look a little more holistically at what's going on with the season since the last time we talked, and we'll see what else we talked about as we move forward with this. But Scott, good to see you again. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. I love going off off script real quick to throw you off. But I mean IU football real quick, like it's better to have
won. So I don't love the idea of like, hey, man, you know, we lost, but we're, you know, but our two losses look pretty good right now. If you look at the national championship game, it is, you know, you look at that, it's like, all right, there's only one team in the country who lost to those two teams and nobody else. And that would be us. And again, it's much better to win and, and make the finals.
But it it is funny, like there's not a lot of talk anymore of strength of schedule or quality losses. Like those are two quality losses. Those are two good teams we lost to. It is. And you know, it's funny because a, I've seen a lot of people tweeting about that or posting about that. And, and I think they should, I, I have seen people be like, well, you know, it's loser mentality if you, if you're, you know, celebrating losses.
And my response to that and what I would recommend everybody's responses to that be should someone bring it up in conversation? First of all, what's happening in your life that you're talking with someone who's bringing that up in conversation? If you're on Twitter, and I say this as someone who's on Twitter all the time, that's your own fault. But you know, the response is IU fans aren't celebrating the losses.
IU fans are reacting to the hideously disproportionate and narratively incorrect response or, or, you know, to IU losing those games. IU loses to Ohio State, who's in the national title game and has looked incredibly dominant in most of the games that they played in this playoff. And everybody was told, oh, Indiana lost. They don't possibly belong in the College Football Playoff. Indiana loses by 10 to Notre Dame at at Notre Dame.
And everybody says, oh, well, they clearly didn't belong in the playoff. You know, Colin Coward's like, let's never invite Indiana again. And then you watch the rest of the playoffs, you're like, oh, Notre Dame's actually good. Who would have thought? So, yeah, it's it's a it's an interesting spot for IU fans to be in. And it's been funny watching non IU fans pick up on this. Like several of the accounts that follow college football have, you know, picked up on
this since then. A couple of them tweeted out like we all owe Indiana an apology. And I'm like, what I what I find most amazing is again, Indiana has broken the national media landscape when it comes to football, where we're still talking about Indiana and it's the 12th of January. We're not talking about SMU. We're not talking about Clemson. We're not talking about, you know, any of these other teams. We're still talking about Indiana. That that's that's good.
I'm curious what the narrative when the preseason polls come out and we're ranked like 19th and what what's that going to be like? You know, you can't you're not allowed to do that. Like there'll there'll be some other reason why like, you know, Feinbaum and you know, Alabama need to be pissed at Indiana for being there. It's like, it really is it. It's like the, you know, Revenge of the Nerds. And like the nerd is in the the cool kids party. It's like, how can we get this
out? Like, how can we stop this infestation because we let them in? Illinois is coming next. Like I, I want to, I want to get to our ad reads first, but I, you know, sorry, but I think it's an interesting. In fact, let me we'll quickly go to the ad reads and then I want to address that 'cause I don't think it's gonna be quite the same. But anyway, first of all, just a reminder folks, that if you haven't yet, please go to homefieldapparel.com and patronize the heck out of that website.
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network YouTube channel. I'll put a link in the. Sub stack message, Political joke. Galen's calling up YouTube and like, give me 10 more subscribers right now. Give me 10 more subscribers. That's right. That's right. So anyway, we'd love to have you on that as well. I want to go back to what you said though, Scott, about like Indiana's going to be ranked to start the season in most polls in football. Better be, yeah.
And I think I said when we talked about this last time, I'm anticipating somewhere between like 15th and 25th. And I don't think one of the weird things about college football is that the hardest period of time you're generally going to have in terms of national perception is the first year that you're really good. So you think about like, I remember when Kansas State came out of nowhere in the 90s and made it in the polls and everybody's like, what is that Kansas State? Ha ha.
They can't really be there. And then they were sustainably good. And now we don't blink when Kansas State is in a major bowl or they're in the Big 12 title game or whatever. And I think it's going to be that way with Indiana. You know, now Indiana has to remain competitive for places in the poll, certainly. But I look at Indiana as probably, you know, the next phase of how they are viewed on a national stage to be kind of
like how Minnesota is viewed. You know, someone noted with Minnesota's bowl win in the in the Dukes Mayo Bowl this year, they've won that like their last seven or eight bowl games in a row, which is wild to think about. But it's like Minnesota's done just enough on the national stage consistently that no one's like shocked when they're in the poll or, you know, if they put together a big run that they might be in contention outside for a playoff bid, especially
now. So I think with Indiana, a lot of the nouveau riche, you know, negative reaction that you get from a lot of the blue bloods and a lot of the traditional media powers probably starts to go away.
I also think, you know, a lot of the arguments against Indiana about, you know, well, they just have a bunch of group of five talent that starts to dissipate as well, because you were seeing them start to pull in more power for conference talent in this transfer portal and recruiting will go up and all of those things. So I, I actually don't think anybody's going to bat an eye at IU being in the poll.
I don't think it's going to be one of those things where everybody's like, well, they don't belong because this is how it works. It's dumb, but this is how it works in college football. That's fair, That's fair. But we're not here to talk college football, sadly. We will be back. I think next week. We're going to sit down and talk through the transfer portal editions and talk about where Indiana still needs to make some moves and talk about how the offseason's gone so far overall.
But today, we're going to talk about IU basketball. The Hoosiers were on a nice little streak there for a little while. They'd won five games in a row. Three of those games were in the Big 10 Conference, and Indiana was four and one on Saturday at about 7:00 PM Eastern Time. And we're getting ready to go to Iowa. And it was a, you know, Iowa was projected to win by 5.
