You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to. Crimson cast Galen Clavio joining you here solo March 10th, Monday Championship week, the best time of the year. Looking forward to watching all of the basketball, including tonight. We've had some great games already, had a few people, teams already clinched their spot, and hopefully the week will conclude with IU getting back into the NCAA tournament. All signs point to that being a
likelihood. We're going to talk about the bracket as it currently stands. I'm also going to talk a little bit about the coaching search and I think there'll be some things here that hopefully will tide you folks over until the next update, which I think is probably going to come Wednesday. I think Scott and I will be back to preview the Indiana Oregon game at that point. But, you know, I wanted to tackle a few items that I thought were noteworthy on the bracket front.
Many of you watched the live podcast that I did on Sunday morning. There was a big problem with the recording of that so it wouldn't download properly, which is why it didn't get released on the feed. So if you are and this isn't, I promise you this is not an effort for me to get you to go. To the YouTube. Channel, I can't get the thing to publish on Spotify and Apple Music the way that it is right now.
And so I'm redoing parts of that podcast and I also have a reset of the bracket that I did later on, on Saturday, on Sunday, which I think actually gives a more accurate picture of where I believe things to be right now. So we're going to start with that. We're going to talk about the bracket. I'll be using some video stuff.
So if you're on Spotify or if you're listening on Apple and you want to go and tune over onto the YouTube channel or to Spotify, you can see the video on those venues. Otherwise, I will do my best to describe as I always do, and I appreciate you folks being along for the ride as we talk about Indiana's prospects for the tournament and some of the things they need to look about, look at and think about over the
course of these next few days. There's already some hurdles that have been cleared, which is a good thing. There's a few more to clear, but I do think Indiana's going to be in good shape by the end of the week if things stand the way that we think that they're going to. Before we get started, just a quick reminder we're brought to you by Home Field Apparel, your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest designs, and you know they've got these new.
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All right, let's dive in first and foremost to where the bracket currently sits and where IU is, at least in my opinion, in terms of that bracket. So I'm going to call up my handy dandy spreadsheet here that many of you have gotten used to and we'll kind of walk through what things look like. So let me start off with a couple of things.
First of all, I have Indiana, like I said in the field, I have them as the first team out of the buys or out of the the the last four in. So the first four buys, Indiana's essentially 5th into the field right now. My line up, the four, the last four teams in. I'm gonna zoom in on this a little bit. We have Xavier is the last team in. We have North Carolina as a second to last team in which I seem to be alone on North Carolina getting into the
tournament island. I just have a hard time believing a team with North Carolina's metrics, even without any high level wins, is gonna get left out of the tournament field. I would love to be proven wrong. I really have no great love for the North Carolina case this year, given how bereft they are of top level wins and how bad the ACC was. But I do think they're going to get in ahead of like an Ohio State or a Boise State or a Colorado State or a or AUC Irvine.
Which is a shame 'cause I'd I'd probably like to see all of those teams instead of North Carolina. But it's a business. So San Diego State also in the play in games, they've dropped quite a bit lately, largely because of a lack of high level quality wins. And then Oklahoma as the best of the four play in game teams.
And then I've got Indiana, Arkansas, and technically the next group would be Utah State and Vanderbilt would be the next 4 at larges because even though I've got UC San Diego, VCU, both above Arkansas and Indiana, they're both automatic bids at this point. This is going to be one of the things that's going to be interesting to watch. What does the tournament committee do with that particular cluster of smaller conference teams?
And really we're talking about New Mexico, who I have his ten seed, Drake, who is A10 seed but is an automatic qualifier, Utah State, VCU and UC San Diego. What, what do they do with this 'cause if you look at their profiles, most of them I think have better overall profiles than the big conference teams ahead of them or in ahead of them in a lot of people's
brackets. And the committee has historically liked to reward teams like Drake who win 2829 thirty games if they win their conference tournament with a bid that also has a seat attached to it that's higher than like a 12 seat. The thing with Drake is they've got a couple of wins against power conference teams to beat Vanderbilt. They won at Kansas State. Kansas State was not very good this year, so I think that might propel them even higher And and honestly VC us got a pretty good
resume. UC San Diego's got a really good resume, although they don't have a lot of top level wins and Utah State has a pretty good resume as well. So I wouldn't be shocked to see all of those teams in the 1011 range. Indiana, if they if, let's put it this way, I think the Indiana could fall from my perspective anywhere on a spectrum between the 10 seed, the 11 seed and the 12 seed slash play in games, depending on what happens with that group of four to five teams that I just mentioned.
If they deem Drake and VCU and UC San Diego as significantly worse than the power conference teams, then we'll know a couple of things. A, they're really valuing quad one and quad two wins, which Indiana has a bunch of, Arkansas has a bunch of, and B, that they don't care that much about some of the other power metrics. This is always a bit of a complicated scenario because ultimately it changes from year
to year. We've talked about a lot about this a lot with the the way that the tournament committee composition tends to sway from game to gay or game to game, game year to year, because the composition of the committee changes, the committee votes change and the field is different every year. Like, you know, this year everybody complaints about how bad the bubble is every year. I think the bubble's fairly clear cut this year. Like there just aren't a lot of teams in competition.
