You must know him really well to know his futures plans. Do his daughters live in Lubbock?
Archie.....
- Thread starter bsmitty08
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You must know him really well to know his futures plans. Do his daughters live in Lubbock?
I'm an Archie guy but yeah, tis the season.
We're old in year 4.
I do think he's missed on recruiting. Hunter is quickly going into bust territory.
Rob is obviously looking like a bust.
Durham was always a bust.
Gotta evaluate better guys that can soar in whatever the hell system he's running.
Like he said his first day here, if he doesn't meet expectations than he'll be removed and we'll try again.
No more excuses. Tis the season.
We're old in year 4.
I do think he's missed on recruiting. Hunter is quickly going into bust territory.
Rob is obviously looking like a bust.
Durham was always a bust.
Gotta evaluate better guys that can soar in whatever the hell system he's running.
Like he said his first day here, if he doesn't meet expectations than he'll be removed and we'll try again.
No more excuses. Tis the season.
Archie isn’t even the best coach in Bloomington!
Junior high, high school, one in college. He’s not leaving West Texas any time soon.
I hope he doesn’t leave anytime soon. Now in a couple of years, when his kids are older, put a good word in for us. I’m sure you can sway him, considering you know him so well.
“Crean “ seems to be a four letter word around here, and I was certainly a critic of our former coach. I expected Miller to be the anti-Crean. But, I frankly have some of the same concerns with coach Miller as I had before.
I’m torn as I always viewed this season as being the year we finally break through. Sort of a mirror image of the #1 seed season for Crean. For me, anything short of being a top 15 team this season would be an abject failure. It’s still early, and I am not pressing the panic button on this season yet. But, I am seeing the same issues with roster construction and program building as I did under Crean.
Yeah and one MAJOR similarity. They both are allergic to recruiting size.
Crean is laughing his ass off in Athens. No more Pearl talk, please... future NCAA probation will get us nowhere
That’s because what’s ailing our basketball program goes deeper than the coach.
It isn’t going to start getting better until enough people — most especially Scott Dolson and others in the administration — realize that and institute a course of corrective actions with that understanding.
You’re far from alone. But it’s been wishful thinking all along.
Nothing from the past 3 seasons should have given anybody confidence that we were on the cusp of turning a corner. But people want it to be the case so badly that they have become impenetrable to any arguments to the contrary.
What progress was made during those 3 seasons was so slight that we had to argue over it. Genuine improvement is self-evident.
Well, I disagree with that. I think a coach like Pearl (it doesn’t have to be him specifically, though) is just what the doctor ordered. This assumption that hiring him or somebody like him is tantamount to adopting a rule-flouting culture — and, thus, a path certain to lead to sanctions and such — is, IMO, a big part of our problem.
Like it or not, a guy like Pearl would bring a demonstrated track record of being less than a model citizen from a rules standpoint. Put him in Bloomington and our compliance staff will be looking for anything and everything, and the NCAA will, too. Absent a trailing person / people who will watch and document every move he makes, he’s simply a guy whom trouble finds, and that’s not going to be acceptable, in my view.
We would go to the final 4 within 4 years if we hired Ricky P. I would bet the bank on that. Id donate 5k tomorrow if we hired him.
What's so wrong with the idea of the athletic department providing close oversight of a coaching staff? You say "absent" that like it's a foregone conclusion that they wouldn't or couldn't do such a thing.
A few weeks ago we were discussing Sampson. And somebody made the point that he "could do anything he wanted" without any pushback or interference from the AD. I totally agreed with that. But it must be looked at in the proper context -- and that is that Sampson clearly had the program on the fast-track back to prominence. And it's not like he was doing it by cheating. Yes, he broke NCAA rules and his doing so left the program in ruins. And I'll never forgive him for it. But, really, how much did his illicit recruiting contacts really have to do with the success we were seeing on the court?
In retrospect, I think the major error in that episode wasn't so much hiring Sampson, but not having a tight enough leash on him. That's probably not a very popular position -- but I don't think it's difficult to defend. Now, granted, I think we'd all rather have a coaching staff that didn't need babysitting. But we need an aggressive coach, we need somebody who will push the envelope. Let them be the high voltage...and the AD provide the right amount of resistance to get the juice we want and need.