But it was one of those games where you looked at it and you said, you know, this is an Iowa team that frankly is they're they're not that good defensively. They're very bad. Yes, they can score, but Indiana's playing really well with this single big lineup that's been forced by Malik Renew's injury. They've been they've been getting good play out of Omar Barlow. They've been getting good play out of Miles Rice. They've gotten good play out of
several other players. And you looked at this and you were like, this is a good acid test for Indiana. This is a game against a team that's borderline NCAA tournament. They might make it, they might not. You know, they don't really have any, any great wins on their resume. If you could go in and win at Iowa, it's going to be a quality win regardless. And at the very least, let's see Indiana go in and compete and and play to their maximum
potential. What we thought we saw in these previous games that did not happen. Indiana came out immediately allowed a huge run, which we've seen a lot from this IU program, not just under Mike Woodson, but certainly a lot under Mike Woodson. Then they rushed back into the game, actually took a 28 to 25 lead. And and I was thinking at that point, Scott is like, hey, maybe they figured it out. Maybe they just needed to deal with that initial onslaught and
they'll be fine moving forward. And then they proceeded to get absolutely boat race the rest of the way. They they take a 28 to 25 lead and it turns into a 25 point loss, 85 to 60 and just a almost a complete abandonment of what you wanted to see Indiana doing on the floor. Scott. The only surprising thing about this game to some degree was that Indiana got themselves back
in it for a little while. Everything else read like the exact same script that we've been seeing from Indiana, certainly over the course of the last couple of years. Yeah, I mean, that's the the this team is so inconsistent. And I'm going to quote a couple times. Like Zach Osterman wrote a great article today in the Indie Star just kind of hammering that point home over and over again.
The thing that I was thinking about with this is, you know, the joke you see less and less now as planes get safer, but there is a joke for you and I will growing up of like, why don't they just make the plane out of what they make the black box out of? You don't know, like a, a plane crashes. There's a black box that holds all the audio recording and the joke is always like, just because that thing is indestructible, like make the
plane that and then you're fine. And you, you think about that with this Indiana team, you know, like the, you know, they have that run against Iowa where they go, hold on, let me pull up exactly that run. It was a, you know, 18 to two run after they they've give it up. And during that stretch, you're like, all right, this is great. This is kind of what we've talked about all season. Like why can't you just do that throughout the entire game?
And, you know, on a macro level, you have this where you have, you know, two game stretches, like we talked about last time, where they they're shooting threes, They're looking good. All right, just do this throughout, you know, multiple games. And in the end, I think that's kind of a, the fallacy of that argument is, you know, not all teams can do that the entire game or else. Like that's why some teams don't win titles, So some teams don't
make the tournament. And, and I think that's like the hard reality with this team is they're not capable of keeping that stretch up, whether it's their ability to do it and keep mentally focused on what they need to do, the schematics that they're running, or the fact that there is another team over there that when other teams seem to make adjustments, those
problems seem to compound. And you, you know, the frustrating part with this team and kind of the last couple of years of IU basketball is you see glimpses. It's like a cloudy day. The sun comes out for 12 seconds. You're like, oh, that's awesome. Why can't it be like this all day? And then it goes away and then you don't know when it's going to come back. The only thing that we know is that this is going to be inconsistent. And that's the thing. You know what, we might have a
stretch later on the season. We have two or three games that are good or we have a couple of games or we have long stretches within games that things are good, But it's really hard for me to say I'm I feel like we've turned a corner on XY or Z because every single season, one of those whatever you're talking about, whether it's 3 point shots, whether it's effort, whether it's defense, whether it's, you know, offense, whether it's running efficient offense or any of these things.
They all seem to fall apart at different times and you never have stretches of, you know, even four games where everything kind of runs smoothly. I think that's what's most madding about what we're seeing is it's just the the only thing that's consistent is the inconsistency with this team. Yeah, it's, I'll even go a step further. I think the problem with this team is they really just fold when put under pressure, like really put under pressure.
And it's, it's disappointing because a lot of, I think the, the, a lot of the issues with IU really come back to the way the fans perceive the team and the way the team is played. There have just been so many games or so many stretches of seasons where IU fans have worked themselves up to a point where they feel like, hey, we've got some hope here.
And then Indiana just cannot measure up in games against teams that are, you know, not necessarily any demonstrably better than they are, but it feels like those teams are just trying harder. And and that is the kiss of death when it comes to a lot of of, of how IU is perceived. And look, we've we've seen that even in good seasons, you know, I'll always remember, you know, Indiana comes into that game at home versus Iowa in Trace Jackson Davis's final year.
And you know, I think there were 11 and seven. They were certainly in the hunt at that point. I think to, you know, potentially win the Big 10 title or or at least stay in the hunt. You know, Purdue ended up winning. They they had pretty was 15 and five that season. It was going to take pretty
losing a couple of games. They almost lost at Wisconsin that weekend, but Indiana came out against Iowa, who was OK that year, and then just got smoked at home in front of everybody to the point that people were leaving like the 15 minutes left in the second-half. I remember that I was there and it's like I think we were like in the mix for like maybe getting a two seed in the tournament, but it wouldn't happen. But it's like we were like we
were in the 3-4 line. It's like, yeah, we we win. We went out here. It's like, wow, this is a season we could actually. Yeah, I remember that. And, and, you know, that it just, it seems like every time Indiana really needs to double down. And when, you know, sometimes they've been able to handle it. But more often than not what we've seen is the result that you saw last night where it's not even that they lose, it's
that they lose by a huge margin. And, you know, you want to go back to the the you talk about Zach Osterman's story. And he might have had this in the story, but he also had a tweet which a lot of people have been referring back to now and and added, Yeah, I think reasonably so. Indiana has lost 31 regular season games in league play under Mike Woodson. Of those, now 16 have come by double digits, 12 have come by 15 or more points, 5 have come
by 20 or more points. And and last night obviously fit into that category. I mean, you're going to lose big every once in a while. But I think it's the it's the method by which Indiana loses big in these games where they just abandoned all principles, aren't able to play hard or consistently and look like they've just kind of waved the white flag at a certain point in the game and then just wait for it to be over. And it feels like it just
consumes the entire bench. People aren't up and, and, you know, shouting orders. The coaches are largely sitting down. The players are largely there. You know, it's it's just kind of this acceptance that we're not that good. We're not going to compete tonight. And then there's not there's, you know, you just the same platitudes end up coming up in the press conferences at the end of those games.
You saw more of that last night where there's just like you can either not take what's in it his word, or you can take what's in it his word. If you take what's in it his word, it's like, well, you know, the constantly he's like, well, the team didn't come out ready to play. And it's like, it's year 4. How is your team still coming out not ready to play? How how is your team not able to navigate these sorts of circumstances? Not like the first time you've been to Iowa.
