You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. I guess I should unmute. Myself first here we go that's better welcome back to Crimson cast most. Of the only five years pal Caulfield joining you as. We get the dance mix open. You like that? Yeah. And the dance mix. Yeah, people, people have said that the Crimson cast theme is a banger. So royalty free on iTunes 17 years ago, open for anybody. It was wild. I wonder whatever happened.
I don't even remember the guy's name, but yeah, it's. It's like, it's like when Scorsese got, you know, Clapton Layla for Goodfellas, like that song had been sitting there. I was listening to the rewatchables with Wayne's World, like Bohemian Rhapsody have been there. Like this song was out there on iTunes for any, you know, call her Daddy could have had this as their as their song. Yeah, yeah, I bet they're, they're probably torn up about that right now. But we're back, We're good.
We're talking last day of February, believe it or not. Beautiful day down here in Bloomington. The grapes are growing in in Scotts backyard vineyard up there. Did you get some golf in this morning, Scott? Everybody wants to know. It's so funny. I was actually talking. I, I, I wanted to the, the close the, the course nearby woodwind opened up. It's, it's walking only, but they don't play, don't open till noon 'cause I was trying to see can I get 9 in, but it's walking.
I was like, I'm doing a podcast at 2:00. No, literally that was a discussion this morning about playing some golf. I'm going on a guys golf trip next weekend to Tampa. Me and four of my high school buddies. I'm very excited. Everybody wants to know where the next. Polo Sesh is for you though. Some of my neighbors actually gone to the Westfield Polo and they feel like it's kind of fun. You guys should go. This is I know these are jokes, but they're cutting real. Close man.
As we've said, Scott, is the other half OK like it. This is this is it's a fascinating spot to be. But now it's I'm glad you're having such leisure. This is wonderful. I'm I'm I particularly for those who are not watching, Scott wore his Ascot today. It was, it was really a nice touch so. If I wasn't an IU basketball fan, life would just be amazing, like everything else would just be winning on all all of their accounts. Perhaps sunshine is just over
the horizon with IU basketball. We'll see. A lot of things have not happened over the last week since we last talked. But you know, next week. We're moving into March. I'll be surprised if we get out of March without a new basketball coach. Oh really? I'll be, I'll be. I won't be shocked. OK, because I I picked April 2nd. I have AI have a bet with some friends. We bet, we bet who's going to be the coach and we bet the date I I picked April 2nd.
I kind of like this. We need we maybe we should organize a Crimson cast version of this. This is it's kind of like the Jerome, but for IU basketball coaching searches. Oh. Yeah, no, on one other part I got to talk through. I know we're limited on time. This one. I have a three of my buddies. We have a draft where we just we did a snake draft of candidates for the job. We did it last time with the Woodson higher. Nobody got we did 5 rounds, nobody picked Woodson.
Just a heads up, and this year the joke was this year is my buddy Robert and Ben, we're doing a keeper league. So just in case there's future hires. And so we, we like, I pick like Drew Valentine with my last pick just because like, I don't know, man, maybe in five years we'll be at this again. But at some point I, I will talk through all the picks that were made. But we also added a a pick for the date and I went April 2nd because I'm just like, there's no way they can announce it on
April. 1st So that's my that's that is official sister of of Crimson cast Olivia Clavio's birthday, April 2nd and famously our our father had to instruct her in the womb not to be born on March 30th April of 1981 because that was the national championship game and she was very nice and waited the extra two days. So not only was the game played, but there was some time for celebration afterwards before they had to go to the hospital. There you go.
Anyway, let's move on. We are brought to you by Home Field Apparel, your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest designs, and again, lovely stuff across the board as Home Field continues to deliver the things IU fans are looking for. If you haven't been over there, just go to Home Field Apparel search Indiana. You're going to find a ton of stuff, probably more than any other school. I haven't done the tally in a while, but I think it's probably
close. I just the other day Scott busted out. My little 500 bomber jacket, the black with the with the big flag display on the back, that thing is lovely. I love it. They have more racing stuff coming too. It's got the e-mail. They have like a Dale Earnhardt thing. But no, you're right. Like we are on home field. What the Oregon football team is on NCAA 25. Like there's a plethora of stuff. Whereas like some schools like you play. I'm playing a lot lately.
I play Texas and it's just like they have white and Burt orange and that's that's all you got. But you know, yeah, Indiana has nothing but options on home field. Use the code home 23 get 15% off your first order again home field apparel.com proud sponsor presenting sponsor of the back home network. We also would like to encourage everybody to go to YouTube, search back home network, join the over 7100 folks that are subscribed there.
Join us on Sub Stack, it's free, you get podcasts delivered right to your inbox. Occasionally you'll get an extra podcast if you do the paid subscription option, which you're not required to do $5.00 a month, $50 a year, help financially support the podcast, keep the lights on and what have you. So Scott, before we dive into the coaching candidates Part 3, let's talk a little bit about the game Indiana played a couple of nights ago. I was in the building, Indiana, Penn State.
It was a predictably closer game than I think perhaps outside forces might have anticipated. Indiana, again, struggled quite a bit defensively in this game. And it was a game that was in doubt until about the last 6 minutes. And then Indiana figured out a way to make the plays and come away with the victory. And Scott, I mean, it's largely because Mike Woodson is just not playing certain players very
much right now. He's really coalesced around this core of Trey Galloway, who's really picked it up lately and I think deserves a ton of credit for, you know, coming back from what was a disappointing first part of the season alongside Anthony Leal, who's been getting a ton of minutes lately. Luke Goody, who's been a Dynamo
offensively for this team. Miles Rice, who while he's had a very uneven year, he's really kind of picked himself up and made himself a guy you have to have on the floor, especially defensively. And then either Malik Renew or Umar Balo, it was Balo this time because Malik had what I've heard was some kind of allergic reaction that that kept him out of that game. Balo played amazing in that game
was really a key element. And that's really all that they've been playing, though they've gotten a little bit out of out of out of Canon Carlisle. He didn't have a very good game against Purdue, but he did have a pretty good game against Penn State. Five points all in a row and two rebounds and really kind of gave Indiana a shot in the arm when they needed it. I don't know if this is sustainable. You know, this is a really short line up. It's basically 6 1/2 players.
We haven't seen Bryson Tucker in a while. McKenzie and Baco has contributed a little bit in early stages of games, but now, like, you know, even though he played 28 minutes against Penn State, I was shocked when I saw that he had played that many minutes because he was basically not on the floor for the second part of the second-half. Only played nine against Purdue, only played 13 in that game at Michigan State, largely, I think because of a lack of defensive
effort more than anything else. I give Woodson credit for coalescing around this lineup because I think it's it's been a big reason why Indiana has won three out of their last four. It's probably not sustainable for that much longer, especially as we get into periods where Indiana's playing games in a
tighter cluster. But I it now really makes me wonder, you know, if if this had been the approach earlier and if you had more buy in and you had this was really, you know, how Indiana had committed to playing from the beginning. Are we even sitting here talking about a coaching change or, you know, is the season good enough that we're moving forward? It's just a it's a real interesting thing to think about. It it is, that's a great
question. I'm, I'm not sure if it's just the playing time, but I mean, you're right, it is. Woodson is kind of down to like we're playing 6 1/2 guys every game and Imbacco just took the renew minutes in this Penn State game. I, I would say that, you know, it's, it's easy to do when you're coming off in nine days between UCLA and Purdue and then you have back-to-back home games with a three day gap. It's going to be interesting to, I think we're going to start to stress test this.
