Well not everybody is Chris Beard. What percentage of coaches turn around a program quickly as he did. Beilein took time at UM. Bennett took time at Virginia. Wright took time at Nova. How long did K take to get Duke going?
Would I rather have all those coaches than Archie? Yes. Still think he deserves 4 years before a decent evaluation can be done. IMO, next year is when the progress needs to be seen. If they regress then I'm probably ready to see them move on.
Would you like to have the Maryland coach. Maryland especially and to some extent MSU should be embarrassed that they did not win the league out right and let a spare team such as Wiscy be the one seed. The league is deep but fairly mediocre once you get past those 2, IMO.
Chris Beard has lost 13 games this season. That includes 9 losses in a conference far weaker (top to bottom) than the B1G and the last 4 to date. A few of those losses have been similar to the "choke jobs" some posters here consistently pin on Archie.
None of that means Chris Beard is a bad coach. He didn't begin to suck overnight. Quite the opposite, in fact. What happened this year is that Texas Tech has holes in its lineup. Just like IU.
Beard was loaded the last two years with experienced players, including multiple transfers who were all-conference type performers at their previous schools. They weren't freshmen and sophomores that he was magically transforming into great teams.
This Indiana team has one huge problem that is the difference between challenging for the conference championship and being two games below .500 - it has zero consistently good perimeter shooters. The other nonsense about "killer instinct" or substitution patterns or lack of player development is just that - nonsense.
There is sometimes a sense of urgency found in experienced teams with strong player leadership that this IU team sometimes lacks. But mostly those late-game fades or prolonged scoring droughts are the result of individual failure to execute on the offensive end. There is a lack of confidence brought about by a lack of demonstrated competence. That can change in only two ways. One, that the players already here become better scorers or two, that we are more successful at recruiting better scorers.
Archie and his staff bear the blame for the fact that we have not been able to find a strong shooter or two to add to this team the past two seasons. Failure to attract a player like that is squarely on the coach. In every other regard Archie Miller is as good as any coach in this conference and as good as most in the country.
If you want to fire the coach at this stage because you believe he will not be able to recruit or develop better offensive players, that's an argument you can reasonably make, I suppose. I happen to disagree. If you believe that Archie Miller is inherently an inferior coach who should be having greater success with the players who happen to be here now, in their current state of experience and development, then you either don't have a very deep understanding of basketball or you are irrational - or both.
