Oh, I disagree with you there. Strongly.
By March of 2020, it was probably entirely out of the cards to fire Archie. The buyout was big -- and the impacts of COVID put that much more financial strain on athletic departments. And, besides, Fred Glass had made it all but impossible by scheduling his retirement for May. Whether that was part of his motivation or not, only he could say for sure. I tend to think it was. But who knows.
Anyway, aside from those issues, there was no good reason to retain Archie after the 2019-20 season. Saying that a school should "always give (their) coach his first full recruiting class" is a weak tea argument. If you doubt me on this, ask yourself if you'd still be making that argument if he'd had single digit wins each of his first 3 years. Are we still going to let him get a 4th year so that he can coach a team consisting entirely of his own recruits? If not, then just how firm are you on the insistence that a coach must absolutely get at least 4 years?
It was obvious after that season that Archie was incapable of producing a winner in the Big Ten. His teams were inconsistent and undisciplined. The things that had plagued his team in year 1 were still plaguing them in year 3. There was precious little improvement -- within individual seasons, across multiple seasons.
Again, it's a totally moot discussion now -- and would likely have been academic a year ago. They weren't going to fire Archie. They probably couldn't have.
But he deserved to be.
Pretty sure IU was a lock for the tournament last year and Archie was not going to be in position to be fired. He wasn't knocking on heavens door but he also didn't deserve to be fired. So I respect your opinion but politely agree to disagree. Wholeheartedly.