I mean, we're going to hear the end of the season really quick. But you, you have two games, you know, in three days, a lot of flying, going to Washington and then Oregon and then you come back four days later to play a game against Ohio State. And then you play the big 10 tournament, which I'm not even sure I've seen the bracket like I'm, I'm, but I'm assuming it's just, you know, you make it on Tuesday or Wednesday and then
you just play every single day. And then if you make any kind of tournament you're, you're doing, you know, a game every two days and then going to a new site. So all that said, it's going to be interesting to see how how this plays out, but I think we're going to find out really quick. The thing that I found funny again with the Penn State game is the game is definitely in the balance. And then Indiana goes on a 12/2 run with about 5 minutes to go.
Again, another game where we get the little run icon in the Ken Palm score chart, like just that that has to happen in an IU game. We also gave up A10 O run to Penn State in the middle of the first half. So again, this is a team of runs. It's just a matter of when's the runs going to happen and can we have the bigger run and can we have more than more runs than the other team gets runs on us. Yeah, it was. And it and it look, it was a weird vibe in there.
It was a weird game. It was, you know, the Purdue game was such a a cool experience for so many of the people that were in there because it was a really like vibrant atmosphere. Indiana played really hard. I mean, it was a lot of like, uncomfortable, oh boy, here we go again kind of feeling in the crowd until Indiana went on that 12O run. I mean, at that point it was
6760. Five there were. 8 minutes left in the game, it really looked like this was going to be one that got away from IU and it was going to really hurt their tournament hopes. And then they really took control from there. And even though Penn State got back into it a little bit at the end, you know, I think the closest Penn State ever got was 5 the rest of the way.
And that I, you know, I really take my hat off to the guys that played and especially Trey Galloway, who hit those clutch threes down the stretch, Luke Goody, who had some great free throws. I mean, there were just a lot of guys who made good individual plays. Omar Balo had a great rebound that kept that last big, like,
high leverage possession alive. But yeah, I mean, the runs, it's just who this team is. This team's got the talent to go on, you know, 1010 point run, 12 point run or 28 to three run as we saw against Purdue. But it's also unless it's focused and really drilled and. You know, doing what it needs to do. It's also able to give up A10 O run like they did earlier in the game against Penn State.
So the the thing I would say with the the shorter lineups is as this has been happening, Woodson have been able to keep. I'm just focusing on Balo just because for a while there he was running some really high minute totals. He was able to do that while keeping Balo at kind of a 22 to 26 minute a game against Penn State. Balo has 36 minutes and we've seen, you know, there is that stretch from, you know what the Ohio State home game to the
Purdue Rd. game where Balo was 40 minutes 363935 and then his play fell off a Cliff for two or three games. You know, it's it's you can't run him in the 35 plus minutes for multiple games in a row. So it's that's what I'm going to be looking for the next couple of games is how is Woodson going to do of these line UPS, tighter rotations with also basically one of the guys you got to keep kind of it 22 minutes a game. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm curious about that as well, especially
with the road trip. Yeah, You know, so you got a game on Saturday, you got a game on Tuesday, you got a big game on Saturday and then. A road trip then the the teams that go to play it seems like everyone either plays UCLA or USC or you get the Washington Oregon 1 and it seems like the Washington Oregon teams do a little bit better it's. It's kind of it's very, it's very, I, I will say it has been
very hit or miss. I mean, if you look at like, for instance, Minnesota went out and swept LA. They beat USC by three, they beat UCLA by three and then they turned around and lost at home to Penn State and Northwestern. This league makes no sense. I will say that. But you know, you look at the teams that have made the the two parter road trip and and it's not everybody, but it's been
kind of a mixed bag. I mean, Michigan State went out and lost the two LA games back-to-back and then has come back and, and put a tremendous run on, you know, Michigan I don't think went out there. It's, it's just been very actually Michigan went to USC and ECOA as well. So it's, it is a little bit uneven in terms of all of that. You know, Purdue went out and beat both Washington and Oregon
by a pretty decent margin. I think they beat Washington by 11 and Oregon by 7. So we know it can be done. It's just going to be interesting to see which IU team shows up in both of those games. When you look at the bracket matrix, we're we're popping as an 11 or a twelve seed right now. So you know, it's it's as as we've talked about our, our tournament hopes were never done. It's that that game against Ohio State, Ohio State's in a very similar spot that we are.
That's going to be a really key game when we get to that point. Yeah, it's it's going to be really fascinating in terms of the the way that the the tournament stuff goes in that right now. I was talking with somebody about this earlier. It's hard to conceive that Indiana is going to be in the tournament, but they have more a better chance to be in the tournament than out of the tournament right now. And that does not really drive with the way that we thought about the season up to this
point. And it doesn't make a lot of sense just when you look at it on paper, except that, you know, IU is 17 and 11:00. If they can go 2 and one in the remaining part of the schedule, they'll be 10 and 10. And you look at their results and, you know, they wanted Ohio State. That's a really good win. They wanted Michigan State. Very few teams have a win as good as that in the whole country. Yeah, and they beat Purdue at home and and they don't have any
bad losses. I mean, that's the thing. The worst loss in the office. Yeah. They're like, yeah, if you want, you want to look up good loss in the dictionary, you see the little like pitchfork next to it. The the worst loss Indiana has all season is at Iowa. And that was a bad loss in terms of like it was aesthetically ugly. But they, I mean, Iowa, that's a that's a top 75 team, you know, so it's not that's not really that damaging.
So the Washington game's really important because that would be the worst loss of the season and it would be a terrible time to pick up such a loss. The other two I think they need to split Oregon and Ohio that. Has the feeling of like something that could happen, which is what we see in the team, yeah. But I could also see them losing at Washington and then sweeping Oregon and Ohio State.
And then it's like, well, now you got a road win against Oregon and now you got another great win that most teams don't have. So that this is where it's, who knows at this point. Just strap in and get ready for the ride. And keep in mind that, you know, there's a lot of other teams that also have to win in order to get into the tournament. And I'm going to do a whole bracket show next week. I haven't done 1 yet because it's just been kind of crazy just trying to keep track of
what's going on with all this. But we'll walk through all the teams that are in competition with Indiana. We can talk through what exactly it's it's looking like and where Indiana's results lie with others. The other thing to keep in mind is like there's going to be bid Steelers, you know, teams that win conference tournaments that aren't supposed to, and you hate being in the category where that affects you. But that's exactly where
Indiana's at right now. And that's going to be a challenge that we got to just consider as we move forward. Just a 2 minute question on this because I've had a couple of friends, I think they're just gaslighting me about this. But it's like the the question of all right, India makes a tournament, how, how far do they have to go before you reconsider bringing back Woodson? I'm just, I'm just curiously, I'm going to rephrase the question.
If they make the tournament, at what point it of, you know, us advancing far is is that's a different discussion. Let's just say pick a round where it suddenly becomes an awkward discussion about how we're still like they make the final four. It's going to be an odd like, wow, we're actually going to to do this. But where, where would you say that that becomes an odd, an odd discussion point that we're still going to keep the, which I think is what you need to do, but.
I was talking with friends of the pod, Mark, Katie and Chris Williams yesterday and Matt Blaska and and this came up in conversation. We were discussing it and my response to them is what I'll say to you, which is at the beginning of the year when we were talking about this IU team who was, if you'll recall, picked second to win the Big 10.
We asked at that point, is making a Sweet 16 enough to consider keeping Mike Woodson back during your way to some degree into the NCAA tournament and winning a couple of games? I don't think changes the problems that we've had within the course of the season overall and the and why a decision was made so early to move on from Woodson.
I mean, I, I think there's going to be so a lot of conversation and question about if you, if the IU makes the Sweet 16, for instance, if they make the NC double, I don't think they're going to, but what? If they make a Davis style run like they just the the bracket breaks they they wouldn't they win a key game in the Sweet 16 and they're in the national
championship game. I mean, I, I, I don't know, I, I, it's almost impossible to entertain that as a thought process because I mean, you might as well ask, like, what if the tournament gets cancelled? Then what? Like it's, it's, there's, there's all kinds of those things where it's hard to really put that in.