But I think you can make a good case. Like I don't feel unclean for putting Xavier in North Carolina. I don't like the fact that North Carolina's in the field, but I don't feel bad about it. I understand the case. There's been years where I've been like, I have no interest whatsoever in putting any of these teams in the field. Last year was kind of like that. But you know, this year I don't feel like it's, it's like that.
And it kind of illustrates the conundrum that the committee often has where you can't necessarily make an apples to apples comparison for what you're going to value as criteria because you just don't know. What the criteria is going to be in a given year because the field will look different. And we talked about this, I
think on a previous episode. But if you compare the like, let me call this up for those of you that are following along at home, I think I've got like North Carolina, their resume and I'm going to call Indiana resume or Indiana's resume up as well since we're all familiar with that. And you know, you can make the argument that like North Carolina, they have, they have fewer quad one wins, they've only got 1 quad one win, but they've got 8 quad 1 + 2 wins.
Indiana's got 4 quad one wins, but only 9 quad one plus quad 2. So not a whole lot of difference there. If you're going to expand it out to that level, the strength of schedule's about the same between the two. Indiana's won five rodent neutral games, North Carolina's won eight. That does matter to the committee. Indiana's resume rating is about 7 spots better on average than North Carolina's.
But North Carolina's predictives, their Ken Palm and BPI and and Torvik ranks are about 15 spots higher than Indiana. You know, North Carolina's got one bad loss in quotes. It was a home loss to Stanford, who's 82nd in the country and net. It's not like they're a terrible team and they lost by a point. Indiana's got no bad losses, but they've got 12 losses. North Carolina's won 20 games. When I look at that like they're two very different resumes in as much as one team has big, you
know, higher level wins. And I think Indiana's, you know, Indiana's got three wins on there, Michigan State, Purdue and at Ohio State that are better wins than anything North
Carolina's got. But I look at all that and I say it's hard to compare the two because there's other metrics that North Carolina comes in that are that are just better than Indiana. Mostly the predictives cause North Carolina's been a lot more impressive in their wins and they have lost some games they probably shouldn't have lost. They took Michigan State to overtime on a neutral floor. This is, trust me, this is not me stumping for North Carolina.
I just said I didn't want to put them in. But they just, they played better against a lot of their competition. They lost by three at Kansas. You know, they lost by one point at Wake Forest. So that's why their predictives look better. And the question every year is like, what is the committee going to value and what will they devalue? And ultimately, I think both of these teams will get in. It's just the order that they go in.
So like I mentioned, Drake. So if you punch Drake into the mix, you know Drake's got five wins total against Tier 1 and Tier 2, and their predictives are worse than Indiana's. Indiana averages out to about A50 in the predictives. Drake averages out to about a 65.7. Their strength of schedule's a lot worse than Indiana, but their resume numbers are better than Indiana. Not like tremendously, but a decent amount better.
But the committee also loves to look at teams that win 272829 games and and reward them if they win their conference tournament. Which is why I just get the sensation Drake's gonna end up as like a ten seed and everybody's like they watch the Missouri Valley title game and they were immediately like, oh, that's going to be my upset pick
for the first draft. I would pump the brakes on that a little bit and then I'll tell you why when I start talking about the coaching search, 'cause they are connected. You could kind of put things. Together about what I'm going to talk about there. But anyway, that's that's where I just want to make sure everybody's on the on the same page now before I get into looking at what the, my bracket right now looks like as of Monday at 8:23 in the evening.
I've had a lot of people say, well, Indiana really needs to win at least one game in the Big 10 tournament to be sure that they're going to get in. And I've said this before, I'm going to say it again. The, the conference tournaments matter a lot less on average year, year over year to the committee than people think that they do. Media notice this, fans who pay attention notice this.
I've heard coaches mention it. They a lot of times the committee will very lightly take the tournament so the the conference tournament's into account when it comes to things like seeding or being in or out of the field. We talked you heard me the other day.
I think talk about the example from 2122 where Indiana wins two games, almost beats Iowa in the semi final and then still ends up in the play in game despite everybody thinking they were going to be clear into the field before the tournament even started. So I look at that and I don't say, well, gosh, they they were out and they barely played their way in. I look at that and say, well, they were in as the play in and they didn't do that much.
That was that exemplary. That made the tournament selection committee say, you know what, we're going to move Indiana out of the play in game and put somebody else there. So I think Indiana by beating Ohio State, sweeping that series, getting to 19 wins, getting to 10 and 10 in conference, picking up a a quad two win, which was an important one. I really do think they put themselves in a position where even if they lose to Oregon on when on Thursday, I think they'll be fine.
