What is so special about Year 7?

[speroni]

I see a lot of "By year 7, we should be..." comments. I don't understand why Year 7 is some sort of marker. Let's take a look at a few NCAA Championship coaches that are considered to be pretty decent college coaches:

Coach K at Duke: 24-9
Roy Williams at UNC: 20-17
Joe B. Hall at UK: 19-12
Tom Izzo at MSU: 19-12
Jim Boeheim at Syracuse: 21-10 (year 6 was 16-13)

Not to mention...
Robert Montgomery Knight - Year 6 at IU, 14-13 (changed to 16-11 after some DQs). Year 7 was 21-8.

Am I cherry picking bad results? Of course I am. Pitino won a NC at UK in year 7. That's not my point. All I'm saying is that there is nothing special about year 7. IU had a really bad year in Coach Knight's year 6. IU had a bad year in Coach Crean's year 6. No, I am NOT comparing those two coaches. Nor am I comparing Coach Crean to the other coaches listed above. I'm just saying all this talk about "by year seven, we should be..." is kind of silly.

And by the way... we're 14-4, and 4-1 in conference with wins that very few of us thought we'd have. Roster management problems or not, SO FAR the results should be applauded. We've won every game we've been expected to win (aside from one), and won quite a few games where we were underdogs. The players are learning to win close games, win on the road in the B1G, and they are improving. Our bench play has been good. And though it doesn't matter, we're back in the rankings again. IF the same holds for the rest of the season, the mythical Year 7 would actually end up not only with a better record than expected - but with an actually GOOD record.

I'm not sold on Coach Crean. I'm not an apologist. He had an amazing team two years ago and they peaked about 3 to 4 weeks too early. I blame the coaching staff for that. But to state that THIS year the expectations are "X" makes no sense. We're playing well. We're not just playing better than the "low expectations" that people had for this year... we're playing well. Let's enjoy the excitement this team is giving us. And enjoy that at this point, Coach Crean is doing a very good job this year, big man or no big man. We're winning.

 

[Let 'er Fly]

It's the collective record that counts

Year 7 itself is not magical - what was done in years 1 - 7 do indeed matter. Results matter.

I am glad you said that you were not comparing crean to knight. Of course Knight went to the championship in year two and had 2 undefeated seasons before that year six that you mentioned. I don't believe cream has had that kind of success.

 

[Hoosier in Tokyo]

We're 14-4 and 4-1 is fine but wait until the next stretch of games.

Many think it should be like climbing a mountain, we should be back as an elite by now sort of thing.
Posted from Rivals Mobile

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

It's not a marker. It's just this year.

People are talking about where we are right now and using the phrase "By year 7" because this is in fact year 7. You're reading too much into a placeholder phrase.

goat

 

[scribe56]

Crean, not Cream...

Why do people continue to do this?
Posted from Rivals Mobile

 

[Rico6819]

Originally posted by scribe56:
Why do people continue to do this?
Posted from Rivals Mobile

Look at a keyboard and on a phone the keys are smaller. I do it all the time and I try to catch it as much as I can. This typo/error is totally understandable. Make sense?
Posted from Rivals Mobile

 

[VanHoosier]

I think it's usually an autocorrect thing.."

nm

 

[bccanada]

Re: It's the collective record that counts

Yeah, but he did that with another Coach's players...DWS

 

[surjay]

So, you're ignoring what each of those coaches did in those 7 years?

You know year 7 specifically doesn't mean anything and nobody is claiming it does. People are talking about the results over the entire 7 years. It's a lengthy amount of time and one would think you'd be able to make some judgements about a coach after nearly a decade.

Coach K: NCAA berth 4/7, 2 SS, 1 Final Four
Roy W: NCAA berth 6/7, 4 SS, 4 EE, 3 Final Fours, 2 National Championships
Joe B: NCAA berth 4/7, 4 SS, 4 EE, 2 Final Fours, 1 National Championship
TomIzzo: NCAA berth 5/7, 4 SS, 3 EE, 3 Final Fours, 1 National Championship
JimB: NCAA berth 5/7, 3 SS
RMK: NCAA berth 5/7, 4 SS, 3 EE, 2 Final Fours, 1 National Championship

Crean: NCAA berth 2/6, 2 SS (year 7 currently being played).

So yeah, not only did you cherry pick who to include but you completely ignored the fact that almost all of the ones you listed had considerably higher levels of success including final fours and national titles. 4 of the 6 guys you listed already had a national title by year 7. Do you honestly believe that if Crean had won the title 2 years ago that people would still doubt him as much as they do right now? Honestly?

JB is the only coach from who you listed who's even in the same ballpark as CTC after the first 7 years.

 

[Slow Happy Boy]

Nothing.

But for a long time CTC was given a free pass because of the mess he walked into. Year 7 does not always need to be a landmark year, but somewhere along the way, you start looking at the whole resume. In our situation, years 1-2 are undoubtedly out (and some even want to say year 3 should be overlooked). This makes year 7 is about the time you have enough data points to start drawing conclusions.

