How do IU fans feel about the team?
With IU heading into town this week I wanted to get to know the Hoosiers a little bit better. So I reached out to the folks over at the Crimson Quarry (Indiana’s SB Nation rep) to see if they’d help me out. Despite some initial hesitance to talk men’s basketball they eventually agreed and our exchange is below. I answered questions for them which should be posted later this week.
Given Indiana’s tough start to the season, what were your expectations for this year coming into it?
This requires a bit of a lengthier answer, bear with me if you will.
I wasn’t necessarily sold on the idea of Indiana as Big Ten contenders for a few reasons. For one, the talent was going to take time to mesh and even if they became good they were gonna stumble early. For another, That 2022-23 team finished second in the league and had a shot to finish higher if it took care of business and won a handful more games that it should’ve. Even if that wasn’t in the cards, this team should’ve been firmly in the tournament picture at this point in the season.
It was fair to approach this season with some cautious optimism.
The appeal of this Indiana team, on paper, was a few different things. For one, Indiana, and i cannot stress this enough, on paper (the program’s motto, essentially) has about four players who have it within them to score 30 on any given night. Both Myles Rice and Kanaan Carlyle did that at least once last year, Mackenzie Mgbako did it in the season opener, Malik Reneau did it last season and Oumar Ballo has done it before in international play.
With a seemingly improved backcourt led by Rice, you could see Indiana giving teams trouble if just two of those guys were having a good night scoring the ball. More than that? You probably felt pretty good overall. Combine the lineup versatility with guys like Luke Goode and Bryson Tucker letting Indiana play small ball, you had a team that looked like it’d be a tough cover for multiple different kinds of matchups.
That hasn’t come to fruition, obviously, for a lot of reasons.
Deep question I know, but what exactly do you think is wrong with IU basketball? Why have they gone through so many coaches with so little success since the Bobby Knight firing and all the chaos that followed?
It’d be a lot more interesting if this question had a more complex answer but I just don’t think it does.
I think it’s simply hiring. Indiana, especially in the NIL era, is always going to be a hire away from being a major factor again. The program has the resources and then some, you just have to find the right person to use them.
Every coach has flamed out here for a different reason. It hasn’t necessarily been IU that’s been a problem. Mike Davis was too inexperienced for the role and the path from interim to full-time was rushed. Kelvin Sampson set the program back years with NCAA sanctions. Tom Crean spent so much time and effort rebuilding the program (successfully, I should add) that I don’t think he had a plan for maintaining the success he’d found once he got there. He was too busy looking over his shoulder, became hard to deal with and wore out his welcome. Archie Miller was just a bad hire from the jump who was maybe the worst possible culture fit and came from a job where the wins seem to come no matter the coach. Mike Woodson has been too stubborn to fully adapt and play a more modern or even just watchable style of basketball on both ends of the court.
All those guys were different and tried different things in Bloomington. None worked. If you want a more interesting reason, it could be that there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen pulling the program in multiple directions as it tries to recapture greatness.
Now that Scott Dolson has proof of concept of what he’s able to do when left to his own devices with Curt Cignetti? That could be different.
Purdue fans are familiar with Oumar Ballo from his time at Arizona, how has he grown this year under Woodson?
One thing Woodson absolutely deserves some credit for in Bloomington is his work with big men. Every one that’s come through here and played a prominent role has left Indiana a significantly better player than when they arrived.
He’s pushed them out of their comfort zone. For Trayce Jackson-Davis, he freed him from strict adherence to his defensive assignment and let him hunt for blocks on that end as a rim protector while challenging him to make plays with the ball. For Kel’el Ware, it was playing through the rough patches and through tough physical contact. For Ballo, who’s already close to a finished product, it’s his passing.
Ballo wasn’t much of a passer at Arizona. He’s not an elite one in Bloomington by any means, but he’s capable and expected to make plays with the ball in his hands these days. That’s the biggest difference.
