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