And you can disagree with you want, but right now I'd say they're going to be about 11 seed maybe, maybe in the play in game, depending on what happens with some of the others. But I've seen other projections where they're in the play in games. I think Joe Leonardi, who is not the most accurate of of bracketologist, but you know, he's also not the worst. He had moved Indiana out of the play in games and into a standalone 11 seed game.
That's pretty much what I did over the weekend as well. And I've seen a lot of people doing that. Most people have Indiana in the 11 range. Couple people have still got them as a 12, some people have them as a 10. So I think that's the range you're talking about. And even if Indiana were to beat Oregon and beat Michigan State, I don't think it really improves their seating that much. And if they lose to Oregon, I don't think it knocks them out of the tournament.
That's just and and that's hard for you to get their heads wrapped around, but. The way the the selection committee is generally gone about these things is by the time the power conference tournaments really start to go, they've already got a decent idea of what teams are going to be in and more or less what order they're in. And that's based upon a 30 to 3233 game sample size. One or two games in a tournament where people aren't necessarily going to care that much one way or the other.
Some teams just don't care. I mean, Michigan State, ironically, potentially Indiana's Friday opponent, is a team that notoriously does not really care that much about the Big 10 tournament. They've had a couple of seasons where they want it, but a lot of times they're out in the first
game that they play. So that's why there's a little bit of skepticism built in as far as rapidly moving teams up and down in the in the seating or putting a team in the field or taking a team out of the field. Baseball, what happens in a conference tournament that not everybody's taking with the same level of seriousness?
It's kind of like, I think I used the metaphor the last time it was like bowl season where you know, every SEC fan when their team loses in a bowl, they're like, well, we weren't trying. And when they win, they're like,
see, we were the best. It it's it's if you're smart, you're just not really looking at those as being a, a, a pure arbiter of the strength of both teams, unless it's like the College Football Playoff where you know that it's a playoff and there's a different categorization of that.
So anyway, with all that said, my advice is to go into the Oregon game and enjoy it. Get up if you live in Indiana or, or within a couple hour drive, buy tickets, go cheer on Indiana. You know, it'd be great to watch Indiana win that Oregon game and then go on a little bit of a run. It it. It just weirdly feels like the tournament bracket kind of set up really well for Indiana because they get Oregon in the
first game. And we're going to preview this more deeply on Wednesday. So I'll spoil that a little bit now by saying I think Indiana's going to win the game. The reason why is you've got an Oregon team that in a similar vein to Indiana, is not going to really benefit from doing anything in this conference tournament. Oregon is likely going to be in the 567 seed range. They've got fourteen wins against Tier 1 opponents. They have a great strength of schedule.
They their predictives are good, their resumes awesome. They've got some awesome wins. They beat Alabama on a neutral floor. You know, they, they have a bunch of Rd. wins. Nothing they do is going to really affect their tournament seating or placement. They're also going to be flying from the West Coast. They're going to be playing that game at 9:00 AM body clock time the same week that daylight savings happens. So it's really still going to be 8:00 AM body clock time for
Oregon in that game. And they're going to be playing in Indiana. Team that's played really well has something to prove. It's going to be in front of a, a relatively home crowd. And I think a, a, a team that really does seem like they're focused on trying to send Mike Woodson out on a positive note. And also a team that's kind of pissed at how terribly officiated that game in Eugene
was. And by the way, Oregon is not going to be bringing those officials with them, at least I don't think so. All of those things put together, I like Indiana's chances. I don't think it's going to matter that much. But I think it's it's a really good opportunity for Indiana to win that game. And then you look down the pathway and you get, well, Michigan State, who might care, they might not. And then you've got UCLA or
Wisconsin in the next round. You Wisconsin has not been playing great lately and UCLA is beatable. And who knows after that. So I it's a really fascinating scenario for the Big 10 tournament. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with it. You know, as an IU fan, I'm never quite looking forward to the Big 10 tournament because why would you as an IU fan, what what, what past evidence of, of like enjoyability has there been with the Big 10 Tournament for IU fans?
But as I was reminding somebody on Twitter yesterday, you have to kind of get yourself out of the mindset of thinking IU is going to suck or not try. Because outside of the one game last year against Nebraska, IU has been competitive in every Big 10 tournament game they've played under Mike Woodson. They've won at least one game every year under Mike Woodson in the Big 10 Tournament. I would expect that streak to
continue this year as well. So looking at the bracket overall, but before we split up, so So again, these change and this is just my pick of where I think things are gonna fall. But looking at the I'm gonna call the bracket back up here and and share it with everybody. And it's a little hard to see 'cause it's tiny print, but I have Indiana in the South region as the 11 seed taking on Saint Mary's in the first round Which. But they're doing it in Providence, not in Portland.
And in this case, Indiana would not be repeating the scenario from 2022 of winning a game on Tuesday in Dayton and then having. Travel issues, let's put it kindly, that leave them getting to Portland late and then getting boat raced by Saint Mary's.