If you just go by statistics and look at IU’s offense, they’ve got four guys averaging double figures, good balance, only average 12 turnovers, and are above 70% from the free throw line you would think things would be fine. Is it the 32% from three that’s holding them back?
Yeah there’s that “on paper” again.
Here’s the thing: Indiana’s offense isn’t as bad as some have made it out to be. Is it great? Or even good? Certainly not. But on the list of problems facing this team it’s not as high as some have said.
You can win in college basketball if you don’t take a ton of 3s. That’s not this team’s biggest problem. Its biggest problem is it cannot play reliable, consistent defense to save its life.
One of the more undersung issues with Indiana these past two years is that the team has gotten worse defensively at every position save for maybe the one and two. Three through five? Definitely.
Mgbako hasn’t progressed the way he needed to this year on that end to make it to the NBA, let alone be a reliable college player. He’s prone to lapses and has let up his fair share of wide open looks (I fully expect Purdue to get shots for Fletcher Loyer out of this). Reneau, to his credit, understands the nitty gritty of Woodson’s system but doesn’t have great lateral speed or overall defensive fundamentals. Ballo is a better rim protector than he was at Arizona but he’s a step below Jackson-Davis and Ware and more of a big body.
Which is bad considering Woodson has tried to build this program on defense. His system, which protects the rim at the cost of allowing open jumpers (again, Loyer) is flawed and his players lack defensive fundamentals.
It’s not necessarily the poor shooting. Indiana is meant to and built to push the ball down the court and get buckets in transition. Which you cannot do if you can’t get stops.
Purdue has a recent, and long term, history of allowing one random player to hit multiple threes against them. This is nearly always a player who has hit 1 three on the season or shoots 12% from three, something like that. Who on IU fits that profile?
Beware Kanaan Carlyle.
For the purposes of this point and this point alone, Carlyle is your man. He’s had, frankly, a really bad season up to this point but I’ve been predicting that, at some point, he’ll go off and score like 25 or something before going right back to scoring 4-5 per game. He’s a volume guy and loves to shoot it so if it’s falling he can hurt it team. Issue being that hasn’t happened since a handful of games last year at Stanford.
If his shots are going in he’s gonna keep shooting. If they aren’t he’s gonna keep taking them here and there. So, yeah, him.
Do you think the influx of transfers to IU has hurt the rivalry with Purdue? There’s just not as much home grown hatred?
I really don’t think so to be honest.
There’s roughly the same amount of Indiana kids on this roster as the one that won both games in 2022-23. Even that one didn’t necessarily hate Purdue (outside of maybe Trey Galloway). I know Jackson-Davis has a lot of respect for Matt Painter after his recruitment of him at Center Grove.
Woodson, as a former player, gets this rivalry better than most and will impress that upon the guys from elsewhere. Galloway, a guy who wanted to be recruited by Purdue and has overall done well in these games, will do the same I believe. Who knows, maybe Ballo wants revenge for last season.
A lot of these transfer players, namely guys like Rice and Carlyle, are dudes who are hungry and compete. I think they’ll bring it for the most part.
But…
Final predictions on the score, and if Woodson gets fired?
I am of the opinion that this is going to go rather poorly for Indiana.
These Hoosiers haven’t really had to face a hostile environment like this before, for the most part. Rice’s rivalry game last year with Washington was played in an arena that I understand was made into something of a neutral site game when Purdue was out there not too long ago.
I also don’t think there’s a better top two duo in the country right now than Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Renn. There’s just no defensive answer for Smith between his ability to distribute the ball and create his own offense and Kaufman-Renn has developed really well in Purdue’s system to the point that I’m not sure Indiana will be able to contain him.
Combine that with open shooters who are going to be feeling it from the crowd? It’s not going to go well for IU.
This could end up something like 93-64. My actual prediction is probably closer to 88-64 but I don’t think it’ll go well at all.
As for Woodson? Don’t hold your breath. I don’t think any result at Mackey will lost him his job a la Ryan Walters after the Bucket Game. A midseason firing isn’t in the cards barring something drastic and it’s not like Indiana hasn’t been blown out before.