And it's not like this is a world beating Iowa team. I mean, this is an Iowa team that you know, they've they've they've done a few good things, but that was an Iowa team that was 52nd in the net coming into the game. Indiana was I think 56th or 57th in the net. These were teams that were theoretically kind of on the same plane of existence and yet they look like they didn't belong on the same floor. So it's it's not just the loss and it's not just the manner in which the team lost.
It's the consistency to, and I would actually say that the the inconsistency is the consistency with this team, but the consistency by which Indiana, when they start to lose games like this, they don't just lose in half measures. They go all out and lose about as badly as you can, which doesn't really fill you with a lot of excitement or positivity or the idea that somehow later on down the line they're going
to turn this around. And that's been the biggest concern is like, you know, look again, losses happen, big losses happen. I don't think you have to overreact at one loss, but I do think you can react and should react to the idea that once again, here you are on the road in the Big 10 getting blown out by a pretty mid team and your aspirations were supposedly much greater than that.
As Indiana, you had a you have a a huge, talented, expensive roster of players who individually can all do really good things. And it looks exactly the same as last year's roster where you didn't have all of those things.
Like there's a consistency of of falling short in these moments that seems to arch over all of the rosters that you've seen here under Mike Woodson. And you know, even again, even the Trace Jackson, Davis, Jalen Huchafino roster was not immune to games like this or circumstances like this. I brought this up a year ago or something. I tried to get a name for it. Like the dead cat bounce or like
the dead on arrival game. But you know, just the, the game last night when you look at the Ken Palm, you know, winning probability at at halftime, Iowa had an 86% chance of winning. And then within 4 minutes it was up to 94%. And then it just becomes this, you know, you, you have like a, it looks like a heartbeat and then it's just flatlined. It's just like a second-half flatline.
And it, it, it echoes in the stats, what you're talking about in real life, that for the rest of the second-half, Iowa's a 95% chance to win. And it never changes. You know, even the Nebraska game, you see some flutters there and it gets to be a 6664 game with like 10 minutes to go. And they ended up letting Nebraska go on a 17 to one run.
But you know, I, I, I did a breakdown of this at one point last year, just how many of these losses that we've had under Woodson and under Archie too? That just to your point, aren't even just beat downs, it's like in the second-half, there's not even Indiana's not ever within a 90% chance of, you know, a 10% chance of winning the game. You go back and look at the, you know, Louisville game, it's
exactly the same thing. It's a little bit better just because the halftime score is a little closer, but it just, it becomes a straight line to zero and then just stays 0%. You know, at 10 minutes to go in the game, Louisville had a 99% chance of winning and just kept that way the entire time. Gonzaga game, it's it's even worse. I mean, it's like we go into halftime work, there are 98% chance of winning and then it just never, never moves.
And it's, it's those kinds of losses that are infuriating because like you said, you can lose, but to have a game where after halftime it's just not competitive. Like there's just not even a chance. Like, how can I all right, they get a stop at, you know, I'm always doing this in my mind, like, all right, we can get a 3 here and they get a stop here. Like you got to put together, what's our plan to get this game back together? And you have an option for that the entire game.
The other thing that I will say, I'll come back to this, you know, I, I think this is also going to be of trouble with this team game to game is, you know, after the last podcast, we were talking about the Penn State game and, you know, you, I was kind of lamenting the fact that, you know, we had basically let Penn State go on a point per possession when they shot, you know, what was it like 3 for 21 from three? I was like, that's not great defense on a team that's
shooting that bad from three. And then you, you had a you, you can look at it, you looked at it slightly differently and like, you know, we're having a discussion, it's fine. But then it's like 2 games later, it's like, Oh no, we let Iowa score 1.18 points of possession and just let them
just obliterate us on defense. And it's like you can kind of start digging into the stats in little pieces and trying to manipulate it. But like, in the end, this team's going to come out and do what it does, which is just play poor defense and and now. Poor Yeah. Here's the thing. I I do think you need to look at it on a more individual basis, game by game. I mean, as bad as Indiana's defense was last night, within the confines of what Iowa normally does, that was actually
an OK defensive effort. I know that sounds weird, but you know, if you look at what Iowa normally does in terms of offense, Iowa, they, they don't play defense very well, but they score, they average 118.9. You know, that's their, that's their average offensive efficiency or their adjusted. And that's exactly what Indiana allowed. So they allowed Iowa basically their average. Now you need to do better than that. The problem was Indiana offensively just didn't do
anything. I mean, I looking at the stats, that was the worst offensive performance that Indiana had had since the game at Rutgers last year. And I mean, depending on how you look at it, you could even go back to the previous year again at Rutgers. The problem there is like, you know what Rutgers is known for? They're known for really good defense. They're known for playing really hard nosed defense. And and that's certainly given Indiana fits with their
physicality. Iowa is not Iowa is a really bad defensive team and the fact that Indiana could not figure out how to score with all the talent that they have on the floor against Iowa and the fact that they on the game ended up only scoring 8 like they're they were at .83835 points per possession. They got obliterated on the offensive glass. They they hardly pulled down any offensive rebounds and that had
been an area of of success. They turned the ball over a ton, which is something that they had more, more or less not done. They took four shots, Everything that you didn't want them to do offensively, that's what happened. It was very much a carbon copy of the Louisville game, except in the Louisville game, Indiana had a lot of offensive rebounds. They just didn't hit any shots. And this one, they didn't get any second chances and they didn't hit from outside.
So, you know, it's another issue where it's like this team just really has a hard time against a, a certain caliber of competition putting everything together. You can go back to the Nebraska game. Their offense wasn't great in the Nebraska game. It was probably close to being able to be an offense that you could have competed for a win against. But their defense was atrocious in that game.
And they let they let Nebraska just do whatever they wanted from, you know, all over the floor, especially just shooting the ball in general, getting to the free throw line, things like that. So I, it just feels a lot of times like Indiana seems to know what they want to do, but when they can't do that, they really don't have a Plan B. They really don't seem to be able to adapt well to circumstances. And the, you know, Scott, I mean, kind of looking at it more in the macro.