Different kind of game. I think Saint Mary's would still be favored and rightfully so, but I think Indiana would have a punch his chance in that one with a potential second round matchup because Kentucky, assuming they can get by Jacksonville State in my projected bracket. So that would be quite a quite an experience if Indiana managed to to have that situation play out in that. I've got the four one seeds, Auburn, Florida as my fourth
number one. I'm really back and forth on them in Alabama and then Houston and Duke is the other ones and then in this bracket. You've got Creighton and Baylor in the first round up in the 8-9 game, Ole Miss and Mcnees fascinating game for a number of reasons. Arizona high point, Marquette Drake in the 710 game and then Michigan State thousand in the 215. So you know these will change somewhat.
As you know, we get some tweaks to the upper level of of the bracket, but I think Indiana fairly safely in that eleven seed range right now. And I've been wrong before on these, but I've also been right quite a bit. So you know, I I just feel like Indiana getting to 19 wins is good enough, especially the 10 and 10 season. Is it good enough for Indiana? No. Is it good enough to get into the field this year? I believe it is. So we'll see what happens with
that. But a lot of great basketball remaining. We got a couple more automatic bids being punched tonight and then obviously things will pick up. I think the ACC tournament may actually start tomorrow, Tuesday. So Big 10 tournament starts Wednesday, IU plays Thursday. It's gonna be a fun week of basketball. So get out and enjoy it. Get out on a patio somewhere and drink some some beverages and watch the games.
I think you'll enjoy yourself. So before I finish up, I did want to touch on some coaching search items and a bunch of things going on right now in terms of like rumors flying online and supposedly this coach or that coach has said no to Indiana and now they're moving down their list. So there's a bunch of things I just want to say in in a row and we've we've talked a lot about the coaching search. We've got another coaching candidates. Cool. We're going to be bringing you
later on this week. I think you'll enjoy it. But I would really be careful in general about believing anything that you see right now that's being put out in any media area that claims that a coach has turned Indiana down or is not coming to Indiana because AI can assure you nobody actually
knows. Most of what you're seeing out there right now is things being pushed by agents, being pushed by coaches themselves or people who don't actually know things, claiming that they know things or maybe thinking legitimately that they know things but not actually knowing things.
And getting too wrapped up in that, as I've seen a lot of people doing on Twitter, on the message boards, you know, I, we, we've seen it in the back home network discord, some not, not nearly as much because we've been trying to, you know, help keep people a little calm. But you, you can't take these
reports seriously. Like when you know, the the one that got everybody started was was the the Jeff Goodman tweet about, well, you know, no, no Brad Stevens, no Dusty May, no Scott Drew, no, no TJ Otzelberger as I expected, which don't get me started on that. But that that all may be true today or yesterday. And I have no doubt that that those coaches or their agents were, were contacted and they said they're not taking the Indiana job.
That doesn't necessarily mean that any of them isn't taking the Indiana job. But who's going to talk about it right now? It's still the seasons, the middle of the season for pretty much everybody involved. IU still playing basketball. I I really have, Yeah. Having watched this for a long time, there's a there's a, there's a trajectory to these things that does not abide by the idea that you can definitively rule anybody.
Out at any point and. Certainly right up to the point where you take a job, you can claim you don't have interest in it. And I'm not saying any of those 4 is necessarily going to take the job. But I'm also telling you there's a chance any of those four could still take the job even if they have said over the weekend that they're not interested in the job. You know, there's just, there's so many rumors floating around because this has been such a long process.
And what I'd like everybody to think of is like a coaching search, especially one with this time. Period where the. Opening got announced at the beginning of February and the season isn't going to end now until at least not this upcoming weekend, but the weekend after. It's not like cooking a steak. It's like cooking a brisket. It's like smoking a brisket. You know, cooking a steak the, you know, you got to get the coals real hot. You throw the steak on the grill.
You're not the steak's not there for very long. I mean, there's methods where you could go a long time, but we're not going to. That's a culinary podcast, not a basketball podcast. Brisket doesn't work that way. More briskets have been ruined by people thinking that you cook them like steak and they're not steak.
Like what makes a steak great is that it doesn't have a lot of tough, fibrous muscle in it. You know, steak is cut from the parts of the cow that when you cook them over high heat for a short period of time, they're very tender. They're very flavorful that way. Brisket might have the greatest flavor of of any part of the cow, but it's made-up of a type of muscle that if you cook it quickly, is inedible.
Essentially, you have to cook it for a long period of time at a very low temperature because that breaks down the collagen. And that's what makes brisket fall apart. That's what makes it tender. That's what gives it that great flavor. It's it's the breakdown of things over time. At low temperature, you heat things up too quickly, you're not going to get a very good piece of meat. The pork shoulder works the same way. Like big difference between a
pork chop and a pork shoulder. And I think, you know, we as human beings are very impatient and we're very prone to believe things that are placed in front of us and we want things to get done quickly. We, we want things to happen in a, in a very rapid order. But realistically speaking, with a coaching search, even a regular sized coaching search, like a two week long coaching search, stuff doesn't happen overnight. Stuff doesn't happen quickly.
