[1119] IU-Ohio State Postgame Show

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You're listening to the Back Home Network,

presented by Homefield Apparel.

And welcome, Hoosier fans, to another disappointed episode

of the Assembly Call as today,

your Indiana Hoosers fall in their final regular season game

of the season 91 to 78 in Columbus,

against the Ohio State Buckais in a game that,

you know, we all knew if you've been listening

to the Bracketologist, you knew how important this game was

for Indiana to just have any shot at an NCAA tournament bid.

Obviously, a big one for a Ohio State too is,

you know, they've kind of been a bubble team,

although certainly playing better at the end of the season

than Indiana has been.

And unfortunately, Indiana just wasn't up to the task.

As has been the case so often on the road,

this season, another double-digit loss for the Hoosers,

which drops Indiana 18 and 13 over on 9 and 11 in conference play.

And basically means that the Hoosers need to win the big 10 tournament

to make the NCAA tournament, you know,

and outside of truly a Scott Call field fever dream,

that's not something that feels possible.

And look, we're in a world where Indiana football has won

the National Championship.

So all things are possible.

But I don't know, man, watching this team play,

you know, as entertaining as they can be

and wins like you saw at home against Minnesota,

then you've got these games like today

where it just doesn't seem like they have the guys to compete

against other good big 10 teams.

And it's another loss that just feels so familiar,

not just for this season,

but for so many seasons that we've seen in recent memory.

Anyway, we're going to break it all down for you

on this edition of the Assembly Call IU Post Game Show.

I'm Jared Morris here with Ryan Phillips

and we have a special treat today.

The host of X's and Joe's Mike Weymouth and Bob Moats

here to join us to talk through this game.

And let's start the show the way that we start every show.

And that is with our Hoosier Proud banner moment.

And, you know, I really kind of struggled with this one a little bit

and I could pick out some particular moment from the game

and kind of make it up.

You know, but the truth is like when we started doing

this segment of the banner moment,

it really was like, what was the moment in this game

that makes you feel like Indiana is on track

toward a national title?

Certainly in the early days of the show,

there are many more performances that felt like that.

Obviously, we've gotten further and further from that.

And, you know, if I'm being candid,

just the way that I kind of felt watching this game,

the banner moment to me really was

the final buzzer ticking down on the regular season

and knowing that we'll be able to get a new roster next year.

And I say that knowing that it's not the nicest thing to say

and there are some individuals on this team

that I really like and that could clearly be part

of the next grade Indiana team.

Lamar Wilkerson is a guy like that.

Sam Alexis is a guy that could be a,

you know, a backup big on a really good team.

Tucker DeVries, like there are some good players on this team.

But when you look at the guys that were out there playing,

the only guys that even have eligibility left

that played tonight were Nick Doran and Josiah Miles.

You know, and those are guys that really I don't think

throughout this season proved

that they can be consistent contributors at this level.

And so I think as an Indiana fan,

as optimistic as we want to be,

as appreciative as we want to be

of all the efforts that these guys put in this season

and there were certainly some good moments.

And again, you know, these guys are good players.

As we look toward Indiana basketball,

getting back to where we want Indiana basketball to be,

that to me really is the most optimistic thing

that comes from this is this was,

as we'll talk about as we go through the show,

just a roster that just didn't take shape

and probably was flawed from the very beginning.

You know, we talked about that some in the off season.

And maybe, you know, it turned out that there were even

a few more flaws than we thought.

And so it's going to be a huge offseason for Indiana

to retool the roster, you know,

get more guys who have the athleticism

and the abilities to play at this level

because unfortunately now, after seeing 31 games,

we kind of just know what this team is.

And it's essentially an NIC level team.

And that is very disappointing.

But as we come to the end of this, you know,

this big 10 season,

that's kind of the one thing.

It stinks to have to turn the roster over again.

And there are problems just in doing that.

But that's kind of the hope that you have.

It's now with Ryan Carr on the job.

Indiana can go into this offseason

and rebuild the roster that can actually compete

against the better teams in the big 10.

Because this season,

this Indiana roster just wasn't up to the task.

And we saw a lot of those reasons on the court today.

So that very uplifting banner moment

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All right, well, it is time to move the ball, find the open man

and get some opening thoughts from the rest of our team.

Ryan, we will start with you.

What would you like to rant about this evening?

I think people think I'm going to blow my top,

but I'm really not.

I think it's more sad than feeling angry and upset.