This is why I was very hesitant about getting overly excited regarding this five game-winning streak that Indiana had put together. Because on the one hand, this is where it's tough as a podcaster or as a writer trying to deal with the ups and downs of an individual season. You know, here you have an IU team that had won five in a row. Yeah, you can kind of throw the Chattanooga and Winthrop games
out, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't think those were particularly important one way or the other. But three Big 10 games in a row, including a game on a neutral floor, and, you know, you win all three relatively handily. And you cap that off with a win at home versus AUSC team that is not helpless. As we saw yesterday, that USC team won at Illinois and and one pretty handily, but it was Rutgers, Penn State and USC. You know, Rutgers and USC are not going to the tournament this year.
They have some significant issues. Penn State is, I mean, that's the Penn State team to turn around and lost by 30 at Illinois immediately after losing to Indiana by 6. So it's like, well, how impressive was that victory really for Indiana? And then they run into Iowa, and Iowa is clearly from an effort perspective and from a plan perspective, a significant cut above what Indiana's able to provide.
And then you, you know, this is where you come back to what we've been talking about for a while, which is what's the ultimate goal of this season? The ultimate goal of this season is supposed to be not just making the tournament, but putting yourself in a position where you can be a protected seed where you're top four in the conference or better. You know, that was that was always supposed to be the narrative. And yeah, the Rutgers, Penn State and USC wins were, were nice.
Those were games, all of them, maybe, maybe all but the Penn State game that you absolutely had to have. And Penn State was one of those Rd. borderline games or away from home borderline games where it's like you, you got to win that game if you want to achieve even close to the goals you had. Well, so was last night because again, Iowa is a borderline NCAA Tournament team. I don't think they'd be in right now. And Indiana looked like they didn't belong on the floor with them.
And that's that's really disturbing when you think about the sheer volume of games of that caliber or better that Indiana's got right in front of them here over the course of the next month. Yeah. And the other thing with that five game win streak, because even within that, you know, the trouble is the losses are just everything's laid bare. This is you, you see everything poor, It's bad defense, it's bad offense. And you get, you know, slacked by Iowa and you see lack of
effort. Same thing in the Louisville and Gonzaga wins. Even that five game-winning streak, you know, we're trying to find the positive things, but it's like you beat Winthrop, but you went one for 20 from three. Like that's not awesome. Like there's a red line in, you know, you look at like Bart Torvik does a great job with the stats for every game and it's like green is good, red is bad.
There's not one game that we have where everything is green, which is kind of wild when you look at like some of the non conference teams we've played, like a Winthrop should be a game where it's just like that's not only a get right game, that's an all green game. But no, you still go one for 20 in that game. You know, the the the Penn State game, that's a good win on the road.
But even within that game, you had a feeling like you put them away and then you really let them get back into the game. You and I were at the USC game where you won that game, you know, by 13 or 14 going away, but there were large stretches that game in the first half where you're letting USC kind of dictate the pace of the game. And and you know, the trouble is there hasn't been those wins where it's like the wins have not been as emphatic as the losses.
And that's where it gets really tough. The the other thing that I want to hit on just I will continue to be, I'll probably continue to talk about 3 point shooting as I tell you not to talk about 3 point shooting, but I go back to this, you know, we, you know, they Indiana goes 12 for 27 against Rutgers. It's kind of it's a weird schizophrenic way this team shoots and plays with the three. If you go back to the Nebraska game, they went eight for 3535,
three-point attempts. And then it just becomes this kind of slow, you know, like it's in, you know, like a half life, just nuclear physical. You're losing half every single time. You know, the next couple of games they shoot 2020, they go 12 for 27 against Rutgers and then they go 9 for 23 against Penn State. That's why I said they're not going to do that again. And they go 6 for 21 against USC, 4 for 16 against Iowa. They they keep making less and shooting less.
What what we know is that there will be a game at some point in the next 5 or 6 where they're going to shoot 35 threes again, Maybe they'll hit 10 or 12. And it's like, that's what I don't want to hear. Like, oh, maybe we've turned the quarter because we have it Like everything kind of continually goes back to the scary thought is that, you know, maybe the norm is kind of what we're seeing against Iowa, that everything always seems to kind of funnel back to those types of
games. Well, and the. The good games are maybe the the the wins are maybe more of the mirages. I, I would look at it perhaps more like this. If you look at Indiana from a three-point shooting perspective, there's some very disturbing trends right now. But, but I think the most interesting one to me is right now, you know, Indiana's overall 3 point shooting percentage on the season is 31.9%, which is
actually worse than last year. Now you know there are 246 in the country and three-point percentage made and they were much better than that earlier on in the year. Last year, as bad as they were shooting from three percentage wise, they were making more threes than Indiana's made so far on the course of this season. They shot 32.4% last year from three. So far they're at 31.9% this year.
If you take Indiana's 3 point shooting stats against top 50 teams, Indiana shooting 28.6% from three this season which is not great. Not good, Bob. But what's interesting to me is they are their three-point rate against those teams is 36.8. Now that's low, but it's not as low as their overall. So they are taking more threes against better teams. They're just not hitting them. And you know, that's, you know, that's a real problem. The the shooting's really gone to a large degree.
I know that that USC game and Luke Goody hitting some shots, everybody's like, oh, the three-point shooting's better in the last 10 games, Indiana's shooting 29.7% from 3:00. That's three, 109th in the country over that span of time. Their three-point rate in that in those last 10 games is 200 and 82nd in the country. You know, so they're both shooting less threes percentage wise and they're also shooting
them less often. It's, look, you're going to have variance with threes and, and I think sometimes, especially with the team that clearly doesn't have an offensive system that is specifically designed to focus on threes, you're going to have those boom and bust games like you're talking about. And so I, you know, I worry a little bit less about the boom and bust games as I do about the overall trend line.
And I just, I worry with this team that they are putting themselves in a position where they're either trying to force threes into their diet or they're simply not putting themselves in a position where they can succeed that much. You know, they are pretty reliably the Rutgers game and the Penn State game look like big outliers over the last 10 games versus what they've done overall.