And when you see things or hear things or things are placed in front of you about what's supposedly happening, especially the place like Indiana where they run among the tightest ships in terms of of not actually letting what's going on
get out. You can pretty much be assured that what you're seeing and hearing is not what's actually going on. Now you'll, you know, this is where it gets tricky because you know, people have to, you know, they, they, they'll, their job might be to report what they're hearing or report rumors or whatever. But as fans, you've just got to understand that there's sometimes just not a lot to talk about.
And the things that are out there may not actually be valid things to be following along with and probably aren't. And I think especially in a place like Indiana, as much as we want to engage in hearing what the rumors are and getting hyped up because a candidate we happen to like is in a rumor, there's a lot of wish casting that goes on with that. There's a lot of, oh, I really want that guy.
And there's this rumor that says that he's really interested in the job and they've got a contract already set. I mean, your, your mind immediately leads to that. What's been funny about this coaching search has been there's some candidates that a lot of people don't like, but other people really do like. Obviously Chris Beard being one
of them. We've talked about, you know, Brad Stevens was one that, you know, everybody, not most people, not everybody, but most people were excited about. But you end up with these factions and you're reacting to essentially nothing. You're reacting to rumors that don't have names attached to them that aren't necessarily substantive. And it's, it's a, it's a good way to keep people focused on the search, but it's not actually a good way to have them interpret information in any
sort of positive manner. And at least people getting upset and it leads to people saying dumb things. And you know, it. Like one of the big dumb things that I keep seeing is, well, this must not be a very attractive job because all these people are turning Indiana down. You don't know that anybody's turned Indiana down.
And the people who are, are saying that XY or Z have turned Indiana down, they're, if they are getting that information, they're getting it from one side of the information, which might have a vested interest in having that be what's out there for a
variety of reasons. And actually, if you haven't listened to the X's and Joe's podcast, the the episode they did with Ryan Phillips, he does a good job of, of delving into that where it's there are coaches and agents whose their role is to go out and get themselves an extension or get themselves into the the discourse around a coaching search without it necessarily being a thing that's actually happening. There are smokescreens that
happen from the school side. I mean, there's a bunch of different things that go on. But with this particular search, as it was with the IU football search, I think your best bet is to assume you don't know anything. And the people who are claiming that they know things probably don't know anything either. I'm not saying they haven't heard things, but what they're hearing is not necessarily
reliable information. Getting emotionally wrapped up in rumor is a bad way to go about things because it makes you either very frustrated with the school and the school's done nothing wrong. The school's doing its due diligence. The athletic department is, is handling this the way that it should be handled and they're keeping it close to the vest and they're working on.
And who knows, they may already have somebody, They may not have somebody yet, but they know who they're going to go after as soon as their seasons open. I mean, there's a bunch of different scenarios. Don't automatically opt for the scenario that I use getting turned down left and right by people because I can almost guarantee you that's not what's actually happening. Even if that's what people would like you to think, that's probably not what's actually
happening. So I just say that as a a reminder. Many of you already knew all of that, but there's no point in getting mad at IU right now for something you don't know. That's based on rumors that are being published based upon the information of people who won't put their names to the information. So be cautious. Would be my message to you. As far as some of the items other the other items I've seen regarding this coaching search that I think are important to
keep in mind. A I've seen increasingly a lot of interest in Ben McCollum that Drake and I made my feelings on Ben McCollum. I thought somewhat clear when we talked about McCollum as one of the candidates a few weeks ago. But I've also seen those comments kind of misconstrued a bit. And I, I, I just want to clarify a couple of things about McCollum in particular. So you know, Mccollum's Drake team is 30 and three.
They're they're, they're actually 28 and three, because two of those wins are against non Division One teams. They beat York, Nebraska, and they beat St. Ambrose. If you can, dude, you can tell me where St. Ambrose is without looking it up. I will shout you out on the next podcast. But you know, a very a very impressive season in terms of anytime you win 30 games, 28 games, somewhere in that range, you're clearly doing a lot,
right. I do think it's important to note a few things about Drake IA. Lot of my complaints in the initial podcast had to do with the pace that Drake is playing at, which is the slowest in Division One and it is significantly slower than the second slowest, like a standard deviation lower than the second slowest team. It's a very much on purpose. Now since then, I've had a lot of people say, oh, but it's not about the pace. Ben Mccollum's teams are just
super efficient offensively. Sounds great. Except then you look at Ben Mccollum's team and in Kenpom and they're 81st in the country in offensive efficiency. I mean, that's that's. Fine, that's a top. I don't know. That's a top 30% offensive efficiency, top 25%. But I mean, last year when Darian Devries was the head coach at Drake, they were 40th in the country in offensive efficiency. So that they've, you know, and they, they were a full 2 like
last. This year, Drake's offensive efficiency is 113. Last year it was 115.1, which is a pretty significant change. So I don't really buy the idea that oh his his offense is hyper efficient because we see young coaches with hyper efficient offenses that that show up in the stats. So a coach I keep seeing mentioned and I'm finally digging into him a bit more and I like what I see is Alan Huss, who coaches at high point.
