Big challenges for Clifton. Glad he is coming to Bloomington to help us get to the next level. Some are only interested in promoting themselves but the group of players IU has now is a great group of young men.
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- Thread starter Baller23Boogie
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We could have had a better sos if we would have won a couple games in Maui.
why did it have to come down to getting those games? with a history of poor SOS, i'm guessing the PTB weren't really interested in building a tough schedule anyway. i mean, we do have data on the subject. lol
Actually not. The last 5 years we've had 4 or 80%. From 77-00 we had 21 or 91%. So better from 77-00 than the last 5 years.
It's hard to disagree. Even Knight needed talent. Crean needs more talent. Can Crean work hard in the off season too and improve from a 3 star to a 4 star coach?
brother, they made it to the quarter finals of the NCAAs and the next year they went to the elite 8. they won 25% more tourney games. they made 20% more post season tourneys
they won a conference tourney. we've won two conf titles (which really is gooood!) to their one but their avg finish in the big ten is slightly higher (4.2 to 4.4).
we should never give back the conf titles but our last five years don't stack up and they don't stack up against MU, MSU, or Wisconsin either. The all at least won a b10 title, tourney title, and went to FF (2 made it to the finals).
we've had the 5th best run over the last 5 years
dude, seriously -- try to sell us on the fact that crean is about to join this crowd but don't try to tell us we're there. lol. we are not.
I would LOVE to see this.
I'm really interested to see how this year develops. Historically, his offense has always featured players attacking the basket off the dribble and either scoring or kicking out to shooters. TB is the strength and it should be fed to him as much as possible.
Past history leaves me wary of any changes, though.
I'm not replying to anyone, just adding .02
I like the kids Crean is landing. Looking at the video, you can see the potential to be better than a 3 Star. That said, landing a roster full of lower probability players is concerning.
I do my little roster rating thing and it appears that IU could have about the #45 rated roster next year (assuming Bryant and Blackmon are on to greener pastures). That would be his lowest rated roster -by far- since the first 3 years, not far ahead of year 3.
Crean does good work with the unheralded sort of recruit, so maybe it's a good thing. Bo Ryan has been a consistent winner with similarly built rosters (on paper), but Crean isn't widely considered to be in Ryan's class as a coach either.
I expected a home run or two in recruiting this season and maybe we have them, their just unheralded. Regardless, while I really like each recruit individually, I'm disappointed in the overall class. That, and the fact that we continue to recruit like half the team is leaving.
I like the kids Crean is landing. Looking at the video, you can see the potential to be better than a 3 Star. That said, landing a roster full of lower probability players is concerning.
I do my little roster rating thing and it appears that IU could have about the #45 rated roster next year (assuming Bryant and Blackmon are on to greener pastures). That would be his lowest rated roster -by far- since the first 3 years, not far ahead of year 3.
Crean does good work with the unheralded sort of recruit, so maybe it's a good thing. Bo Ryan has been a consistent winner with similarly built rosters (on paper), but Crean isn't widely considered to be in Ryan's class as a coach either.
I expected a home run or two in recruiting this season and maybe we have them, their just unheralded. Regardless, while I really like each recruit individually, I'm disappointed in the overall class. That, and the fact that we continue to recruit like half the team is leaving.
The class is not finished yet and if we can land Wilkes and Waters it would be a pretty god class.
Thanks for another gem Cortez Peters. Hopefully it's "a pretty god class" after all is said and done. Everything will be different if he can just land that one special recruit.
Last year saw less of mass substitutions. Zeller said practices when he was there were tougher. I think end game tactics is a questionable area. Players have to buy into playing defense. How Crean takes advantage of Bryant hopefully will help with recruiting bigs.
Defense has to be a priority of the coach.
I had a graphic up a while back regarding this: Aaron Craft had nearly 3 times the number of steals in his career at Ohio St. than Yogi did at IU. While some of that may fall on the player (Yogi, to his credit, did come around a lot on D the 2nd half of last season), much of it is a systematic approach.
Crean's teams throughout his career have never been strong defensively. If he can change this one thing he'd do a lot to win me over, but the way he plays and recruits doesn't lead me to believe we're ever gonna see consistent results better than what we have to date. Will it change this year? We'll see . . .
Maybe if the coach does first? Or has Crean been so unlucky that he recruited 16 of 17 rosters full of players that didn't buy in? Maybe he should start asking them before recruiting them. "Do you buy into defense?" of course the most common answer would be "do you?"...
I wrote that to mean defense needs to improve.
And if I did, the response would still be same: and who's job is it to do that? That is not where I'm going with that response.
Is there potential for Crean to improve in that area and in game coaching is what I was asking more than who is responsible.
But that begs the question...
Why, after nine years, should the Indiana Men's Basketball program be paying what it does for a coach who has the potential to improve in the area of defense and in-game coaching...?
I have read this opinion before. But that's where we are right now. RJ and OG maybe even Morgan plays defense. The player who replaces Hartman's minutes could contribute to a better defense. JN remains to be seen. I don't think we will miss Triy's defense but will miss his rebounding in addition to his offense. Will have to see if the NBA job hunting this spring will translate into an improved JBJ. A lot of things to look forward to but coaches here have a better idea of whether there'll be any significant difference.
Simply saying he is a team player. Someone who is willing to play for his teammates as much as he is playing for himself. It's a special thing to be a part of a group of guys who are focused on improving and winning as a group. I think that is part of the reason we are seeing players stay around longer now. TB, OG, and others like the guys they play with and it also helps with recruiting guys like Clifton, Justin and Aljami.
It really hurts losing Hartman. It scares me to think Crean's fall back could be a lot of 3 guard lineups and IMO, that is a big reason we haven't seen much in the way good defense. Now my hope is McSwain is primary benefactor of Hartman's loss unless Davis and TB can co-exist without much foul trouble.
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Good defense is a team discipline, not individual. This is why certain coaches are always rated high in defensive efficiency, while Crean is not. They emphasize it as part of their overall philosophy. A team philosophy. His strategy over values offense and needs five good individual defenders on the court to succeed defensively. Do you think Bo Ryan needed gifted individual defenders to have a good defense?
Crean obviously isn't a gifted defensive coach as is evidenced by 15 years of Kenpom ratings where he's had very few decent defensive teams. Part of the fault is his strategy, as he's over-emphasized offensive rebounding and disrupting the ball. Both of which will create better offensive efficiency for the price of lesser defensive. It's always a trade off. This is what makes someone a great or poor coach. They know when and when not to. Look at the better coaches, they are capable of having both good offensive and defensive efficiency almost every year.
Against some teams it's better to not crash the boards and instead get back. We don't do that. We try to outrun them. Choosing to disrupt the ball, or creating TO's, means players are often out of position gambling and then he doesn't like too much rotation or help. We've all heard him complaining about "over helping". Those two traits would need to change and with his love of deflections, something pressing coaches track (we don't press) I don't see it.
For us to become a defensive team and for him to become a defensive coach, his whole basketball philosophy needs to change. It's not simply a question of "players" buying into it. And, expecting that from guy who's been doing the same thing (egotistically reinventing basketball) for 15+ years is silly. It's possible, but just not very probable.
At the very least lets hope we stop doing stupid gimmicky crap like switching everything or switching in mid possession.
Also, though we improved defensively last year that improvement was a ranking of 70. Sure it's better than 100 or 200, but it's still very poor.
The best hope for any type of real success, for anyone still holding out hope, is if we recruit a whole team full of lottery picks. Which doesn't seem to be happening.
I've been saying the same thing you just did, but never as well. Very nicely done.
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