If I were Duke I'd go after Stevens or Wright
Archie Miller Out At Indiana
- Thread starter nwwarrior09
- Start date
WishIWasGolfing
Active member
Completely agree with this. I wonder if K will think the same...
Omar
Well-known member
If you’re Duke, you have to give Coach K the opportunity to pick his successor, if he wants it. He is Duke Basketball, so he’s owed that.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
Chris Beard is about to get offered a Brinks truck by Texas. He might be able to get a nice bidding war going that will at worst drive his salary at Texas Tech up even higher.
Omar
Well-known member
Yep, pretty much means he’s out of the running at IU.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
On the open market this would have to be the biggest example ever of "don't be the guy to follow the legend". If you're a big name coach or a stock riser that were to be interested in that job whenever K calls it quits, it would be much better to let a Coach K lackey follow him and flame out within a few years before stepping in.
wolves82
Highly Respected Expert
Agreed. As a Buckeye fan this made me smile.
The arrogance of the Hoosiers, to think that Holtmann would consider their program an upgrade. No school has more resources than OSU. IU has fallen to a second tier B10 program, and everyone knows it except them.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
Hoosiers seem to be somewhere in-between not having a real coaching search plan and having the media continuously blow smoke as they need constant updates to continue generating clicks on this developing story.
I tend to think the most logical explanation 12 days after they canned Archie is they are hot to trot for a candidate or two that are still in the tournament, especially since they've only advanced past the first weekend four times since canning Bob Knight. In the meantime they may be doing their due diligence working the phones with less likely candidates.
I tend to think the most logical explanation 12 days after they canned Archie is they are hot to trot for a candidate or two that are still in the tournament, especially since they've only advanced past the first weekend four times since canning Bob Knight. In the meantime they may be doing their due diligence working the phones with less likely candidates.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
Sound like it's going to be Mike Woodson, and they'll be bringing Thad Matta in as "associate AD for men's basketball administration", i.e., he's not going to be in one of the three countable on-the-court every day assistant positions, but he's going to be tasked with teaching and mentoring the NBA guy on how to be a college coach, as well as with trying to give this new regime some legitimacy with recruits when they get them on campus.
Thad in a non-coaching admin role is a good start, but this is going to need to have a really strong three man assistant staff, i.e. Fife from Michigan State, a more recent Hoosier stud/pro (Cheaney or Guyton), and probably someone who has been a mid-major or D2 coach in Indiana (with some success) that has a lot of in-state recruiting connections.
Thad in a non-coaching admin role is a good start, but this is going to need to have a really strong three man assistant staff, i.e. Fife from Michigan State, a more recent Hoosier stud/pro (Cheaney or Guyton), and probably someone who has been a mid-major or D2 coach in Indiana (with some success) that has a lot of in-state recruiting connections.
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nwwarrior09
Well-known member
Indiana is going to be a laughingstock if this doesn't work out...Woodson is a 25 year career NBA coach that doesn't have any college coaching experience or experience with recruiting, and he didn't exactly light it up in the NBA during his eight seasons as the head coach of the Hawks and the Knicks. In eight years I think he made the conference semifinals three times, going 2-12 in those three series getting swept twice.
eastisbest
Well-known member
see one do one.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
I can't believe somebody dropped $10 million to fire a coach for this...but with a very good staff this could possibly work.
If they don't nail their assistant coaching positions this will be a disaster.
I heard a good take on realistic expectations for IU basketball in 2021. It was roughly opining that fans of the program are still living in 1985, and the fact that they ever thought that Brad Stevens would actually consider leaving the Boston Celtics for Indiana should tell you something. That and their most recent relevant talking point is still the tale of Watford’s buzzer-beater against Kentucky back in like 2011.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
Waiting this long to get into contract negotiations with Woodson makes me believe they tried to get in contact with Porter Moser after Loyola got bounced yesterday, and got immediately rejected.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
The fan base is probably both the best and the worst part of this job IMO. IU has few bright spots of relevancy over the last 20+ years, and at this point I don't think there's much patience for anyone to try to rebuild something legitimate.
My guess is now that they'll eat one of their own if he's slow out of the gates and isn't a world-beater in the first 2-3 years.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
That part makes perfect sense. Power brokers dreaming of the glory days of Bobby Knight were interested in a former star from yesteryear, and since Scott Dolson likes being employed, he went along with them.
Omar
Well-known member
There’s some real cognitive dissonance playing out on Twitter. Of course all of the ex players are going to publicly loud this hire, as informal Ambassadors of the Program, they should. However, being an impartial observers, there’s a lot of red flags. I hope it works out, bc College Basketball is better when the Blue Bloods are good.
Agree with most of this. Been a number of yrs since IU been a College Basketball Blue Blood though.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
Watching this play out on Twitter I think most of their fans that are over 50 are at least willing to let this play out because he starred when the Hoosiers were the Hoosiers and seeing a game at Assembly Hall was on par with a religious experience.