I look, here's the thing. The one thing I'll the one thing I'll, the one thing I'll say on this is a lot of people, those questions first started popping up not when Indiana beat Purdue, but when Indiana beat Penn State. And I just would like to remind everybody that I, I was thrilled that Indiana beat Penn State. I was thrilled that they've, they've coalesced around the lineup that's working hard. Penn State is 17th in the Big 10 right now.
Penn State had won one Rd. game the entire year and it was at Minnesota 3 days before they played Indiana on the road. I, I, I'm all for giving IU it's flowers. I don't think that we need to be having the conversation about, well, gosh, if we win four games in the NCAA tournament at this point, since it's not even guaranteed he's going to get in. So I'm I'm going to I. Think we pushed that off to the side. For now, and we can revisit. I, I agree. It's like, it's like paying
taxes on winning the lottery. Like it yeah, that, that, that theoretically sucks, but you also won the lottery. Like if we're in the final four, that's I, that's a, that's a weird conversation I'd be happy to have. Let's win the Big 10 tournament 1st and then see what happens. Let's win a game in the Big 10 tournament. Win a game, let's win one. Game in the Big 10 that would be ideal all. Right on that. Let's talk about other coaches. Yeah.
So let's let's get to the other coach discussion. I'm calling this group, so I know we got to name it, name it. Well, we don't have to, but I'm naming the groups. All these guys are, you know, I'm 46, you're 45. They're they're kind of in our age range growing up, not millennial. So I'm, I'm calling this the Friendster group Friendster or Myspace because they're a little bit before, you know, they, they were around, they're kind of our
age. So we're going This is the Friendster group, the the Six Degrees. Group, right? Yeah, You remember, you remember that one, right, Friendster? God, I that's that's yeah, OK, I like it. This is a this is a relatively. There's enough Gen. X DNA in this group that you know that we maybe we should call them like the singles. Group or say. Reality bites. Reality Bites. This says that singles. Yeah, yeah, this the Reality Bites. Group. I love it all right.
So we have been trying to cordon off groups of four. We're going to have more of these. We've done 8 so far. And if you have missed those those, go back and listen to those podcasts. Do you think when we're done with this we will have done our new coach? Yes, I do. And in fact, we're going to there's, there's big names we haven't hit. We're going to hit one that everybody talks about in this group.
There's big names we haven't touched thus far, right, that we are planning on doing and we're trying to meter this out because we've got a long way to go. Obviously still in this coaching search, probably another month or if you're, if you're Scott, we've got a month. We got a like 5 weeks instead of four. Right, right, right.
So let's start with a name. I don't really think is a serious candidate, but I keep seeing him popping up on job boards and I don't for the life of me understand why he coaches in the Big 10. He's he's been in the Big 10 for
longer than you might think. And other than being I guess, a relatively good looking guy, I really don't understand like why people keep bringing him up. But it's Chris Collins at Northwestern. So Chris Collins, he's 51 years, He's going to be 51 years old at the start of the upcoming college basketball season, which is younger than I would have anticipated, but relatively young.
Guy makes $2.8 million a year, does not have a buyout at Northwestern. At least from all all evidence that I can find they they got rid of the buyout in his last contract extension. Maybe Cronin can give him some of his. Like, here's 2 million of my buyout. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, let's let's pool our buyout. Let's see what happens.
Five O 7 win percentage for his career, which 192 and 187 is his totals 3 and three in the NCAA tournament was Big 10 Coach of the Year in 2023. In his time in the Big 10 and this is the only place he's ever coached as a head coach. He is 84 and 140 in Big 10 play, which is a .375 win percentage, which if he did get hired, that would be a great homage to the history of Indiana football because that's about their winning percentage. I think overall in conference
play. Chris Collins, his high watermarks have come somewhat recently, of course. If you all recall in 2022, they finished tied for second in the Big 10 with Indiana. Sorry, 2023 tied for tied for second with Indiana. And you know, if you look at his history, a lot of the reason why he gets mentioned is because of the pedigree of him having been a Coach K assistant for many years. He's obviously got the Duke
connection there. I'm going to call his 10 pom page up so we can look at it together. But, you know, he's been coaching in Northwestern since 2014. And Scott, I'm just not seeing a lot here to really get excited about. As you know, he's at Northwestern. Tough place to win. At least we always here.
And yet it feels like every other tough place to win has had the ability to be more consistent with their winning than has been at Northwestern. And while there is no argument that Chris Collins has been the best coach Northwestern's had, maybe ever, I still don't see a lot there that would make me think, God, this is a guy I really would like to get as the head coach of Indiana. I mean, he's been there.
He's only had three seasons in the big 10 with double digit wins, a a lot of single digit wins. Here's what I was noticing on the page. Well, I, I would say, you know, because he's being mentioned for the job. I would say he's got a great agent, but he doesn't have a buyouts. Maybe he doesn't have a good, maybe, maybe he doesn't have a great agent or he has a great new agent. I I, I, I don't want to keep harping on this, but I will bring this up on all the candidates today.
And I always go back on the Ken Palm looking at the rank in adjusted offense and adjusted defense because we continue to say, you know, normally if you have a team that's in the top 25 in both of those categories, you have a team that has the hallmarks of a team that could go to the final four. I was looking at it and this is an another weird marker point, but he's never had a team in the top 10 of adjusted offense or adjusted defense ever in his career.
And then I started looking just through his Ken Pom page. Has he been in the top ten in the country in anything? And he has. There's little pockets of like one year they were top in turnover percentage. They were in the top 7:00 or 8:00. But my point is you go back and look at, you know, and I didn't do a deep, deep dive, but you look at Tom Crean when he was at Marquette two years, he had an offense that was in the top ten
in the country. Like coaches that are going to be taking a job like Indiana. I would hope that at some point, maybe if you don't have tournament success, you have a team that is just elite at something or you've shown over the course of this long in one place. You know what we call before, like, you know, hot green or like a green streak, like something that just shows like you have figured out something for Chris Collins. Maybe it's offensive turnover percentage.
They're they're very high and not turning the ball over on offense. That's it's just not there's not enough. There's nothing that says like he is great and making his team's elite at this. Yeah, no, I mean, his teams don't shoot the ball well. His teams, you know, they've had times when they've defended well, but it's generally been at the expense of their offense. There's just, there's not a lot there that sticks out
statistically and the. Good news is in when his tournament results, he's never really lost to a he's never had like a, a loss where he's, he's losing to a lower seed. That's because he's always been a 7-8 or a nine seed where in the second round you get shellacked by the one or the two, which you know, that's, that was a year in mine college experience with the IU Hoosiers with Bob Dias, you're always stuck in that 8-9 game, which which sucks.
So I, I don't, I don't know why he's being mentioned. I know. Well, he got mentioned. He got mentioned in 2017 because if you'll recall, like that was the first time he'd taken Northwestern of the tournament. He'd been there for years. It's like, wow, there's a great
upward trajectory. And you know, that was famously like Julia Louis Dreyfus, like kid or nephew was on the team and you know, they, they won their first game and then they proceeded to have 5, four straight losing seasons overall and five straight losing seasons in the conference. And you know, you go back and look at the articles from like March of 2022 and it's like, well, they're bringing Chris Collins back mostly because they can't afford to fire him.