I think it's, it is kind of the, you know,

I'm not mad.

I've disappointed, you know, view of this.

And Indiana really had a chance today

to jump up this to a potential being, you know,

in a much better position on the bubble.

SMU got crushed by Florida State.

That really opened things up for them.

And then, you know, they came out and were down.

But I don't know what the score was at halftime.

I wasn't paying close attention to the score line,

but they cut it to six at one point.

Got it to about five.

You know, we're competitive in the first half.

And then that last stretch of the first half

just got there, just got crushed.

And then the first stretch of the second half

just got, you know, hammered.

And then all of a sudden, they got it together.

And I know how is they probably relaxed.

I mean, to be honest, I thought they played well

towards the end, but Ohio State let him do that, I think.

And I think that the message here is,

Indiana cannot have another season without players

that belong in the Big 10.

And there's just a lot of guys on that roster

who try as they might play as hard as they can.

They are not physically fit for the Big 10.

I mean, Reed Bailey, I do not think anybody should have

booed him.

I thought that was out of line.

But every time that guys on the floor,

you are consistently reminded he does not belong

at this level.

He does not belong as a Big 10 player.

You know, there are other guys too.

I'm not going to go through the list and just check

everybody off.

But physically, it takes a certain type of player

to play in the Big 10 with size, athleticism,

length, quickness.

You need the best of the best.

And I know that Derry's got hired kind of late last year,

got his staff together a little late.

They got into the portal a little late.

Everybody at Indiana when he arrived

wanted a reset of the roster.

Several of the guys who would have maybe been

targets to come back really didn't want to come back.

So it wasn't, it wasn't like his choice to

Malik Renew stinks.

Let him go.

That was not the case.

You know, the parties were just looking to move on.

And so he had to replace an entire roster

in a short period of time

that when the portal had already opened.

And the result of that was

getting some guys who it was very iffy

whether or not they could play at this level.

And I think we have enough evidence now to say

a lot of them can't.

And sad sucks because those are, they're not bad kids.

They didn't, you know, they weren't lazy.

They played hard.

But you can do all of that.

It's still not be good enough in the Big 10.

And so the lesson moving forward is

A, it's fine to grab a guy from a lower level

who has the stuff to play in the Big 10.

We saw Lamar Wilkerson can play in the Big 10.

Tucker Dabri's struggled mid season.

But I think by the end we can definitely say

he can play in the Big 10.

Several of these guys are that way.

They cannot only have a small handful of guys to do that.

It has to be a roster full of those guys.

And maybe there'll be one guy you reach out

to say he may, he may not.

But it can't be a guy you're banking your season on.

And so I think Ryan Carr was brought in

for a very specific reason.

And there's a very specific reason

why that hire was announced when it was

moving into the type of,

for the time of year that it is.

They are going to go after better players

because they know they can't compete without them.

I genuinely think Darin Derees is a good basketball coach.

I think his system and his ideas

and the principles of the of his systems

work in college basketball.

Is he the guy to execute them?

I don't, we haven't seen the evidence yet.

We don't know.

But we need to see him with big 10 level players

before you make that determination.

And they have to go get some this year

because you can't do another year

where it's like, well, we just don't have the roster.

You don't have five years to figure this out.

And I know I, I've heard from IEF as well.

Kurt Signetti turned it around in a year.

Completely different.

They're not, it's the, it's different sport, guys.

It's a different sport with 100 players versus 13.

You can afford to miss on some guys

when you have 100 players to choose from.

So I, I'm disappointed in the way this turned out.

I think it was a gamble they took on this roster.

It clearly did not pay off.

And that's why we're here.

And that's why Indiana is on the outside.

And this team had several chances.

They don't lose to Northwestern.

They still have a real good chance to get in.

They didn't play well that night.

They didn't deserve to win that game.

So there's a lot going on here.

But in general, I think the message of the season

is in the future moving forward.

Indiana needs to get guys

belonging to Big 10.

Or we're going to be right back here next.

You're having the same conversation.

Bob, you're opening thoughts.

Well said, Ryan, dead on.

And hey, Mike, we're here.

I'm going to kind of go with where I'm going to take Ryan's

comments and move it, you know,

moving along a little bit.

Because I think what he said was dead on

accurate about where this team is currently

and where it needs to go.

And by this point in the season,

the systems are systems.

You know, everyone's guarded Zoom action now.

A couple hundred times in games and in practice.

You know, if you don't know your pick and roll coverage

just by now, then you're your guys on the way out.