The problem is he has to sell himself to 16-17 year old kids. No experience recruiting, and outside of young Hoosier diehard fans kids don't know him as being a famous ballplayer, and odds are pretty few currently of recruiting age know him as an NBA coach as he hasn't been a head coach in seven years. His longest head coaching gig with the Hawks ended when current high school recruits were 5-6 years old.
The problem is he has to sell himself to 16-17 year old kids. No experience recruiting, and outside of young Hoosier diehard fans kids don't know him as being a famous ballplayer, and odds are pretty few currently of recruiting age know him as an NBA coach as he hasn't been a head coach in seven years. His longest head coaching gig with the Hawks ended when current high school recruits were 5-6 years old.
Omar
Well-known member
I think Blue Blood Status is hard to lose once you achieve it. IMO the only Blue Bloods are: UK, IU, UNC, Kansas, UCLA, and Duke. In order to lose that Blue Blood Status you would have to be just awful for 20 yrs. And while IU hasn’t had much success the last 20 yrs, they haven’t been awful.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
I'm sure many won't agree with this, but IMO Louisville is on par with Indiana historically if not above them, and I wouldn't consider them a Blueblood program. Less titles than the Hoosiers, but more all-time wins, better winning percentage, and more Final Fours.
Indiana basketball was Bob Knight. I think there's still enormous potential there, but it's just that until somebody actually achieves something with it.
Indiana basketball was Bob Knight. I think there's still enormous potential there, but it's just that until somebody actually achieves something with it.
Omar
Well-known member
I think Lville was hurt by not being in a major conference for many years.
14Red
Well-known member
I think many were kind of disappointed, wanted a bigger splash, but you can only get what you can get. Obviously Stevens wasn't interested and many of the other current college coaching candidates had their plusses and minuses. Thinking about it a little though, I'm good with this hire.
Indiana needed:
- an Indiana guy - this can be debated, but since Knight's firing, the administration has been running from Indiana guys. 21 years is enough.
-Woodson has a long NBA career - today, when you recruit big time players, they want a path to the league, and I don't know many who has as many contacts or more respected in the NBA than Woodson
- You will see an NBA style offense at Indiana. This will mean we need NBA type offensive players. Some may cringe at that notion, but that's what big time D1 basketball has become. You can't do 15 passes and shoot at the end of the shot clock. You need multiple guys who can dribble drive and either finish or dish for open 3's.
-I think you'll see an exciting style of basketball at Assembly Hall
-The transfer portal makes its possibly to turn things around quickly. There will be approxmately 1,000 kids in the transfer portal. It's going to be like a huge re-recruiting period the next few months, and IU can put a competitive team together quickly. This doesn't have to be a 3-4 year process.
Now we'll only be able to judge Mike Woodson in a few years to see if he's got IU in the top of the big ten, making sweet 16/ final four apperances and we'll make our judgement then. For the detractors, we're a heck of alot better off today, than we were a month ago.
I think Thad Matta is going to be huge in this. I'm excited!
14Red
Well-known member
No doubt the expectations are high at Indiana, and that's fine. You have to aim high to sustain greatness. The program wasn't too awful until Kelvin Sampson came in and burnt us down in about 2007-2008. It took Tom Crean 4-5 years to finally build us up from the ground up. There was no transfer portal back then and you had to build one brick at a time. Fortunatley, the developments of Oladipo, Watford, the recruiting of Zeller, Hulls, Yogi brought us back. IU has won two outright big ten titles the last decade, certainly not our standard, but it's not like we've been Rutgers the last 20 years.
The admin got greedy with Crean and thought they could do better and bringing in Archie at this time was an awful decision. Kids don't want to play that style anymore, and they didn't come to Bloomington. Sure, we got a couple of Mr. Basketball's in Romeo Langford and Trayce Jackson Davis, but Romeo was just stopping by for a cup of coffee and I just never felt he was fully into the college game. Trayce is good, but we have so little around him it's difficult to carry a team in D1 basketball today.
nwwarrior09
Well-known member
I wonder if you'll see them hit the transfer portal hard. Recruiting seems to have been a big struggle for the guys that have been NBA guys transitioning to the college game, and it's why most of them haven't worked out. It hasn't been an X's and O's problem as the college game has been transitioning into more of a pro style, and whether people believe it or not, in most cases there's more in-game coaching and adjustments going on in the pros than in college. I think Woodson will be fine there.
Prior to Howard the biggest standout among NBA career guys in recent years has been Musselman, who's loaded up on transfers at both Nevada and now Arkansas. From a pro perspective it probably makes sense, as it has some similarity to free agency. Instead of rolling the dice on recruits and having to try to relate and appeal to teenage kids endlessly year round, you evaluate and identify the best available veteran free agents that have already played at this level and that fit your system and target those guys hard for a few weeks after the season ends.
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