Like that was literally the rationale in the articles and had nothing to do with what we really believe in the Chris Collins experiment. Now, to his credit, they have been better. They were better in 23. They were better in 24. And it's hard to judge this season particularly strongly because they lose Brooks Barnheiser, you know, in the in the middle of the season, they lose. They got kind of snake bit by injuries. They're still 6:00 and 11:00 in
the conference. But man, it's just like if if this is another one of those candidates where it's like if this is who they end up with, either someone like really, really wanted a Coach K assistant as the head coach at IU or Indiana got turned down by all of the other. Good candidates. And so they've settled for this.
You know, the only good, the only good thing he could bring is the the fireworks that go off behind the basket while other teams are still shooting that can make the ball go out. That would be fun. Or or bring the officials that refuse to call push offs on on his own team when they're playing Indiana. Like if we could import that, like if we get the whatever Boo Boo E magic they had in terms of official calls, I would I would consider.
It at least or or can we also just take away the like Northwestern's no longer Chicago's Big 10 team, just Indiana becomes Chicago's Big 10 team. I have been advocating that for years. We have a far greater. Claim to that than they do anyway. Anyway, I don't. Think my my my number would be like I'd be in the 30s. I'd be like a 32 just because I Indiana has in the last 10 years, Indiana has made three tournaments. Chris Collins has made three tournaments in 10 years.
Like this is this is, I don't know what you're doing. And it would kind of, it would look like everybody turned you down. I would be at AI would be at a 20 like I I would be more excited for Brad Brownell. Which K? Yeah, You did coach K today. Yeah, I would much. I would much rather have Brad Brownell than have Chris Collins. Yeah. Even if Collins is going to bring K back as an assistant, I'd be more interested. So what if it? What if he brought Johnny
Dawkins too? And Steve Wojciechowski like just getting the whole band back. And Jay Beilis takes over Fisher's job just. There you go. Let's move to our second candidate, also a private school coach, younger, much younger, Mark Byington, whose name has gotten bandied about.
There was what appears to be a very erroneous story that was floated on social media that somehow Kurt Signetti having worked with Byington when Byington was the head coach at James Madison, that he was like advocating to Dolson that he needed to hire him. And then of course, hilariously, Signetti got on Twitter was like, Nope, that's not accurate. It's I, I love that. That's great. Signetti is so awesome. But when I look at Byington,
he's an interesting case. One thing I did here yesterday, I was, I was listening to Field of 68 with Jeff Goodman and with Robbie Hummel and Goodman mentioned that Byington's buyout is pretty, pretty large, like $12 million. He just got there. You look at his stats, he's 49. He's going to be 49 at the start of the upcoming season, 237 and 142 overall, 625 win percentage. Just had kind of a, an interesting pathway through his career.
He, he started off a a while ago, like, you know, even for having, for being close to 50, he's been in the game for quite a while. He was at Georgia Southern and LED them from the Socon to the Sunbelt, was there for like 7 seasons, then moved to James Madison, LED them out of the Colonial and into the Sunbelt. He's like a Sunbelt. I don't know if that means Indiana would go in the Sunbelt or if that's where Vanderbilt might be headed there.
I'm not totally sure. But you know, he's he's he's had some success and and certainly he got hired at Vanderbilt largely because he took James Madison from in the post COVID year, a 15 and 14 record in a 227 mark. And Ken Palm all the way up to not just being a tournament invite in a 12 seed as a sunbelt team, but a team that won the first game in the tournament, won 32 games that year. He's he's an interesting candidate.
But again, Scott, when we talk about him, he's done really well at Vanderbilt. He's in his first season. It's an interesting idea, but he's he's pretty far behind a lot of the other candidates that would be in the mix. Just just looking at what he's done overall, you know, there's, there's, there's a little bit of a footprint there, but only one NCAA tournament appearance throughout the course of his
career as a head coach. Yeah, you got to be able to make the tournament once or twice at a school, or it has to be something where you make it and the team is so good. Like that team at James Madison went 32 and 4. They were 72nd in offense and 74th on defense ranking wise. Like it, That's a team that is good but is not. Like, again, not doing anything special. This is the one where you look around, there's only one year, one year they ever did anything that was in the top ten in the
country. And that was last year's James Madison team. They were fifth in the country at 3 point defensive a defense on three-point shots. You figure all right, we're going to bring this to Vanderbilt and we're going to take you we're going to move this over. Nope and Vanderbilt, they are the worst team in the country damn near 344th giving up 37% from 3 point line sounds like something we're we're really good at here at IU. We we could we could definitely
do that. It it looks I, you know, I don't want to harp on this one too much, but it, it looks like somebody who's OK and having some, you know, mid level success. But but there's no, no evidence in the numbers in the records in the tournament success that this is somebody who can take a team and really do something elite at some facet of the basketball game.
It looks like somebody who's able to kind of be an average coach, and it seems like a great coach for a place like Vanderbilt. Well, and, and maybe he'll grow into something more than that and I am impressed. His offense this year is far better than any offense he's coached so far this year. They're 21st in the country and adjusted offensive efficiency. And going seven and eight at Vanderbilt in this year's SEC. Is nothing just. To sneeze? No. No. No, I mean, they've had a good
year. I mean, you look, you look down the list of what they've done, they they beat Tennessee, they beat Kentucky, they beat Texas, they beat Texas A&M on the road the other day. That's that's a big win. I mean, there's a bunch of a bunch of really good results and, and it's not, I'm not throwing shade at Mark Byington
by any means. I will say though, that other than playing fast and doing a pretty good job of limiting turnovers, there's not a lot, as you said, that really sticks out on his resume as being important and meaningful in terms of, hey, this is clearly the next candidate for the IU job. We're just, I don't see that in in what's out there. So, you know, again, I think this is one of those names that gets tossed around because he's having a good season.
He's got a loose, very loose tie to IU in that he was at James Madison same time Kurt Signetti was. But beyond that, there's not really a good argument to be made here. And especially if he's got $12 million buyout, yeah. 12 million is a lot to pay for that. Those results lot lot to Cronin's like what, 15? But he's like just tournament, tournament, tournament. Right, No, that's the thing. I mean, Cronin's at a significantly higher level. So that's that's what I would
say there. I I, you know, I would be intrigued if they decided this is the guy we wanted. Like there would have to be something behind the scenes or it'd be like, whoa, baby, but I'd be like, OK, you need to show me what that is like real fast to get excited in this. I mean, I'd be about the same level as Brownell in terms of excitement, so I'd be around like the 25 to 30 range, but again, it would feel like settling more than anything.
Else agree with all that. I'd be in the 32 to 35 range. But the only thing that would make me happy is if it came out it's like, well, as part of Signetti's extension, he demanded that we hire the James Madison basketball coach. Like, OK, Like, I I would if it makes Signetti happy. And that's what kept him on football. Like, sure, this, this looks great.
I love those 10 palm numbers. Yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of it's there's certain things you'll allow, you know, as a payment for, you know, hey, you got us to, you know, 11 and one in football. Yes, we'll let you hire the basketball coach. That's not happening here, though. And and that's, that's funny. Before we go on, we were asked by one of our Twitter followers. This question. Love this question. We've been doing this zero to 100 scale in terms of of our
excitement on hires. One of us, probably you, Scott, you have a little more free time than me. You just go back and actually write down what our actual answers were so that we can have that moving forward. But they asked us what would have been our zero to 100 excitement ratings on all the coaches since night that got hired. I'm going to let you go first on
this. So we've got Davis, we've got Samson, we've got Tom Crean, we've got Archie Miller, and we got Mike Woodson's. We have 5, five people. We need a zero to 100 number of what you would have been at the time, not not knowing what happens, but at the time, how excited would you have been for that hire given what we knew about those candidates at the time? What when are we when is when is the Davis hire because he was
interim and then like so? Let's say when he got hired full time, so may or not May March of 2001 after after that four seed year that he had for the interim. Yeah, God. I was still so young and dumb at that point, but my dad and I, I mean, imagine you were imagine now flew to that game to watch us lose to Kent's. It was just it, it was wild. We flew TWA the the teams were facing and we're in the back like facing, you have the table in the middle. I don't know what was going on.