You know, when you shoot 23% versus Nebraska from 328% versus USC, 25% versus Iowa, Like the so much effort and, and, and focus has supposedly gone into trying to broaden the offense and make it more modern and more holistic and taking advantage of the three-point line, which you have to do from an efficiency perspective. They, they're going the wrong direction right now. And that really should be
concerning. I think if you're if you're concerned about what Indiana's going to do long term and whether they can snap themselves out of it, their offense looks like it's going the wrong way in terms of where their points are coming from and how efficient they are in those shots. So if you don't mind, I want to go back to a macro point that you made earlier just about, you know, what the goal of the
season was. Because I I think this is what's also really concerning is having this game at this point. You, you could lose at Iowa, but again, it's the manner we lost the trend lines you're talking about. When you look ahead, you know, this is where, you know, just in Ken Palm, the next seven games are, are losses. And you we, we talked about the stretch, the schedule. We, you, you had last time kind of identified that Purdue to
Purdue stretch on January 31st. Like just to get to that first Purdue game, you got to play Illinois at home at Ohio State, at Northwestern, home to Maryland. And then we get, then we get to what you think is the, the, the toughest stretch of the season. You know, Kenpom doesn't have US winning a game until we play UCLA at home on February 14th. Because I'm like kind of dubious whether that that's a one point win. It's a 50.50% game.
You know, this is where the rubber really hits the road. And to me, you kind of run out of excuses because you are, you're in your four of a 10 year, you're in the middle of that season. And to me, you just, you don't get the luxury of saying, oh man, it's a bunch of tough opponents. You know, what are we going to
do it? At some point you need to be one of those tough opponents, but you just can't be the nail that's getting hammered in. But this is where it gets really tough because you know, the next four or five games, statistically, they they, they, they should be losses. They're going to be tough games to win. You have an Illinois team is now pissed. They're going to come in here, try and, you know, get right game. And I I'm, I'm not sure how this team kind of breaks out of this fight.
And there's also a team that over the last couple of years, when they get drilled like this, they they don't always come right back. And sometimes this has led to a three to four-game losing streak in the Big 10, as we've seen multiple years. This is what I was always concerned about was this stretch of the season. It felt like we had to come in with some kind of like, we have things humming and we're not just a sputtering engine that, you know, dies on the road in Iowa City.
Well, the effort is and the consistency and effort's a big problem. And, you know, you saw one of the things that people pointed out quite a bit last night was Iowa just look like they cared more and that they were playing harder and and that in Atlantis, like it hasn't that that. Was evident in Atlantis and we're still dealing with it. Now, you know, there's a couple of things I'll say a you know, college basketball, every year we look at it and we we look at
the projected wins and losses. And sometimes we forget that they're going to be individual moments that don't work out that way. And and you'll have really good teams that'll have really bad games, especially on the road. I mean, look at last night on the national stage. You know, Auburn goes on the road, they get there's an injury that they state and they only win by three at South Carolina, who as we know is not particularly good.
Iowa State has to go to overtime to win at Texas Tech, who was unranked. You know, Kentucky struggles at Mississippi State. Mississippi State's pretty good. But you know, there there were a lot of instances including Georgia beating Oklahoma yesterday, Illinois losing at home to USC. You're going to have games where teams don't play well. They're good. And Indiana is talented. Like Indiana has pro level
talent. They've they've got a pro level center, they've got a pro level point guard, They've got they've got other players that can contribute at that level. It's the lack of consistency that makes you think, well, you know, Indiana's probably going to pull a couple of victories out of a hat here that you might not expect from simply looking at the probabilities. Like, and not just at home either. I mean, you know, they'll play Illinois at home on Tuesday. I won't be shocked if Indiana
wins that game. They'll play what, Michigan at home on the 8th of February. I wouldn't be shocked if Indiana wins that game. But it's the whole string of things like it's, you know, when you look at the losses in the Kenpom projections or the Torvic projections, these are probabilities that arch over an entire rest of the season. Like right now, Indiana's four and two in Kenpa, in the Big 10, in Kenpa, they're projected to go 9:00 and 11:00.
Well, if you look at the actual numbers, they don't. They're only projected to win four games, but that's built into where they're probably going to win one or two games. They're projected to lose and lose one or two games that they're projected to win. I just, what worries me for Indiana is the overall trend line of where they're headed. This Iowa game was really important. I think I tweeted this right after the USC game.
It's like what we're seeing out of Indiana in this USC game wasn't perfect, but it was just if you could play like that and go into Iowa and have the way that Indiana played translate in some way to that game, that would give me an indication that perhaps they're going to play better than we thought that they would down the stretch. I didn't see that last night. And we talked about this a lot last year where they went on the they had the multiple losing streaks in the Big 10.
And a lot of it was like, I keep waiting for something to illustrate to me that this team is going to play with more consistency. And if you think about like that stretch last year that started right now, they beat Minnesota at home. It wasn't that impressive of a game. They never really put Minnesota away. And then they turned around and had to play Purdue at home and then at Wisconsin and at Illinois. And they lost all three of those. They beat Iowa at home, lose to
Penn State at home. And that was that big one where everybody was like, uh oh, Yep, they win at Ohio State randomly, and everybody was shocked by that. And then they lose four more in a row. And by that point, you're 6 and 10. And the season was almost over at that stage. It essentially was over at that point. And even though they won the last four to get to 10 and 10, the damage had been done. So that's what worries me.
And then, sorry, just to go on to the larger points someone had made, just figuring finishing that off, You go to the Big 10 tournament, it's like you gut out a win against Penn State. It's like, OK, now maybe we can make a run in the Big 10 tournament to maybe get into the NCAA tournament. It's like, oh, no, you play Nebraska, you lose 93 to 66. Again, a game where at halftime you have a 98% chance of losing and it just stays at 90 the entire game.
So like, again, these kind of flux point moments, these pivotal moments where like, all right, can we turn the corner and get some momentum? You not only lose, you just get shellacked. Yeah, I mean, Indiana was four and two last year and they finished 10 and 10, but the way they finished 10 and 10 disqualified them from being a legitimate team to consider in the NCAA selection process.
Now they're in slightly better shape now 'cause you figure last year when they were four and two, they were 92nd in Kenpom. They were, you know, in the 90s in the NET because they've done so much damage to themselves in the non conference. They haven't done as much damage to themselves in the non conference this year. They're 56th in Ken Palm, not 92nd in the net. They're what was the updated number then? They're they're 60th today in the net. But the problem is they're 60th
in the net. And, you know, they're they're there's a there's a lot of teams they have to kind of jump over that they have to play moving forward. They have to play Northwestern on the road. Penn State still gets to come to IU.