I do think Pearl would be a great fit. But, again, it can be somebody else who brings that kind of high energy and enthusiasm, who welcomes the high expectations, who demands that his players buy in to it, etc. I'm not necessarily lobbying to hire Bruce Pearl. But I very much am lobbying for the kind of cultural shift a coach like him would bring with them.
You should be pressing the panic button. In the last 36 years, losing to an unranked team to start the home conference schedule has only happened 4 times and three of those were terrible Cream teams. The other was the '86 team that lost to Cleveland St. in the first round of the tourney.
Maybe. My qualms with Pitino really aren't so much what happened at Louisville, but whether or not we'd even be able to get those 4 years and, if so, how much horsepower we'd be getting out of him for them. He's 68.
But, here again, there would be a lot of people who would (understandably) fear another Sampson situation. "We're going to hire a coach with Pitino's ethical baggage? Are we just begging for the death penalty?"
People forget that Pitino and CM Newton made for a heckuva tandem at Kentucky. He got in no trouble there. He was the guy Newton hired to clean up the mess that Eddie Sutton left behind. And not only did he stay out of NCAA trouble, he resurrected that program to arguably better condition than it was when Rupp was at his peak.
RMK used to like to say that his great friend CM Newton was less of an athletic director and more of a parole officer. Point is: this relationship worked for Pitino, worked for Newton, and clearly worked for UK.
Ironically, I've been off the Archie train for quite some time now, but I'm not having that kind of reaction to the NW loss. Maybe it's because my expectations have been so lowered (though, I must add, that I'm unwilling to accept those lowered expectations...unlike a lot of people). But it's just one game and just one loss.
If this loss is all that surprising or concerning to people, they haven't been paying very close attention the past several years....or else they've been drinking the Kool-Aid that the payoff really was on its way.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but I do believe there are limits on how effective you can be. An intern reviewing cell phone bills stumbled onto Sampson’s violations, even though it was obvious KS was trying to evade detection. Our leash was tight, but his effort to evade detection was greater. I think there’s at least a chance that Pearl, like Sampson, would be somewhat more clever than “law enforcement”, which is the concern you have with someone who seems to believe rules are mere suggestions and who is wired to try and cover his tracks when he’s misstepped. Is that what we want?
And I don’t agree that the program was on a fast track to prominence. If anything, it was a house of cards academically and with respect to personal conduct, and the fallout from that would’ve been far greater than any on court achievements. It’s was a house of cards.
Love Pearl as a coach and motivator, but getting him to walk the line of compliance has been an issue at every job he’s had (with the possible exception of UW-Milwaukee). He is a walking moving violation.
OK, those are all fair points. And you're right that, even after the Aaron Craft incident and Pearl's blown attempt at a coverup, trouble has still managed to find him once again at Auburn. I get it -- and I certainly am not advocating for constructing a deliberately (or negligently) dirty program. All I'm saying -- and you and I agree on this -- is that we really need a wholesale change in culture...and that starts with getting rid of the high tolerance for mediocrity.
With our football program, we're seeing up close what a deliberate change in culture can do for success on the field...even in a program where mediocrity (or worse) has long been the dominant theme. When Tom Allen polls his players to ask them which games on the schedule they think they're going to lose and then makes a point to say that they should sit out those games, this has nothing to do with Xs and Os. It's motivational, of course. But it's even more than that. It's about rooting out the old, unhealthy culture and instilling a new one grounded in expectations, confidence, accountability, etc. I think Tom Allen is an absolute master at the "culture" aspect of coaching. He doesn't want anybody on that team who isn't absolutely bought in, who isn't absolutely certain that they can win any game -- and, even more than that, that they should.
When's the last time our basketball team had that kind of culture?
Purely as a coach, I think BP is top notch. He’s great as a tactician, his kids play hard as hell, and his enthusiasm is off the charts. The cultural change would be immediate if he came to IU, and I have no doubt the program would improve dramatically within two years. No doubt whatsoever.
I also think he’s basically a good guy whose errors are largely ones of “omission” rather than “commission”. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and the details related to compliance on every little line item are not in his “strength” column.
Hiring him would require a compliance structure that would ensure he could be effectively managed, all while not inhibiting his considerable upside, and he would have to accept, prospectively, a rather stern set of consequences contractually should he step off the path of righteousness. Maybe that‘s immediate termination without compensation of any sort if rules are broken or an agreement to pay damages if the University is sanctioned due to his transgressions, or both. That’s a lot of ring fencing, but it wouldn’t be unjustified to ask him to agree to some type of onerous pre-nup given his proclivity for straying.