We stopped in Saint Louis, flew TWA. We get there and then it's like it's like a Thursday or Friday game. It was obviously the first game, but we had hotels till through Sunday and then it's just we get our smoked by Kent State. I, I would, I was probably like a 73 with Davis just because I was, I think I was buying into the narrative of like, all right, you know, this guy's part of the, you know, was an assistant, like he's part of the
lineage. I was more bummed after we lost that that Kent State game, but that that four seed was the highest seed line we had gotten in like 8 or 9 years at that point. It had been a while since we were a protected seed and then you know, it, it quickly changed. The next year I probably would have been like an 84 because I'm like took him to the title game. Like like he felt like it was a, a breath of fresh air. I wasn't thinking about how much we were giving up by not having
a real search at that point. So if I was doing it now, I'd probably be like a 64. I think at the time I was like in the probably the mid 70s. Yeah, I was not terribly excited about the higher. I felt it was settling it. It felt at that point, keep in mind that like there was not a real commitment to winning on the part of the IU administration. So I would have been probably closer to about 45. The season was fine.
I mean, there was some great moments that season, but it it just didn't feel like an inspired hire, especially with some of the names that were thrown around at the time. Remember Rick Pitino's name was getting mentioned. This was pre baggage. Steve Alford, you know, it was before Pierre Pierce and all of that, you know, so he was still considered to be somebody that, you know, was it was in demand and everybody kind of assumed he was going to get the job.
There were other name, Bobby Cremen's name I remember being mentioned during that time period. So to just be like, yeah, we're going to go with the interim guy who didn't have any other prior experience. So I would have been around a 45, I think. Let's go. Calvin Sampson. What would have been your reaction for that one? It's. Are are we like now if the hire happened now or like I'm saying at the time, at the time, at the time, what was your level of excitement?
I was pretty excited. I mean, he had taken a team to a final four. It, you know, it, it's really tough to parse now knowing how quickly he just did the same show of cost stuff that he was doing. Then it felt like everyone said all the right things. Like he he's done. He knows what he did wrong. He's not going to do that here. We, we, we have a great plan in place. And, and then very quickly he got a team together and, and put it together.
I, I was, I, I would say like mid to high seventies, like probably like a 76 or 77 because it felt like an interesting hire and somebody who had a really good pedigree. I was really mixed on this one. I was about a 55 or 60. I remember having a conversation with my dad about this because, you know, I I was still watching IU basketball, but I was also watching Texas Tech. I was really interested with the Bob Knight experiment down there.
I was going on. So I saw a ton of Big 12 games, saw a bunch of of Oklahoma, always admired the way they played. But I knew all the problems that they were having at Oklahoma. And the fact that he was, yeah, he was, he'd applied for the Arizona State job and then all of a sudden he ends up with the Indiana job. And it's like, well, they were chasing this guy out of Norman, why are we hiring him? And that was not knowing all of the back story at that point about how the hire had gone.
And So what, what was also for me is like I, I, that was a time that I thought Alford made sense. It, it just like that was what, you know, coming off a 25 and 9 year at Iowa, I think 2006 or 2007, like he was, he was still doing well at Iowa. It, it felt like to me that was the time I was like, I, I, I think I was disappointed they didn't go with Alford because it felt like that would have been a cool hire at that point. Let's go to Tom Crean only two years later. So Crean gets.
I heard of the podcast like this is about the time you and I start. We probably go back and listen to the archives. I given everything that had happened in the way that we self flatulated ourselves. I was I would say I was in like the mid the low 80s, like 8283 only because this is a guy who had final four experience had take, you know, had one of the. Most important players, the NBA in his pedigree, seem like a young, energetic coach who
wanted to be there. And, you know, for those who don't remember, that was a really dark period where there was a lot like, why would anybody want this job? You know, And there was a lot of discussion of like, maybe no one would take that job. Looking back, there was a lot of people who would have taken the job. And it probably wasn't as we felt, but that that was a moment where it did feel really dire. There was a moment where it's like, are we getting Dan Dokic as our coach?
Like he's really advocating for it. So I I would be high because it it, it, it all it felt really good and ending and after the press conference. Kareen won that press conference. You're like, damn, this guy really wants to be here. So yeah, it's like 8384. Yeah. No, I was excited. I mean, it seemed like a good
hire. Like, I mean, there were there were some questions a little bit about, you know, the, you know, there were a couple whispers about how effective of a coach he was going to be at the highest level. But he was enthusiastic. He'd been to a Final Four within the previous four years, played in a very tough Big E Seemed like a really good hire. And so, yeah, I was. I was right up there in that range. Archie Miller, I'm going to that. I'll just, I'll let me go on this one first.
I was very excited about the Archie Miller higher because again, as we've talked about many times on the show, seemed like a dynamite higher. Everybody said that was the best higher in the cycle. There was I, I still can, clearly. Remember in that 2017 tournament watching Wichita State and Dayton in the first round and thinking, God, I'd love either of these coaches look at how
hard their teams play. So, you know, obviously we saw what happened afterwards and there were a lot of failings as a result. But on paper, as we've said many times, it it felt like a great process that led to a great result that ended up being a terrible result, but it wasn't because of the process. So yeah, it was. I'll, I'll say 85 on that. One I'll I'll give you my my my number with a story. My wife and I started a scholarship at the School of Education around this time and
it was a fun process. If you haven't done it, I would venture to do it. It's, it's a fun process. It's very cool. It's now been funded. We, we worked at the School of Education. They were fantastic to work with. And as part of that, they put, they used us for an advertisement in the IU Alumni magazine. And so when we got the IU Alumni magazine, it was the magazine with the cover of Archie Miller on the cover holding the ball
like Assembly Hall on his back. I got it framed with that cut out with a picture of us and our scholarship. So excited. And I thought, this is going to be effing awesome because now we have our next coach for 20 years. I'm going to put this in the basement. And what a great cover of IU alumni to have there. It has since moved to the corner of the basement. I won't get rid of the frame, but like I might at some point put a poster with a new face on it. I was the same thing.
I've said it over and over again. Part of you was like Holtman was interesting because like there are so many good guys coming out of Butler over and over again. But I've said it a bunch of times, I will say it again. He was, you could argue him or Holtman, but it's it's kind of a doesn't matter. He was the number one higher that offseason. He was the best coach available that offseason. I was probably in 93. And then finally, Mike Woodson, I was at about A50.
It was very similar to how I felt about the Calvin Sampson hire for completely opposite reasons. Like I was like, oh great, an IU guy will understand the program. But I think everybody was kind of like this. This is what they landed on. And now of course, we've got some additional context on that. But I, I was not, I was not sad that white Woodson got hired. I was more confused, and that is kind of where we're at with everything still, I think right
now I'm still very confused. How about you? Yeah, I was probably like in the same boat, maybe a 61. I I was trying I remember listening to assembly call. Can't wait to talk to you. Like like what it it definitely felt like we struck out and it felt like that we did kind of the easy the easy pick. And again, I will joke. Me and my buddies, Robert and Ben, we did a I'm looking at the list right now, a coaching bet. Pick.
For that, I'll be real quick. These, these are the names that we picked in five rounds of picking. We for, for when we hired Woodson, our bets were Beeline Mata, which ended up being there, Chris Beer, Dane Fife, who also kind of was there, Scott Drew, Brad Stevens, Steve Alford, Calvert Cheney, Eric Musselman, Dana Altman, Lawrence Frank, Rick Pitino, Tony Bennett, Bruiser Flint, Bruce Pearl, a lot of those guys. I'd, I'd be down. I I'm in for going back and redoing it.