So look at the past 4 years (or 3 if you're among those charitable enough to give a 3-year grace period)... You see a pretty mixed bag, and that is what makes this year so important. If we'd just come off of 4 outstanding years, no one would care what happened in year 7. (And if years 4 and 5 hadn't happened there wouldn't have been a year 7.) So this year is kind of an inflection point in terms of overall resume - but that's not some absolute statement about every coach's year 7, just a statement about our current situation.

 

[Peoples H]

The core issue is that nobody wanted a repeat of Year 6

One bad year? Ok, you come back for another season. Everybody, including RMK as you pointed out, might have a bad year. However, two in a row - plus issues with player behavior, roster management, etc - would not be ideal. Year 7 is meant to convey that while we understand that in the first year or 2 of cleaning up a dumpster fire (which Crean had to do after Sampson) might have more negatives than positives, this stuff should be cleaned up once a coach is well established. In this case, despite the roster issues and off-court issues from last year/this fall, Crean somehow has this team off to an impressive start.

Besides that, with respect to the RMK comparison, he also had something to fall back on: an undefeated national championship, plus a 2-year stretch going 36-0 in the Big 10. That's pretty awesome, and Crean doesn't have that to fall back on. So the comparisons to other coaches are only partially valid in my opinion. Anyway, this team is 4-1 now, which is fun to see.
This post was edited on 1/20 1:15 PM by Peoples H

 

[outside shooter]

we want it better than years 1, 2, 3, 4,and 6, which were all pretty awful

Plus even year 5, with the NCAA tourney underachievement, wasn't exactly enough success to quiet the stink of those other years.

 

[iubud]

A look back - I have been wanting to do this.

2008-2009. It took time to recruit and replace an entire team. Crean got a late start in the first year and that meant he had to accept players that would fit in well at mid major schools. Someone like VJIII turned out to be someone that improved and was a good late pickup. Remember players like Gambles, Lewis, and White? Me neither, but we were glad to field a full team at the time. Kyle Taber and Kip Schutz were good kids from Evansville but they didn't expect to play much at IU. Kip could only dream he would play basketball.

2009-2010 was the first year we had recruits that could build a base for our success. It would take time for them to play at the D1 level and there was nobody to play with them, but Watford, Hulls, Creek, and Elston were 4 of the 7 that contributed early. Creek turned out to be injured most of his time so that was really 2 starters, and a key reserve along with VJIII, Pritchard, and Rivers.

2009-2010 team was still lacking talent. Rivers wasn't his dad or brother, Pritchard began his yearly decline, and Hulls wasn't the player he would become in his final two seasons.

2010-2011 was the year we added two players that would not be a factor until later in their careers. Oladipo did win a exhibition game by himself, but he was good at times and scary at times. The rest of the team was a year older and slightly better. This would be the year people should have complained about. We needed an instant star recruit to make the jump we all wanted. Instead we got a future #2 NBA pick and a good player off the bench and 1 year starter.

2011-2012 will be the year Crean saved his job with his most important recruit. We all remember Cody and forget that Abel and Etherington were the other two recruits. We finally got our impact player to go with the improving cast to play around him. Eventually, they jelled after some bad losses.We were ranked as high as #7 before losing to Minnesota, OSU, and Nebraska. We finished ranked #16 after making the Sweet 16 and losing to UK after shocking them earlier in the season.

2012-2013 was supposed to be the year with the "Movement". It was a movement, but only Hanner and Yogi stuck with that team. We had a lot of success with experience and good young talent. We were so good that besides the valued seniors, and we lost two of the most important players IU has had. Too bad they couldn't play against a good zone. We still ended ranked #4.

2013-2014 roster was a lot like Crean's first two years except the team had more talent on paper. After losing most of the scoring and 4 starters, one might expect a slow start. Key contributors like Hollowell and Hanner weren't ready, but we had Vonleh and Yogi. Bad chemistry ruined any chance this team would play for each other. Finishing above .500 was probably not too bad considering all that was going on.

2014-2015. A talented recruiting class of guards with Yogi and the improvement of our freshmen left us with one big question. If Hanner wasn't ready, how would we be competitive? Hanner has played well at times, but not to the level we were expecting. A forgotten player, Hartman, shows up and plays bigger and better than we expected. Holt, RoJo, JBJ, Hartman, and the improvement of Williams made up for Hanner and has given us a 4-1 conference start. Really, we are where I thought we could be if things went well. We didn't get here like I had anticipated. This team has reminded me of the 2011-2012 team in that the talent and experience was better than the previous year with the pieces in place for a nice run if players matured and developed quickly.

The recruits for 2014 remind me of the base of players that came in 2009. Not that they were the same position or ranking, but they could be the blocks of a future run (minus April and Priller).

The next 3 games will be a test. If we get through this in good shape, Crean might start feeling his seat cool off drastically. I like this team and I believe I will like next year even better.