You know, they all the and then you got that whole mishmash of teams that are between 20 and 35 in the NET, which is Maryland, Oregon, Purdue, Wisconsin, UCLA, Ohio State, you know, Nebraska, that like, at some point you're going to have to elevate yourself up into that conversation. And what worries me again with the consistency, or lack
thereof. Is that they may pull one of these games or two of these games, but it's hard to really have a lot of faith that they're going to pull a bunch of games in a row simply because we've seen now two of the three years that Mike Woodson coached before this and certainly several of
the years before that. As if you if you want to take those into account, where Indiana is more likely to go on multiple game losing streaks in the Big 10 than multiple game-winning streaks in the Big 10, well. And and you know what, what we're doing, you know, we're trying to prevent present kind of the positive outlook of like, all right, you know, it's projected. All projected losses are not going to be losses like some
variants will happen. I get what you're saying that the trouble with that is to me is not towards you, but just kind of that that thinking is that, you know, this is a all that's trying to do is like, how do we find a path where we can get onto the bubble for the tournament?
And that's kind of all we're doing because what we haven't talked about is like, all right, here's our path to get back to what you and I had thought kind of the and most people, not like we were out of bounds was a realistic expectation for this season. And honestly, take coaches and you know, years of helm out of it should always be a realistic expectation for Indiana basketball.
Like every year, we should go into a season hoping to win the Big 10 title and getting a protected seat in the tournament like that. That is what Indiana basketball should be going for. I mean, we haven't been, but. I mean, at some point we just need to stop saying that. I mean, really, you know, it's like what what evidence do we have to demonstrate that that's what Indiana basketball is at this point? I'm. Just going to keep talking. Because I have no come back,
come back. To that, but I mean that I think is what most fans want to believe or, or hope. And you know, hope is not anything, but that's what we hope to believe. But it's that's all we're talking about here is like, how can we get to just the the absolute bare minimum of what a season should be? And it's like we're having to really struggle to find that. And that's what I think is disconcerting is I'd love to see, you know, not just win Illinois, like can you win the
next four games? Can you can you go into Purdue on a four-game winning streak? And like you look at that and say, well, no evidence says you can do that and there's no reason to believe that could be done. But there's nothing to say we don't have the talent to do that. And that that's the frustrating part is like we have the team. We have the talent.
And the thing that we also haven't talked about at all, we're at minute 42 in this is we have the issue of this odd problem of we have maybe one of our best players who at some point will come back to the team, at which point all Indiana fans know well that's going to muck up our offense. Like we're the only team that's like we need more of our players
to not play. So our coach is hamstrung to be able to run an offense that actually makes sense that you know, if Renu comes back at any of these next couple of games, it's nothing against Renew because he might be our most overall skilled player on the team. The way that he's utilized within the two big offense, does that end up causing more problems in these games than where we're at now? I mean, it's certainly an open
question. And you know, it's funny because Indiana has slowly gotten better defensively over the course of this season compared to what they did last year. They actually, if you look at the actual numbers on a game by game basis, they've kind of flatlined in terms of adjusted defensive efficiency since the start of the year. Offensively speaking, it's hard to say.
I mean, so much of what we talked about with Renew being out and with the, you know, the change in how Indiana was playing offense was largely tied to the fact that they played three pretty good offensive games against Rutgers, Penn State and USC. Well, last night they did not. So it it does come back to this idea. If you're continuing to shoot fewer threes, is it a situation where maybe you have to have the two big line up back in just to maintain some level of of offensive normalcy?
But then you take away the extra outside shots. But if if you're not going to take the shots, like they didn't take the shots against, you know, Iowa, then what's the point? So I think you're right. And and certainly I've said similar things, but the more I think about it, it's like, I don't think the renew injury matters that much. It's really like just how
Indiana is choosing to play. And, you know, there there's a lot of effort issues and there's a lot of, again, consistency issues that seem to go well beyond whoever is out on the floor at this point. And that is really frustrating. And I just, I guess I keep coming back to this idea, Scott. I keep waiting for some evidence that it's going to change. And yet I don't necessarily see that taking place.
You know, you can just the the one thing I'll say, and again, a lot of it will be, I guess, put into more relief by what happens in the next three games. Maybe this was just a big outlier game and Indiana had that, just a bad game. You know, if they come back and beat Illinois, then they've got, you know, at Ohio State and at Northwestern. Those are two games that are very similar in profile to what they just played at Iowa. And, you know, they won at Ohio
State last year. They've certainly struggled to win at Northwestern over the course of of the last several years. But it's not an insurmountable thing for them to do, you know. But again, it all comes back to like, what are you predicating your belief in the team on? You know, what is it you're pointing to that making you say, I think Indiana's going to do this or I think Indiana's going
to do that? And what's disheartening about the Iowa game more than anything else is a lot of the things that people were leaning on to say, I think Indiana's going to be better. They're rounding into shape, All just washed away very quickly in that game. And even if you want to say, gosh, that was just a bad game.
It's like it was a bad game in all the worst possible ways if you're an Indiana fan trying to build some degree of belief that your team is going to exceed expectations as they go through the next month and 1/2. Well, it's taking that point a step further. You know, it's you are right. Good teams, great teams have outlier bad games. The only way that you turn this into an outlier bad game is you got to win multiple games in a row after this.
You know, you look at that 23 season Indiana, you know the the the trace Jackson Davis here they were they were four seed. They did lose three in a row. They lost to Iowa, Northwestern and Penn State. But then the rest of the way from this point on January 14th on, they never lost back-to-back big 10 games. So then they they had out why they had unfortunately too many outliers.
But you could say from January 14th on, it's like that's a team that for the most part had it together and would have a bad game here or there, but would then followed up with a win or a two or three-game winning streak. That's kind of what has to happen here. And the the trouble is you're doing this into the the schedule gets tough now, like this isn't the meat of the schedule.