But it's just, I look at that and I'm like, we had 1517 names and Woodson was never on there. That that isn't awesome. I really went into it. I had to talk. Myself into the all right, you know, NBA guy, he knows it, you know, alumnus and all that. So, yeah, like 6162, all right, We got to get to the last two candidates. We don't have a whole lot of time. Let's go to the youngest name. I think we'll have in this entire search a guy who's had certainly a checkered experience
with the NCAA. Will Wade, currently the coach at McNeese, which used to be McNeese State, formerly the coach at LSU and VCU, ran afoul of NCAA rules violations and got a show cause penalty and got essentially barred from LSU 699 win percentage. However, two and four in the NCAA, 2 Coach of the Year awards and a guy who you want to talk about some green streaks on his Ken Palm page. There's a ton of them. Will Wade has been back in coaching since his second year at McNeese.
He made the tournament in his first year. Now McNeese is not that complicated or hard of a place to get to the tournament necessarily, but it's still an accomplishment. He's been in the top 75 at Ken Palm both years. Now that he's been there, his teams are entertaining, they're fun. They play entirely different styles from the way that his LSU teams played, who played somewhat differently from how his VCU teams played. Clearly a good basketball mind.
But man, this guy comes with his own compartment full of baggage. And it's it's a name I don't know that we would normally see if IU wasn't in such desperate need of a reset from a program. Perspective. I was reading through his Wikipedia page that this could again goes to Bob Knight is underrated like it is now official. I was reading through his Wikipedia page Will Wade got his 100th win in 2017. I went back and looked like damn he was 35 years old when he got a hundred wins.
So I was like that was like Knight was young too. No Knight left army in 1971 at 31 years old with 100 and 250 record. But but I will say this, I mean, again, Bob Knight underrated 100 wins at 31 years old, insane. Will Wade after six years, his record is 109 and 60, which is very close to where McKnight was one O 250. He's he's put up a lot of wins and he's shown the ability to coach to me. The the hinge point is, I mean, I I know what you know, I read about what he did at LSU.
I know it was, you know him. On, on FBI tapes. And it's not just like OEP gave players impermissible payments and like there's, there's bribery, there's, there's all kinds of like actual illegal stuff, not just the rules stuff. That's that's a little bit questionable, Not more. It's more than a little bit questionable. No, no, you're right. So I mean it, it it's almost you have to discuss like are we going to discuss him as a coach?
Because as a coach there's a lot of things to like there. The the real question is, again, this comes back to what we'll talk about the next two candidates with baggage is you look back at Samson and Samson was a great coach. Samson has shown he's a great coach. But we have history of hiring somebody at Indiana who has some
baggage. And the question is, are, are you, is Indiana going to be OK with that baggage and with some of, with some of the controversy that comes around with that or the minute that the water gets turned up 1° in temperature, are we going to have issues with it? And I think that's the problem because if you hire a guy like Will Wade, there will be stories. He might get a little in the Gray area, whatever that I don't know what it is now with Nil, but like he'll, he might do that.
He he's shown a history and unfortunately Indiana has shown a history of not reacting well to that. So Indiana, if they want to go down this road, to me, it's less about his ability to coach. It's more about Indiana's ability to deal with a coach who's going to live in the Gray a little bit more than maybe they want or they say they want. Yeah. And I mean, ultimately, I think
a lot of it is perceptional. I mean, there, there is an argument to be made that I, you know, one of our network members, Kathy Amos made to me a few weeks ago, which is, well, if a guy cheated knowingly and willfully and then tried to cover it up, that's not really AI mean. That's a that might be a character flaw that you don't want to overlook in a head coach. Like it's one thing to say, well, look, everybody pays players and and it's not, you know, it's it's totally
permissible. Now that's true, But going to the level where you're getting show cost penalty slapped on you to the degree that Wade did actually was more of a wrist slap than perhaps you might think given what you heard about Wade. And certainly the rules changes
have made a big difference. Again, this is one of those guys that's really hard to adequately evaluate because the the, the other thing, the flip side here, it's like you look at his performance at LSU and it was good, but it wasn't like right dominating. You know, his best season was in 2019. They went to the Sweet 16. They were a three seed that year. So they performed a seed expectation. He had a three-year run where he had amongst the most efficient
offenses in the country. And then his last year at LSU had one of the most efficient defenses in the country, but not at the same time. And in fact, his offenses outside of that 2019 team were at the expense of his defenses. So there is a little bit of like feast or famine aspect to him. He's been a lot more consistent in terms of what his teams have done at Mcnee's, but he's also point, like literally they played A-Team this year who's listed in Kenpom as biblical
studies. I'm going to call it up here. Like you said, they beat them 111 to 57 there. I don't know which Bible they're studying. I don't know what but that they're listed as biblical. Studies and even. Like one of those, when we look at Indiana's football records from 19 O 4 is like we play the Alumnisus or you're playing like the Indianapolis Armory. It's like, I'm not sure if we should count that, frankly. You've also got, as we look through here, I mean, they've
they've had a great band name. They've heard a band that IU biblical studies. They're they're on like the seventh longest winning streak in the country right now.
They've won, I think something like, I don't know, 21 or their last 22. But the the one thing I'll note is that they're winning a bunch of games against teams that are significantly worse than they are because they're in the Southland Conference. Like the best win they've had and since since December was against the team that was ranked 176th and that was Texas A&M, Corpus Christi. Now you can only play the teams that are in your conference.
But much like I feel with Ben McCollum, I just think people need to pump the brakes a little bit on the record and maybe focus a little bit more on like who they're beating. So in this case I don't know. Play the team. Letourneau when I when I Googled it, Mary Kay, Letourneau came up before the university. So, so all of that to say, I am, I don't know what I would think if Will Wade was the higher I would be. I would be tremendously shocked.
You want to talk about going entirely outside of what the normal spectrum of coaching and culture would be for IU. This is an example of it and I just look at it from the perspective of Will Wade might end up being a really good like coach who who spends a ton of time in college. This is one of those dice rolls. I would love to hear the explanation if it was indeed the higher of why he was the higher, but I have a hard time seeing him being the higher as a result
of that. So I would, I would say my excitement level would be like a 40 merely because I'm like he's, he's clearly done too many good things in his career to discount him. But he also doesn't done enough great things to make him a shoe in for the IU job. And then you Add all the other stuff and it becomes a real issue. Yeah, I'd be A50 just because I don't. I would be like you, very
intrigued. And Mike, it would come down to, I think as a basketball coach, I'd be in the 70s or 80s, but I'd be really nervous that in two years Indiana would reverse course the university and say, oh, we don't like all of this. And we'd be kind of doing the 2008 thing all over again. I I don't trust Indiana can handle the the heat of somebody who has baggage like this. For those watching on YouTube or Spotify, we just did a complete costume and location change.
We had to stop the previous recording due to some time constraints, but we're back, Scott, we're it's. Oscar's weekend. So we're, we're doing different gowns. We're, we're trying a new movie, we're trying to make the best Oscar for best podcast. I mean, surely we deserve it at this point. I, I would agree. I, I would like to thank the Academy. I'd like to thank my agent. Anyway, one more, one more candidate to talk about.