Alan Huss. Interesting pathway studied under Greg McDermott. He was an assistant coach at Creighton. He was the head coach at La Lumiere, which many of you will remember is where you got Haner, Mascara, Perea and, and and other recruits from. Was head coach of Culver Military Academy, played at Creighton. He's coaching at High Point.
He's in his second season and in the two seasons that he's been at High Point, he's had the 36th most efficient offense in the country and now he's got the 26th most efficient offense in the country. Last year, High Point 127 games. This year they've won 29 games and they're going to the NCAA. They they clenched their bid on on Sunday, they beat Winthrop. So I I have no and and doesn't doesn't play that fast of a
pace. I mean, they play 224, which is yeah, kind of median, certainly on the slower side of median. But you know, all the talk about what a miracle Ben Mccollum's been, I'm like, well, OK, what are we judging that off of? Most of it's the D2 national championships. What I just don't think is, is that I mean, it's impressive. The four national championships at any level is impressive.
But my big concern is let's get a little more background at D1, even an extra season to say is this a fluke? Is this just you bringing your guys in 'cause you're not going to be able to bring your guys with you to the next stop cause most of them will have graduated by this point? That's that's the thing. I mean, could McCollum end up being an amazing coach at the D1 level, at the high D1 level, the power conference level? Sure, possibly.
But there's other people in that same bracket who we should be looking at similarly that aren't getting the same level of attention. And again, I think the more of a sample size you have, the better. And it's nothing personally, because Ben McCollum, I've listened to podcasts like, you know, you've kind of been, if you follow the IU coaching search, you've kind of dragged in to following Ben McCollum by people who are insistent that this is like the, the, the, the, the coaching Messiah or
something like that. Like, you know, I've, I've heard, I've heard, I've seen now and heard multiple people say, well, if you can't get Scott Drew and you can't get TJ Otzelberger, it's a no brainer. You got to get Ben McCollum. And it's like really, I, I, I, I, I, I just don't think I, you can take a chance on a guy with that little level of D1 experience yet. So that's something to keep in mind. Again, nothing against McCollum
personally. Just looking at the profile, looking at the pace and with that being the only data point at the D1 level that you can look at just strikes me as an unnecessary risk. You know, certainly would be fascinated if that was the choice.
I don't think it's going to be the choice, but it's weird how that has become the de facto because of the stuff published over the weekend that claimed that the top, the theoretical top 4 candidates had all turned Indiana down, which again, we don't know that that that's actually the case. So let's put the McCollum stuff on hold for a little bit. I just, I think that's too big of a leap to go from D2 to Indiana University in, in essentially a calendar year.
That's a lot. That's, that ain't, you know, for an Indiana team. And this kind of feeds into my next. Item which is lot of things. Being talked about on message boards and on social media and I've, I've heard this on a couple of podcasts that you know what, whatever, whatever Coach Indiana goes out and gets. They're going to have the biggest.
Nil budget, they're going to be able to, they have all these resources and you know, they, they don't even it doesn't matter if they haven't proven that they can recruit at a high level or win at a high level necessarily, because the NIL budget is going to be the great equalizer. And I just shake my head when I see things like that. It's like no one learned a single thing that's writing that from what's happened over the last eight years or really even
going beyond that. I mean, Indiana, it's not like Indiana was under resourcing its basketball program. And you know, these, these coaches were. Operating in a vacuum. Indiana's had these resources from the beginning and it didn't uplift Mike Davis's coaching to the level where he could sustain at a high level. It didn't. I mean, you know, Tom.
Crane. Got off to a great start and even with all of the resources and the great start, Crane couldn't maintain, wasn't signing recruits, you know, was, you know, missed the tournament 2 out of his last three years. It didn't help Archie Miller. I mean, I was one of I, I would, I made those arguments about Archie Miller that well, you
know what I mean. Archie's recruiting three stars and two stars and his teams have gotten to this level, and with Indiana's resources and recruiting spread and everything else, it's going to just catapult him to the top of the profession because he's going to have that half behind him. Well, we all saw how that worked out with Mike Woodson. It was like, well, it doesn't matter if Woodson doesn't doesn't have experience coaching in college. He's got this big machinery with IU.
And then halfway through his tenure, it was like, well, Indiana's got close to the most NIL. Money. Out there, the whole. The. Whole conceit of this last season. Was that? Woodson was just. Going to go buy the best players and put together a team that was going to immediately compete. Indiana is struggling to get into the NCAA tournament. Indiana went from being picked second in the conference to being what? 9th in the seeding. They had to win on the last. Day.