All of those things, all the schematic things

that you looked at early in the season

where you could get a quick shot off of a quick

little flare screen screen that's over.

So now it comes down to playmakers and shot creators.

And one, if there is anything,

anything you can take positively from this roster at this moment

is that IU is at least trying to get the ball

in Guy's hands to go make plays and create shots.

They're at least giving it a shot on this.

It's not like they're trying to jam it

onto the flare screen and chucking threes.

What the, you know, Tucker Dives tonight did it.

Lamar Wilkerson did it, Conor and I did it.

But what you saw at Ohio State was you have a roster of guys

that can do it better than you can.

Look at the muscle definition.

You want to look at player differences,

a very simple difference there.

Look at the upper bodies of the Ohio State players

and the upper bodies of IU's players.

And when you see the more muscle definition,

more speed, more power,

when you see early in the game, IU trying to,

and they, you know, again, they did their best

to try to contain Bruce Thornton.

And they beat them so badly by IU trying to contain Thornton.

They had to let Thornton go and beat them.

And that's really what you saw here

was that you're playing whack-a-mole

more than the opponent is.

And a lot of that's just because of where your roster is

from just a physicality standpoint.

These guys tried.

I mean, you can make cases to say,

well, you know, but no.

I mean, these guys tried

and even going late in the game,

they were still doing what they could

to try to score the basketball

and try to stop Ohio State.

If I'm going to Ohio State fan right now,

I'm questioning the fact why this roster

is sitting at like low, like the high 20s in Kenpom

and talking about limping in.

I mean, if I'm in Ohio State fan,

I'm asking that question.

You know, the first 20 minutes of the game,

you saw a team that could probably beat anybody

in the country the way they played.

And then you saw why they're,

why they're at where they're at in the last 20.

I think if you get Darren DeVries as roster,

you're going to see some incredible things.

I think if you get, if Darren,

and let me rephrase that,

because that's the wrong way to put it.

It's not giving Darren DeVries as roster.

He's got to go out and earn this roster.

You got to go out there and get in the trenches.

Actually, you got to go.

Your schemes are fine.

Your defensive stuff's fine.

And I may get blown up on the chat mom

and blown up later on this.

And if I do, great.

But the point is, I can tell you,

talk to any coach, fine.

The guy, the guy actually is playing modern basketball.

I'm not trying to cram it down into the pose,

triple team, and try to get a guy through it.

He's not trying to win matchup basketball

every single possession.

The guy is actually,

you can see that they're at least trying different things.

I mean, heck, at the end of this game,

they finally decided when they've tried everything else.

The coyote for his final one,

he put in the two bigs.

And it actually played, look pretty decent.

So call it what you will at this moment.

But they're,

yeah, I mean,

now if he gets this type of roster and it's the same result,

it's an academic conversation.

If you don't get this roster and it's the same result,

it's an academic conversation.

But then that's a conversation.

Mike and I are probably going to have some point here

the next few weeks.

You know, it's not about daring to reason particular

about just about anybody in the coaching landscape

right now in the college basketball,

in individual and college basketball.

But this was basically,

you had repeatedly instances of Ohio State attacking

and I you having to take the primary attack away

and Ohio State having a guy on a secondary,

on a secondary part of the offense,

just bust them down and hit the shot.

And so now, yeah, you had what was on paper

of Winimal Game, there was a 15 point loss.

And now we'll know,

and we'll know by Mother's Day

where this roster is basically.

Yeah, Mike.

Yeah, I'll do both of those speeches.

I would say this really,

I'm sure you can see in this game

compared to some of the other ones

against the upper tier teams.

It's basically just a microcosm of the whole season.

When I face as a team that's basically

in the same zip code as them,

in terms of length, athleticism, muscle,

you actually see the cutting, the screening,

and this superior shooting actually pays off.

You're actually like squeeze out some wins.

In some cases against really bad teams

and especially teams that are not well constructed,

I can actually blitzkrieg teams like that,

like Kansas State, like Marquette.

So we kind of know that, okay, systematically,

okay, there's something here, obviously.

But the moment this team goes up against

actual power five level power forwards centers,

point guards that can actually get in the lane very easily,

and two guards and wings with length

and the ability to both shoot and attack at the same time,

then yeah, it's almost a guaranteed 10 point loss.

And so, I know it was just a gambler's point,

you could just like easily just go through this schedule

and just say, okay, they're probably going to get killed

by this team, but they actually have a chance against these teams.