A name that gets bandied about quite a bit within certain circles and a name that's clearly being pushed for the job by agents is Chris Beard. Chris Beard, currently the head coach at Ole Miss and of course prior to that had a season at Texas, which right at or during or after he was terminated due to a domestic violence arrest, had a decent amount of success
at Texas Tech before that. And then of course had started at Arkansas Little Rock in 2012. If you look at Beard by the numbers, what you've got is a coach that's had a laudable amount of on court success over the course of his time. Looking at the numbers, Beard, who would be 52, so still
relatively young at the start of the next basketball season. 6695 win percentage 661 Wall at Ole Miss 11 and five in the NCAA tournament, which includes 2 regular season conference titles, 6 tournament appearances, one Final Four, two Elite Eights and then Four Seasons with a top 15 Ken Palm defense. I'm gonna call Ken Pom page up here. You know, Beard gets talked about quite a bit in relation to the IU job Scott, and some of it is what's happened on the court with him.
Obviously took Texas Tech to that national title game where they lost in 2019 to Virginia. Had the top Cam Palm defense in the country that year. Went to an Elite 8 the previous year. A tie to Bob Knight was if anybody watched, you know, that weird reality show that they did with Texas Tech back, you know, in the last couple of years that Knight was at Texas Tech, you've seen Chris Beard in that.
But of course, most people know him from what he's done as a head coach since he got to the Division One level in 2016. So you know, Beard from the perspective of of being a candidate that's had some success. You know, that by itself, I think has made him a hot name
among certain circles. And then for many people, they see the the Bob Knight influence or they they see some kind of a seed in that Beard about a month ago, kind of out of the blue drops a Bob Knight reference on a national broadcast. You know, and we've heard quite a bit from reporters both on and off the record who have said, like Beard is being actively and very aggressively pushed for the job.
It's clearly a job he wants. But Scott, this is also a gentleman who lost his job at Texas because of the aforementioned arrest for domestic violence complaint, ultimately was not charged. But as anybody who understands the criminal justice system understands, that's that's not at all unusual when it comes to domestic violence situations.
Was hired after a year out of coaching at Ole Miss and has been impressive in terms of getting Ole Miss elevated to a level where they're competitive for the NCAA Tournament this year. But with Beard, there's just a big obstacle that people should be focusing on. And I've seen a lot of people try to brush off the domestic violence arrest either through saying, well, you know, he wasn't charged so therefore you can't hold that against him, or,
hey, everybody makes mistakes. I've heard that one a lot, which is a bizarre argument as far as I'm concerned, Scott, my big thing is like IU is at a juncture right now where they have to make the right hire. They have to make a hire that will stabilize the program, can be built around, can get positive momentum going forward. There's more to that than just
being a good on court coach. And my concern that, you know, a lot of people's fervor around Beard is kind of ignoring all the other issues that would make this a very dangerous hire for Indiana. And you know, that's, that's even assuming that you don't find a domestic violence arrest disqualifying, which I personally do in cases like this. It's it's just, it's one of those deals where the the risk does not justify whatever reward because the risk is almost unknowable.
Yeah, I mean, you, you, you look at all the other candidates that we've talked about that have some kind of baggage. It's just running afoul of the rules of the game or pushing too hard or cheating. This is this is a real, a real arrest, like, like you've done a real crime, which, you know, it's funny, all the other people you'll text me like, you know, Wade Collins, here's what we're talking about that next time.
This is the only one that you and I have kind of pushed off because we're not quite sure how to talk about it. We've talked about at length how to do this. We have recorded this before. And imagine doing this kind of tiptoeing around this for multiple seasons as your coach. I'm I, I hear what you're saying. I agree with him. I'm not comfortable talking about I'm not a I don't don't, you know, don't condone what
happened. I don't know what happened, but it's like this is a very serious allegation. It's a very serious crime. It it's something that I don't feel comfortable talking about. Like I don't want to be talking about this with my basketball program for years. And, you know, we we had talked before this about, you know, like the redemptive arc. You know, you got to give somebody a second chance, which I agree with. But as you said, it's like he has a second chance.
He's coaching in the SEC, like he has a job. He's coaching one of the two best conferences. It. It's one of those where if another story pops up at any point during his coaching tenure, it it could all fall apart again. And is that really a risk you want to take, as you said, at a very important juncture? And the the last thing I'll say is the connection point. I'm also tired of the connection points tonight and has to be somebody from the play.
We're done that we did that with Woodson, but this connection point is so minor. Like yes, he coached with Knight. That was when Knight was in jilted ex-girlfriend. Like he wouldn't wear this is the most comfortable red sweater I've worn in years. I mean he hated IU at that point. Wasn't like he was glowingly telling Chris beard stories about assembly. Come sit up, come sit and let me tell you about assembly hall and how great the pretty were
happening. He hated IU when he was at Texas Tech. I'm not sure he ever got over it. And outside of that, this is Chris Beard is a guy who who has built his bones recruiting, coaching in Texas and the Southeast. If if he had not coached under Bob Knight that there'd be no point where you'd be like, this is a real connection point to a guy who can cut it in the Midwest. Yeah, I mean, and look, I think on the Knight front, I've got
this on pretty good authority. Like they may not be as close as perceived. I think it would be the way that I would put it. So I think a lot of people miss misidentify that connection a little bit. I look, I, I look at it like this, this is a coach who clearly can coach at a top level, but clearly has had some issues that have made him not attractive. Because look, it was at the Ole Miss last year.
Everybody was like, who's who's going to take the chance of hiring Chris Beard and will it go off the rails? So they hire him at Ole Miss. He coaches there for a season. He's clearly very available to go somewhere else. This is not too far off from Bob Huggins. You know, post DUI arrest, the first time getting hired at Kansas State and then trying to bounce after a year and ends up bouncing after a year to go back to West Virginia.
But I'll note that last cycle, two programs that are very much culturally connected to Indiana had openings. Louisville had an opening, chose not to hire Chris Beard. You know, like he was very available at that point. They end up going with Pat Kelsey, a a relatively little known coach at the College of Charleston. Instead of hiring Chris Beard, Kentucky opens up Does Kentucky
hire Chris Beard given. Program that's that's more willing to play in some of these areas if you like in Indiana. Kentucky does not hire him and ends up going in entirely different directions with the person that they're trying to bring in. Arkansas had an opening. Did they go try to get Chris Beard? No. So point being, several pedigree programs, programs that have have won national titles, you know, decided that this was not the right move for them.
So I look at Indiana and Indiana being I think in a more precarious spot in some ways than maybe not Louisville, but certainly the other two programs were at the time of their hires. This just feels like an unnecessary risk for a coach that while he's had quite an impressive run, is not I don't there's no national title. And you know, you're talking about very good, but not consistently great across both offense and defence performances.
And I I would even say I'm going to call something up here, Scott, for those people who are watching on YouTube and Spotify. But if you're not watching, I'll read it off. I've got this this thing up that says, you know, it's coaching notes and it's a it's a blind resume comparison between two coaches. Coach a I'll just give it away.
Is Chris Beard 695 winning percentage over the last eight seasons, two regular season titles, 6 tournament appearances, one Final four two Elite Eights, Four Seasons with a camp on top 15 defense. Coach B same eight years, 753 win percentage, three regular season conference titles, 6 tournament appearances, a final 42 Sweet sixteens five seasons
with a Ken Pomp top 15 defense. And I'll note this, Coach B also had probably their best season as a, as, as a head coach of their current institution wiped out by COVID. You know, this was the season where this person's team was going to be a two seed. They were in the top 10 of Kenpom. We never actually got to see that team perform. Coach A, as I mentioned, is Chris Beard. Coach B is not is not Archie Miller. I know. That. He is not Chris Collins.
It's not Will Wade, it's Brian Dutcher of San Diego State, the the the long time assistant for Steve Fisher, who of course, as we talked about, took his team to the national title game. They lost, you know, pretty brutally to UConn. But is Matt Painter and Brian Dutcher? There you go. It's like a tie. Love Midwest guys is what I but you know, this is where I asked myself with the beard thing, like everybody's like, well, let's just look at the basketball.