To avoid playing in the first day of the Big 10 tournament. So my point is this IU isn't going to make a coach. The coach needs to make IU. If there's one ironclad rule of Indiana University basketball, it when. Indiana has a. Top level coach, they are a amazing program. When Indiana doesn't have a top level coach, they're not an amazing program. And I don't know that. That's necessarily that much
different. It's, it's I, I used to always say like, you know, it feel, it feels like there's three programs that can sustain a bad coach and still be good. It's Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas. I mean, Kansas hasn't had. Many coaches period. When you think about like the last since 19, what? 198483 They've had three coaches, they've had Larry Brown, Roy Williams and Bill Self. You know, Kentucky obviously what what makes them special.
They've been very good under John Calipari, maybe not great except for 2012 and 2015. Obviously they should get some credit for that. They were good but not great under Tubby Smith. They won a national title, but they were not they were never quite, but they weren't like average except when they had Billy Gillespie and even then they weren't awful that year. But they quickly course corrected on Gillespie. North Carolina not impervious
either. We saw them take a nose dive under Matt Doherty, but they quickly changed course fired Doherty. They bring in Roy Williams. Roy Williams retires, and it's kind of like the same thing's happening again with Hubert Davis. They're keeping Hubert Davis, they're having to restructure everything around him to try to make it work. But I think everybody knows it's not likely to work. So Indiana's no different than those programs.
The difference is Indiana just has not had the right coaches in place. For the last 30 years and. I include the last five years or so of Bob Knight in that just because Knight clearly was had sunk down to the level of the Tubby Smiths, where he was doing fine. They were top 25 every year. They were winning 20 games most seasons they were finishing, you know, in a position where they'd be 6th, 7th, 8th seeds. You know, that's about 6 seeds are like 21 through 24 in the in the poll.
That's about where Indiana was at for most of those seasons. So. The idea that nil budgeting is going to make that big of a difference it certainly. Helps. And you're going to. Need that as a coach. To really compete at the highest levels. But that NIL budget, as we already saw this year, it doesn't buy you competitiveness. It doesn't buy you the type of logistical organization, strategy, overall culture building that you need in a program to make something sustainable year after year.
You know, you look up at the team that won the Big 10 this year in Michigan State. I mean, you can talk about Michigan State having NIL, you can talk about it having had success, but that success is Izzo. I mean, Izzo is so much more successful than Judd Heathcote. His predecessor was. And Judd Heathcote won a national title. Judd Heathcote had Magic Johnson on on his 1979 team. But yet you look at Judd Heathcote like his teams went like, like just roller coaster.
You know, they didn't have years where they were, you know, contending for the Big 10 title and get to the Sweet 16 or the Elite 8. They'd have years where they were like 13 and 17. And that wasn't to say that Judd. Was a bad coach. I think Judd was an inconsistent coach, especially in recruiting. But Tom. Izzo's not. Tom Izzo is the right coach and and you look across the Big 10, there's a few programs that I think have a natural ceiling on
them. Even a really good coach who knows what they're doing is going to hit that ceiling. Iowa's like that, like Tom Davis kind of took that team as far as they could go. Although you say that and Lute Olson. Got to do a final four, so maybe, maybe he didn't take them quite as far as they could go. You know Minnesota's. Got a? Clear ceiling on it. The only time Minnesota's able to be competitive national is when they're cheating.
And now everybody. Can. Cheat. So I don't know what Minnesota's going to do, but but you know, there's other programs where you have the right coach and you can do great. Things. Purdue is one of those programs. Illinois is one of those programs. You know, Michigan State is clearly one of those programs. Michigan is one of those programs, and Indiana is one of those programs. And so, but it doesn't work the
other way like. The NIL budget, the travel budget, the recruiting budget, all these things that Indiana, all these resources Indiana pours in is not going to make an average coach. Good. Or a good coach, great. And this is the tricky part of this. And I talked about this with the football hire. I mean, if you the football hire is probably the big the best example of this where they hired
the right guy. Finally, it had been 40 years since they previously hired the right guy, like the absolute right guy. And that was Bill Mallory. And, you know, Mallory took a team that had been, yeah, kind of descended into the lower, the, the far lower reaches of the Big 10 after clawing about a little bit with with Corso. And he made them a competitive team. And then he kind of fell. Off at the end and then.
They made-up succession of hires that that either didn't work out or had something tragic happened to them. And it, it, it took that long, but you hire the right guy and you can turn things around very quickly and you can see, you can feel it. Anybody that was in Memorial Stadium or anybody that's watched press conferences or anybody that that watched IU football on the road, the team. Suddenly starts. Exuding something, a confidence, an aura that is only from my experiences.
That's that that that comes from a great coach hire. That comes from having hired a coach that knows what they're doing, has a plan, knows how the logistics work, knows what they need to do to build culture, puts the right people in charge of the right things. And they themselves operate in a way that helps to build and then sustain upon that excellence. And that's what Indiana had with Branch McCracken. That's what they had with Everett Dean.