I can't argue anything that you said.
From a 'feelings' standpoint, I've got my doubts that Archie will ever get over the hump. Everyone of his teams have had killer flaws that we couldn't get over.
We all thought it was a players issue of a system issue but, ever since that opening ass whooping from ISU to constantly coming up short or dead for key games (like the Big Ten tourney ass whooping by OSU with a tournament birth on the line)....its getting tough to think a Miller team will ever get over the hump.
His teams have a choke factor in them.
It's not a Crean choke factor. You can usually tell ten minutes in if an Archie team is going to win.
Again no data, just my observation of my 'feelings'.
I watched him up close and personal when he was at USI. Had a number of personal interactions with him for some events we were both involved in. His positivity and enthusiasm were infectious. And they were genuine. Towards the end of last season, he even made a point to get on a plane shortly after an Auburn game to come back to Evansville to take part in the 25th anniversary of his 1995 D2 National Championship team. And that passion and enthusiasm, even then, were still on full display.
That said, he very much did choose to lie about the Aaron Craft/Cookout thing. And, not only that, he pushed others to lie. I'd call that a crime of "commission" rather than "omission." Do I think having a recruit over to your house for a cookout is as big a deal as what, say, Clem Haskins did? No. But it's still against the rules. And lying about it only made matters worse.
So maybe Pearl himself has used up his chances, I don't know. But I do agree with you that the kind of cultural change he'd bring is exactly what we need. But it doesn't have to be him -- and it doesn't have to involve breaking any rules.
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Eeeh, I don't know about that. I can certainly see why you'd say that. Nobody will ever convince me that the punishments doled out to IU for that fit the crime. But it was Sampson's second such violation -- and IU had hired him with full knowledge of the first. Had it been a first offense, I think he'd have survived it and the fallout for IU would've been much less harsh. But it wasn't a first offense.
Brink makes a good point too about the slew of off-court issues we had with players at that time. Given the NCAA issues, it can be easy to forget. But the reason the roster was virtually empty when Crean came in was because there were so many disciplinary problems -- drugs and all that.
I said “largely ones of “omission” rather than “commission”, and it’s the latter of those categories that soaks up much of the criticism directed at him. The Craft Cookout was a classic case of the cover up being far worse than the crime, and his behavior there was indefensible. You can’t tolerate that kind of dishonesty, especially from someone who’s already transgressed. It’s just not worth the upside, no matter how considerable. Reputationally, it’s not worth it.
But my EVV friends are as effusive in their praise of him as are you, and I’m convinced he'd shoot the lights out in Bloomington. We need a complete cultural rebuild, and he would provide that.
Didn’t have a choice. He got a 5 year show cause and IU wasn’t going down with him.
Can you imagine the asshats conversations behind the curtain? "Sampson is making phone calls again guys....What are we gonna do about it???" Better turn him in and fire him, we are IU are we not? We dont deal in the gray with these phone call issues. We beat the piss out of our kids and make them graduate. Yes, we at IU have morals!!!!!
Never should have hired Sampson. You spelled “hired” incorrectly.
I’m sure it was a lot simpler than that.
NCAA (to IU): “Either take care of it or we’ll take care of you”.
He knows everything. Yet, he has only criticisms, no solutions. Put some skin in the game coach: what is the solution?
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
He's got daughters in that area too. So I would not blame him if he wanted to stay put. He's a very good coach though and I would be thrilled if the IU administration and Alumni provide a job for him, wife, kids, and even pets. Put the dog in IU literature. Put the cat on local cat food commercials. Get Beard at IU!
He's far from a "proven" commodity but given our current circumstances I'd take a really long hard look at Mike Lewis...
Butler has had some good luck taking flyers on Assistant Coaches (although theirs were all internal hires)...
Who knows maybe Mike is the next Brad S.???
I’m not paid nor in charge of making solutions. And neither are either of you and not sure your input on a message board carries much weight with the administration. What I do know is that Brad Stevens nor Chris Beard are taking the Indiana job. Sure, I have my short list of wishful candidates in the event the job opens up and fear it’s going down that path, but I’ll wait until it’s time to cross that bridge.
We would be a much better program if we kept him. Heck he keeps a
Program like Houston in top 10
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