It's like you can't just look at the basketball because you just look at the basketball. His resume is pretty good, but there's other coaches that have equal or superior resumes. So that's to me, not the reason why you point to this guy and say he's clearly the choice. Oh well, he took a team to a final four. Well, who else? Recently has taken teams to Final Fours.
I mean, Kevin Keats at North Carolina State just took his team to a Final Four. I just mentioned Brian Dutcher who took San Diego State to the Final Four, which I would consider to be a bigger accomplishment than taking Texas Tech Hubert Davis took his team to the title game. Mick Cronin, who we've already talked about. I'm sorry, Porter Moser, the. Oklahoma coach who when he was at Loyola. You reverse engineer what you what you've done before. Going through the top coaches
right now. How many of them took a team to a Final Four before their first job? Like Nate Oates hadn't, Tommy Lloyd hadn't. I guess Tommy Lloyd still hasn't. But I mean, like, but you go through that list, a lot of coaches that are really good right now never took a team to a Final Four until they did it with the place they're at now.
Yeah. So look, when you get down to it, I'm going to actually call Dutcher stats up for those people who haven't seen them because this is not a guy who I think is a reasonable candidate. It's a shame though, because I mean, he's had tremendous success at San Diego State. He's had look at all these top 10 defenses he's had offense hasn't been quite as good in most years, but that you know, they had that 2020 year where they had both of them going at
the top 15 rate. I'll always wonder if that team might have had a chance to win a national title in the tournament that year. So my point being, like there are other coaches out there who have similar resumes who don't have the baggage. And even if you want for whatever reason to take the approach that, well, you know, whatever, whatever sins were committed were paid for, I don't, I don't think you can put aside the fact that that
situation occurred. You've got a lot of industry people who are very skeptical that this guy is going to be able to sustain himself. This is just one of those hires where I know the guy you can can take the risk, nor should they because there are certain things, as you mentioned, Scott, but fall beyond the level of, oh, you cheated with the recruits or this or that. This falls beyond that as far as I'm concerned. And normally we do our our zero
to 100 rating on this. And it's like, I don't know that I could ever feel good about Chris Beard being hired as a head coach because of what's happened up to this point. And that's just I, I don't think Indiana needs to put itself in a position where this is the direction that they go. It's, it's, this is both too critical to hire and I just don't think this is a person who has demonstrated over a long enough period of time that they can keep it together under the
spotlight. Because that's exactly as much as we've heard talk about fishbowl and things like that. This is not the place to go and like live out a quiet coaching life the rest of your time. It would be almost impossible to get excited about this hire because in the back of your head, A you just hired a guy that got arrested on ADV complaint, whether or not he was charged. And B, in the back of your head like this is A, a time bomb
waiting to go off. Like something is going to happen that that is going to put Indiana basketball and the athletic department in a really bad situation. Agree with all of that. I would also say, you know, for those who are saying just just focus on the basketball, let's focus on that. It's like, all right, that, but that's in a vacuum because I get you teach media.
If you were there at that first press conference, the third question you asked Olson is how did you you know, what are your thoughts about the domestic assault charges and how did you put those to rest? I mean, like it's going to be a question of the press conference like it's just it is. And you know, the other thing that I will say is it's not, it's, it's only, it's only been 2 1/2 years since that happened.
It's very, very recent. It's not that it's better to happen before, but at least if it was like 15 years ago, it's like, all right, that was 15 years ago. It's been a lot of time past. Like we, we know what happened. We, you know, you've, you've demonstrated a long period of time. And again, this is just Indiana is a program that doesn't like to play in the Gray. This is you're, you're like you said, you're willingly putting yourself in the in the Gray in a very important hire.
And if things go wrong or if more things come out, even if they're alleged, you're probably in a tearing it down to the studs situation. Again, like, like this is the one that we've talked about. Every other coach we've talked about, like whether it's I keep joking about Chris Collins, but you know, Chris Collins or any of these other guys there, there's a bad scenario where ends up being like Archie again, like, I mean, four years didn't work out.
This is the only one we've talked about where there really is kind of a, you know, end of Samson era possibility there. And it's like, is, is the reward really worth that risk? Yeah. So that's yeah, I think, I think you know about all that you can say on the topic. And and again, I just from knowing what I know and who I know at IU and the way that this institution is going, a lot of the moral high ground stuff on recruiting and paying players,
like that's gone. Like all that's, you know, that era is over. There are certain things that go well beyond that. I just think the beard situation falls right into that category. So anyway, before we wrap up some real quick news, there was some chatter. It was not chatter. It's actually like printed reports from the Des Moines Register that TJ Otzelberger has signed the contract extension, which a lot of people immediately jumped at and said, well, he's off the hot board.
Whether or not Otzelberger is actually off the hot board or not, this signed contract extension doesn't really change anything that we talked about the last time. You know, we did get confirmation that they did drop his buy out from 20 or so million to $4 million. It actually drops to two of their athletic director leads, which I don't think is going to happen. So a lot of the talk about Otzel Berger was predicated on the idea that this extension had been signed.
He didn't just sign it. It just got publicly released through open records request, which is why you're now getting this information. So it actually kind of confirms the idea that at least from a financial perspective, Otzelberger would be a viable candidate for Indiana to go after. Whether or not he's the guy they end up hiring don't know, but that's.
Having this much time, it is turning into where we're becoming like the LA of the 90s in the NFL, where everybody's just using us as leverage to get a better deal. Like if you're the coaches, you might need to come together your next meeting. Like, hey, right, you know, Kansas, you guys are having trouble with self. Can you fire him in like February?
It's just gives us a long. This is a nice three months to just everybody can renegotiate their contracts and then somebody can go take that job and we'll just UCLA, you guys are up next. Like everyone just it's like it's like Hard Knocks. Everyone takes a shot at it. Everyone gets a three month period. One of the top schools. But no, it's it's we will hire a coach, but I think that, you know, we we almost need to bet the over under on the number of coaches that renegotiate their
own deals when this is done. I mean, we're already at 2 again. The old sport thing probably happened maybe before this, but. Just. For fun we'll have him. We have Dusty May there might be another one. Like we're going to get 3 or 4 coaches who just get to renegotiate based on this process being so long. This is the problem with when did something get signed versus when did something get publicly
made available. And that's people you see now Gene Hackman. I mean, people, people miss this stuff all the time or they misinterpret when news comes out and what it means. And so Gene happen joke, but just it was that was terrible. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna acknowledge that. Geez, but that that's I think important for people to keep in mind. And and again, when we were talking about Olsenberger, it was, it was with the idea that the buyout had become more
reasonable. So there'll be some interesting things I'm sure that'll pop up. But again, like you said, Scott, it seems. Outside like I. Use being used as leverage for all of these people. The only one we really know about it was Dusty May because that one was signed at some point in the last couple of weeks. But even that does not look like a contract. That is, I mean, it wasn't like that buyout became unreasonable. That buyout went to seven and a
half million dollars. Credit you, this is your thing too. It's like I'm I'm joking about the buyout. There will be other buyouts happening. That doesn't mean that the person said no to IU. It just means that they they noticed a leverageable situation situation and they leverage it for themselves. Which doesn't mean any of these people are saying no to IU. They're just saying yes to more money and then possibly could also be saying yes to IUI. Mean we don't like, we don't know.
No, it's just like I, I get money, my former institution gets money, everybody gets money. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, All right, we'll we'll go ahead and wrap things up as we will have another game coming up tonight, Indiana taking on Washington. We'll be back next day or two. Talk about that game. Have some bracketology updates for you candidates and more candidates coming up for Scott. I'm Galen. This is Crimson Cast. We'll catch you folks.
On the flip side, bring back the bison. Stay never daunted. So everybody.