That's what they had with Bob Knight for most of his tenure. Same thing with McCracken. I mean, Mccracken's last six years, five years weren't great for a lot of times for reasons that weren't necessarily his fault. But they didn't have it with Lou Watson, they didn't have it with Mike Davis. They didn't have it ultimately with Tom Crean or Archie Miller or Mike Woodson and.
So that's where. You know, I don't envy Scott Dolson and the and the search committee for what they have to do because they really have to nail this hire. But this is where you know from my. Perspective. If they decided, I'll go back to the Ben McCollum thing. If they decided after vetting Ben McCollum that this was the next guy with that DNA strand, it's like the Da Vinci Code of coaching. This guy can. Come in and get.
These things done and do it very quickly if they if they really look at that guy and they say this guy's got all the intangibles and we think he's going to have the tangibles as well and that's what they hire great. I'll need to be sold on it, but. I will. I will. Feel like they've sent us in the right direction. But that's a really challenging.
Thing and and again I don't envy the the folks that are in the mix having to make the decisions on this but I just I think people need to be cautious about this idea that you can hire like Brad Brownell who. However. You want to dress up his career at Clemson? You know he got to an. Elite 8 last. Year people, you know, people have said, oh, he has nil money and now he can bring in the right players. I mean, look at look at who he's actually brought in.
I mean, do your own research on that, but go look at what Clemson's done with NIL. It's a lot easier argument to say, well, Brad Brunel's thriving at a time when there's no dominant team in the ACC. You know, he's thriving at a time when, you know, North Carolina's having historical troubles and Louisville was just sitting flat on their ass for three years basically. And you know, Wake Forest is very mid and NC State just fired a coach like the ACC is, is kind
of at the lowest ebb. I've seen it in a while and it's been that way for a few years now. The idea that Brad Brownell, well, he's been slightly better than average at Clemson is going to come in and I use resources. They're going to suddenly turn him into a a top level coach. It just, it just, I, I rarely see it work that way. That doesn't mean that you can't hire a younger guy or a guy that doesn't have a great deal of, of, of prior high level success.
It's more than just that, you know, and again, we've talked about a lot of the examples of of people that were hired that were from lower level programs and we're really on the ascendancy. But though I guess the. 1.
Big change. The one big difference there that I would look at between, say, a Ben McCollum and for instance, like a Nate Oates, who got hired at Alabama after four years at Buffalo, like go look at his record in those four years at Buffalo. Like it's, it is remarkable how good they got over the four years that he was at Buffalo. And that that matters in terms of the big picture things.
You know that there's a trajectory you can clearly see because there's evidence for it. Dan Hurley took him a little bit of time at Rhode Island, but by the time he got done at Rhode Island, his profile looked really good. The one thing about? Hurley, that's interesting.
Still, it's like his profile at Rhode Island the last two years look an awful arc like Archie Miller's profile did, which is kind of what concerns me about McCollum, because his stats profile through one year at Drake looks a lot like Archie Miller's stats profile at Dayton. That doesn't mean that, I mean, obviously Dan Hurley turned out to be a lot better than Archie Miller. Maybe Ben McCollum will as well. But it's more.
Of a dice roll, I think than just saying, well, we'll hire a guy and as long as he's got the intangibles, the, the, the NIL and the other items around the job, we'll make him a great coach. That's just not been the history with IU. It's the other way around. IU has been made by its great coaches and the lesser coaches have been eaten up by the expectations of the job. That's what a great job does, you know? A great job is. It's like if you've got a great
pilot, great pilot. 'S going to be able to take. A plane that's got all the bells and whistles and, and use it to its maximum capacity, but that same great pilot could probably take a lesser plane and fly it better than most people can fly the plane with all the bells and whistles.
So ultimately, I would just say think through as you go through these processes of the coaching search, as you think about the various candidates, you know, broaden, broaden the viewpoint a little bit and don't just assume that this coach or that coach will work because it's Indiana, because that as as many of you know, it's just not how it's worked. I still have, I still have faith. Indiana's going to get the right coach and you.
Know I I. Think that this search is different than a lot of the previous. Searches that Indiana's had, it's a different field candidates, but I think there's a lot of really good coaches out there and I think it's a very desirable job and. Despite a lot of efforts. To try to make it look like a not desirable job by certain parties.
I think the the truth of the matter is actually pretty well known throughout the industry and I'm really excited to see where in the ambulance end up going with all of this. So with that, I'll go ahead and sign off and I hope that you all have a good rest of the day or evening and. Back Wednesday. Where Scott will. Be joining me, we will talk about what's going on in IU
land. We'll have some extra coaching candidates to talk about and we'll also preview Indiana, Oregon. I hope to see some of you folks up there at Gambridge Field. House later. On this week, as Indiana takes on the Oregon Ducks, we'll catch you folks. On the flip side. Bring back the bison, stay never daunted, So on everybody.