Lucy

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It continues to amaze me the posts about how we are young and gonna get there yadda yadda. Everyone here is completely aware of that. The point is we played horribly the other day. We may have well been freshmen in high school. So regardless of our age and experience it brings about a lot of questions. Sheesh.

The offense is average at best and without Jones it would be horrific. The zone creates rebounding problems and our man defense would be awful with Jones and Hulls in the game but Jones can't sit on the bench, the offense needs him.

We have all seen this team do these things well at points in the season so we know they have been taught it. We just lack mental toughness and consistency. We need a true leader on and off the court who can show these guys how to do this night in and night out and tthat person hasnt stepped up yet

i agree our offensive sets look horrible but we do not have that much talent to work with. MY hope is that when we do we will have a different type of offense. You are right though, history will tell us crean relies solely on talent to make shots for themselves, but hopefully that will change. It doesnt even look like are guys could handle learning any type of offense right now. As we all saw against I owa, we still havent learned how to box out and get rebounds or how to play man to man on a consistent basis These kids have been taught this stuff long before CTC got ahold of them and they just dont get it yet.

CTC has mentioned on several occasion that right now he is worried about building a solid defensive structure for this team and the offense will find come after that. Well this team has not proven that they know how to play good defense and become a hard nosed “defense first” team. I think we can all agree that that is the type of team we want here at indiana. A hard nosed defensive team that goes all out , dives for balls, boxes out and hits the defensive glass, and plays suffocating defense. I applaud crean for his effort in this department. If we get anything out of this year going into next year, I hope it is a solid defensive foundation and mentality that these players can take into next season.

Next year, we will get creek back, we will have a good shooter (sheehey) and finally two players who can play above the rim(sheehey and oladipo). This is when we will start to see what type of offense we will come to expect under CTC. As frustrating and painful as it is to watch to watch our offense, it is even more painful to me watch our horrible defense. Doesnt matter how good are offense is ,…if we cant stop anyone..we cant win games. ANd lets face it…we are not going to any postseason this year and crean is stil building the foundation. He is focusing on the right area DEFENSE. The offense will start to take form this summer

we have seen this team perform way better this season and execute most all of the things we sucked at against iowa. So these players have been taught how to box out and rebound and they have shown they know how to well is some games so that is not creans fault they did not execute it in the game. they obviously know how to. However, It is possible that he did not prepare them well enough mentally beforehand …but hes not on the court during the games looking like hes playing 5th grade basketball.

We have all seen this team do these things well at points in the season so we know they have been taught it. We just lack mental toughness and consistency. We need a true leader on and off the court who can show these guys how to do this night in and night out and tthat person hasnt stepped up yet

in the FWIW category I think he intially started with transition offense run by Rivers on the break and early shots in the shot clock . Everybody but TP is pretty good in the open court. This is still there to an extent but lacks Creek as another rebounder and finisher PLUS our defense is not good enough to trigger the transition game often enough. So now we see ourselves going deep into the clock

So the transition game is no longer a ” go to ” but more of an ” opportunity”. At this point I think Crean has stuck with this theme too long and now has to develop something else.

Personally i would like to see the following changes:

1) Change to a low stack or something to off ball screen for Watford and shake him loose for a short jumper w TP setting the screen. I think Elston is a good enough shooter for this to work for him as well. No more ball screens from TP at the three pt line . Only off ball screens down low. This might improve our rebounding on the off end as well.

2) Dumes alongside JR if we are still attempting the transition offense in order to trigger it off the defense

3) More of the big lineup less of the 3 guard. After watching the PSU game again you could see we were going to have trouble w Iowa. PSU had only one penetrator in Battle and in that case we can protect Hulls on defense …….but if the opponent has at least 2 penetrators we cannot protect Hulls. I think it is worth a try to exchange height ( Elston ) for Hulls in those cases .

I think Crean has some things to answer for. I'm getting a little nervous about recruiting for next year, and I have been underwhelmed by his end-of-game inbounds plays. But overall, I don't see any evidence that there is a better coach out there who would have taken the job. His boundless energy and relentlessly positive outlook are probably worth more to the program right now than x and o acumen.

Many people are baffled by this as well. I’m also confused as to why no one has confronted or asked Crean about this.

That being said: Creek, Watford and Hulls all clearly have a lot of talent, and Elston brings a lot of energy to the court. VJ3 keeps improving and is becoming our go-to-guy down the stretch. I know it’s a few years away, but I feel like if everyone improves and matures then this team could challenge for the Big Ten title when VJ3 is a senior.

I also blame a lot of the problems we're seeing on AAU basketball. People put a lot of emphasis on AAU now because it highlights athletes, but they neglect to realize that AAU is not fundamentally sound basketball. It's a run and gun style of play and things like ball security and rebounding are not stressed. Then, these kids start playing college ball (in my opinion the last pure form of basketball), and it shows that over the previous 4 years they have forgotten how the game is really supposed to be played. Yet, for some reason, our fans expect Crean to be able to fix 4 years of bad habits in 4 or 5 months, and its just not gonna happen.

I hope you check back on the site and keep that blood cream and crimson.

Trust me, you have no idea how painful it is for me. I live in Lafayette, Indiana – have for the vast majority of my nearly 30 years (dang I'm getting old).

Since I was a little kid, I've had to hear Purdue this and Purdue that. There are quite a few IU fans here, but overall it is a brutal punishment to live in the hometown that I love. For as fun as it can be (waving my big IU flag across Purdue's campus in 2002 when we beat Duke for example), I never hear the end of it when Purdue is doing well.

Thankfully some Purdue fans have taken mercy on me, and actually feel for the state of the IU program. But oh how some fans love to rub salt in my wounds. Embarrassments like Iowa don't make life any easier. For as far back as my memories go, I've loved nothing more in the sports world than Indiana basketball. I've developed a bit of a thick skin, but it's taxing to grin and bear it

This site is awesome and there are tons of great posts on a regular basis.