So, you know, if, if you're going to lose the next three games, you know, it's like, you can't tell me that this is a great that was an outlier. And it's like, oh, well, it's just tough opponents like that. That's too many variables that you're compounding. They're like, I I hear what
you're saying. I'm not arguing with you, but I would say that like for that to be the case, you kind of got to win up to that Purdue game, you know, win or win three of the four, like don't lose Illinois, don't lose Ohio State. And then maybe we can talk about how that was an outlier. But the trouble is you have four of them so far this year. You know that that's the other trouble is like four of the games that are outliers or games where you lost multiple digit by
multiple digit points. And that that's something that very rarely happens to a good team. You know, a good solid team that knows what its identity is and and knows how to win a good number of college basketball games doesn't normally have 4 10 + 15.15 plus losses by the middle of January. Like I said, that's very abnormal. Well, we'll see what happens as you move forward with things here.
It's one of those deals where I, I think everybody that was, even the people that weren't being honest with themselves, you know, you, you kind of looked at this and said, you know, there there could be positives that come out of this. There could be situations where Indiana is able to go on the road and win games. I think those things are still
possible. They have the talent to do it, but you know, at this point, I don't know that they've done enough and they they certainly didn't do enough in the non conference to truly justify a a bid in the tournament. So they're going to have to do the work in the Big 10. Now, they had crept into the lower reaches of some people's bracket projections. You know, that win at at to the Palestras done some decent work for them, But that's that may
not be enough. And you know, the question becomes like, well, if you tread water from this point forward, if you're Indiana, have you done enough to get into the tournament? Obviously you want to have that happen. You want to get into the tournament because that matters more than more than whatever the pre season projections were getting in the tournament still matters. You can have the conversation about was all of this sufficient afterwards?
But it does look like a team that if you were going to wager right now at 13 and 4:00 and 4:00 and 2:00, you know, if you were going to wager whether or not they were going to make the NCAA tournament, I don't know how many IU fans are wagering that IU is going to make the tournament. You know, and, and that's the people that aren't doing bracketology. Like I, I still do that regularly. I look at what they've got to do
the rest of the way. The nice thing is they're going to have plenty of opportunities to win games. And you're the bracketologist. Let me ask you this. And, and this is a tough question, but. How many wins in the Big 10 do you think they need to get? And I know, I know there's so many other variables, but like, give, give us the the fans a, you know, 9:00 and 11:00 I don't think gets it done. 10 and 10, you know, what level are we like
that? I think that's given us a shot to be, you know, firmly in the bubble. See, the The thing is, I don't think you can do it that way. I mean, there's going to be, and I hate to be like wishy washy on it, but like there's going to be I, I saw something the other day, actually this morning where I think it was John Rothstein tweeted something out about, you know, there's going to be 7 and 11 SEC teams that make the, the. So many good losses. But but but, but this year, he's right.
I mean, the SEC is really dominant in terms of their
overall play. But not all 7 and 11 teams are created paid off at ESPN 2. They're they're coming for all of us. I'm trying to make a point, Scott. You know, like Texas is a team that cannot afford to go 7:00 and 11:00 in the SEC and make the NCAA Tournament, whereas, you know, someone like Ole Miss could go 7:00 and 11:00 because they've got enough on their resume that, yeah, you know, if they if they go 7 and they're three and O right now, they're not going to go 7:00 and 11:00.
But they've beaten BYU on a neutral floor and they've beaten Louisville on the road. I mean, there's they've got a lot of things going for them. Indiana doesn't have those things. So when you ask me what record is needed, a lot of it's like, well, who are the wins going to come against? Like if Indiana goes 9:00 and 11:00 in the conference and 18 and 13 overall. But their 5 remaining wins are like, you know, they win, don't laugh, but they'll they win at Purdue, they beat Michigan at
home. They they win at Ohio State, they win at home versus Ohio State and they win at Washington. That might be enough for them to get in. Whereas if they go with the same record, but their five wins are like Northwestern on the road, you know, Washington at home, Ohio State at home, Penn State at home, Maryland at home. I don't know if that's enough and maybe it is. So a lot of it is like who does Indiana beat? Where do they beat them?
You know, there there aren't a whole lot of games that won't help in some way if you win them this in this rest of the season. I mean, at at Washington's probably not going to do much for you. And you know, I would say probably like at home versus Penn State's not going to do a whole lot for you. And I don't know that at home against Ohio State's going to do a whole lot for you.
But there's a ton of other games that are going to be helpful to the point that Indiana almost like all they have to do is just get if you can win six games the rest of the way. I think a collection of six wins out of this mix probably gets
this team into the tournament. It's just they kind of look like a zombie team at that point because if you're if you're 10 and 10 in this big 10 where everybody's kind of equal, I don't know that Indiana demonstrates that they're that good on the national stage going into the tournament by just going 10 and 10 against this schedule. So it's like, again, it all comes back to what are you expecting or what are you hoping to get out of the season with
IU? Obviously, getting into the tournament is is the bare minimum, and especially with this year's team and especially coming off of what happened last year, but that's got to be the primary focus at this point. And so you dust yourself off from this Iowa game, you're probably going to play an Illinois team that that won't play as well on the road as they do at home. You're going to be pissed off. Illinois is going to be pissed off because they just lost at home to USC.
If you can come out and win that game, I think it again resets the conversation about where Indiana's going. You're five and two, you have a home win against a bona fide top 20 team. Those are all going to help. It's just I need to see Indiana win a game like that. That would be they beat Illinois at home. That would be by far their best win. Like their highest rated win against teams in Kenpom is that win against Penn State. And Penn State was 51st.
The, the, the four teams they've played that are in the top 50 of Kenpom, they've lost to, they lost to Louisville, they lost to Gonzaga, they lost to Nebraska, they lost to Iowa. And then like, you know, Penn State's 51st, USC 68th, Providence's 84th, South Carolina 73rd. That's the echelon of teams they seem to be able to beat teams that are sub top 50. I do worry at the end of the day that that's not going to be enough to get it done.
Yeah, if you're going off of that, we got three more wins. Right. And so, so now it becomes like, you know, can you win, how many games can you win against top 50 competition? But you also. Have to then win those three like no joking, you got to win the the Northwestern Washington and Penn State game again, like you. This is where you can't start throwing in more bad losses, but you pick up a win against Illinois, it's like great, you got that in the bank.
You got to keep those three. You know, again, the the sub fifty teams. You know, any Northwestern home to Washington at Penn, you know, home to Penn State, you got to win those three, like those three have to become wins no
matter what. And then you're just stacking bonus wins on top of. It, I mean, to me, the, the team that's going to be the biggest competition and maybe the greatest measuring stick for Indiana the rest of the way is Ohio State. Ohio State is 32nd and Ken Palm and they're 49th, I think in, in, in Torvic. And you know, they both calculate things a little bit
differently. And sometimes I like the Torvic ratings more than I like Ken Pom 'cause I think they, they match a little bit better what I'm actually seeing in terms of, of game by game stuff. You know, Indiana right now is projected to go one and one against Ohio State. That's really a team they need to beat twice. You need to be able to demonstrate, especially if they're as close as they look like in Torvic, where Ohio State's 49th, Indiana's 52nd, you need to be able to say we
beat that team twice. We are clearly of the mid level teams in the Big 10. We're clearly like above the fray. I don't know that Indiana's going to be able to do that. That's where that that game really fascinates me this upcoming Friday where they have to go to Columbus and take on Ohio State. And Ohio State's been almost as schizophrenic as Indiana. You know, they, they, they, they, they beaten Texas on a neutral floor. They've beaten Kentucky on a
neutral floor. They have a lot of good losses. They don't have a lot of good wins. You know, the Kentucky and Texas wins. They get credit for those. But they also, you know, they, they've, they've lost to Texas A&M, Pittsburgh, Maryland, Auburn, MI State, Oregon. No, no shame there. They actually played Oregon pretty tight at home on Thursday, but then they almost lost in double overtime at Minnesota, which is a really hideous team.
And their overall numbers statistically just don't look that impressive. But that's a team that, you know, Indiana could, if they win that game, it's a big boost. But if they lose that game, it really clearly defines Indiana, I think as being a cut below right, what they need to be. So a lot to watch for. And, you know, I know this, I, I always feel bad when we have to do these podcasts and it all
kind of sounds doom and gloom. And I think it's hard to do a podcast after you lose by 25. Really, I mean, Indiana should have lost that game by 30. They had a couple of shots at the end of the game that that made the score a little bit respectful, but that was a 30 point loss at the end of the day. What do we say here that puts that into a system or a situation where you feel better
about the pathway? I don't know that a lot of people are particularly inclined to feel better about the pathway that Indiana's got in front of them. So I do worry about, you know, how do we how do you maintain some semblance of optimism when it feels like you've seen this movie so many times before as an IU fan? And ultimately this is the break point as we kind of thought it was going to be at the beginning of the year.
It's like once you get done with the non conference and once you get through that opening spade of relatively easy Big 10 games, what does Indiana do from here? How do they react? I'm as curious about that as you are, Scott. I have my theories that I think Indiana's going to kind of mid their way to about a nine win season in the conference at this point and be probably just outside the bubble if I had to
project right now. But the nice thing for Indiana is they clearly have the talent and the ability to do better than that. It just becomes a question of whether they'll actually do better.
Than that Yep yeah I mean my my biggest concern for this for this coming stretch to kind of put a point on this is you know if if they're not able to make any kind of hay between now and Purdue if they end up do losing you know Illinois Ohio State Northwestern Maryland. My, my concern is, I think at that point, it becomes really tough to come up with a narrative of how this team makes the tournament.
And I, I think that's tough to do when you're still in January, January 27th, to be at a point where you and I have to do a podcast where there really isn't a logical path to the tournament, but you still have 10 more game, you know, seven more games ahead of you. A lot of them at home. It could get very vitriolic very quickly. And I, I just, nobody wants that. Like I don't want that. Nobody wants that.
Like I just, I would like to have the, the glimmer of hope and maybe even more than just a glimmer of hope. I, I don't want it to be extinguished before we even get into February. And that that's what concerns me is there's there's still a lot of opportunity here. There's still a lot of ways to get there. Those paths start to get very tight and closed if you don't do something over the next two to three. Weeks we'll see what happens feels like again, we have this
conversation every year. I think the one year we didn't have this conversation was was 23. And that was, you know, certainly one of those seasons even there, it's like, you know, at this point, it's funny that the that same year, that 2020 year, one in four, I mean, that was actually where I was going with that On this date in that year, Indiana was one in four and had lost three games in a
row. Now they were, you know, two of them were close games, but, you know, getting obliterated at Penn State. A lot of people had given up hope. And you know, the nice thing about that year was Indiana went out and won five of their next 9 and got themselves back up to 9 and five in conference. And very much was eight of their next nine, eight of their next 9, sorry, you know, and put themselves in a position where
they were a contender. And, you know, and in those in those games was a road win at Illinois, which was surprising, a win at home versus Michigan State, a win at home versus Purdue, a win at home versus Rutgers, a win at Michigan. Like there were a lot of really good moments in that stretch. That's where Indiana kind of sits right now, albeit with a better record, right? You know, I mean, you're when you're 4 and 2 instead of 1 and 4, you're you're in pretty good
shape. The difference was, and the one thing I'll say there, Indiana's overall statistical profile coming out of that Penn State game in 23, they were 33rd in Kenpom. They were significantly better than what this year's team has demonstrated so far. And, you know, you could argue they got unlucky in those losses to Iowa and Northwestern. You can't really argue that they were unlucky in any of the losses that they've suffered so far this season. They've just been bad in those
games. And that will be an interesting thing to watch as we move forward. Can Indiana put themselves in a position where they just play better because that's what it's going to take to win the games that are in front of them? So, yeah, all right, well, that'll wrap it up for us on this edition of Crimson Cast. We will be back with more in the future. We'll have another podcast, I think coming up this week. We'll probably have a football podcast coming up later this
week. So just keep an eye out for that as we continue to move through January and Indiana takes on Illinois at home this upcoming Tuesday. My thanks to Scott. My thanks to our presenting sponsor, Home Field Apparel and our entire family in the Back Home network. I'm Galen Clavio saying thanks for joining us here on the show. We will catch you folks. On the flip side, stay never daunted, bring back the Bison.