And I think that's what you saw,

it was consistently throughout the year.

I mean, are you built this roster

basically to max out three point shooting?

In order to compensate for all the deficits,

they probably knew they're going to have coming in

against teams that are more physically gifted.

But you look at a game like tonight.

Ohio State is clearly more gifted

as both Bob and Ryan had mentioned.

Ohio State shot 11 for 24 from three,

and I shot five for 18 from three.

So even the thing that you're basically putting

all your marbles into, three point shooting,

is not actually going to help you very much

when you're facing teams that can basically

shut you down from the three point line,

can basically max protect on the three point line.

And then you're going up against a point guard's like Thornton,

where you basically have to just sell out to stop him

and you leave all these other shooters open on the wing.

Then yeah, trying to be a superior three point shooting team

and constructing a team around just loading the zone

with three point shooters, doesn't actually work

and doesn't actually make you a superior three point

to shooting squad.

So I think we've kind of gotten into this weird tradition now

in every March where we watch these elite teams

go against each other like right now, Duke is playing.

I watch some of the other elite, like two, three,

four seed teams today and saw the kind of players they had.

And then at the same time you watch

all you play a game like this.

And it seems like for the last like decade,

you have the fans every March saying the same thing.

I watch this IU team and I watch the upper tier teams

going into March and our roster does not look like theirs.

And so it's become this regular tradition of just like,

you know, here we go again.

And I think that's why the fans are basically so pissed off,

you know, with where things are going because of that.

Yeah, well said, hey, very nice.

Okay, just got back from the store.

Just a reset real quick Jared,

because I keep getting questions about this.

Indiana is definitely out of the NCAA tournament right now.

It's a very weak bubble.

People have been talking about that all year.

If they can go to the Big Ten tournament

when a couple of games, maybe they do get in,

but they have to, I mean, and look,

relying on the Big Ten tournament always works for us.

So it'll be great for them.

But it's, you know, they probably have to win two, three games

to have a chance.

And that's, you know, not exactly the position

this school with that history wants to be in.

And I'll take the quick con on this

because I would say that I would agree with you

in principle, except as I think I just let you guys know,

this tier three is right now just a stinking pile of

whatever it is.

And meaning those six seeds all the way down

to maybe the bubble.

There's a lot of weirdness going on in that.

I don't know what Torvich's going to look like.

I mean, we didn't even drop in Ken Palm.

I think you're right, Ryan.

If there, you know, for it to even be possible,

you get a couple possible, you know,

you have to win a couple games.

But I leave, I leave nothing.

I leave that on the table right now,

just from a standpoint of, it's possible.

And it's just weird.

It's just weird.

I mean, they were shocking here.

It's shockingly coming in.

They were 37 in the net, which is way higher than I thought they'd be.

I mean, they're going to drop, but I mean,

they're not as, I don't, I don't think there's far away

as people think, but I also think they have a lot of work

to do to get over that, huh?

And that's kind of what I'm saying here.

Is that they're not as far as I think we feel like,

like last year's team of the team before that,

and there's a couple of the Archie Miller teams,

they were a little further out.

And it's, it's just a little different,

just because the metrics, this team has met,

has that time to metrically plus anyone

when they haven't been great.

It's just, it's just weird.

Me to Jared, I can't hear you.

You hear Jared?

I can't.

I can read your lips a little bit.

Yeah, a little bit.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

You guys talk.

You're back.

Oh, my back now?

Yeah.

I don't know what was going on.

So, look, that, that is all true.

And I hope that this team wins a few games in the big 10 tournament.

I would love to see the Make the Insee tournament.

That would be awesome.

But I guess it's just this visceral feeling of feeling so far away.

Mike, like what you said, like when you watch good teams play,

and that used to be the experience of an Indiana fan,

is knowing that your team was kind of part of the standard

that was being set.

And I get how old I must sound, saying that,

because that was like 30 years ago.

You know, and so it is ancient times.

But it's just, you know, these seasons,

just as they stack up year after year after year,

after year, it really does weigh on you.

And that is not Darren DeVries fault.

But, okay, here's the question I want to ask you guys, right?

And I want you to talk me down off of this ledge

and disagree with me.

As I sit here right now, like just viscerally, how I feel,

I feel less optimistic about this, you know,

this coaching tenure than I did at the end of year one of Archimelor,

and then I did at the end of year one of Mike Woodson.

Now, Mike Woodson made an NCAA tournament.

You know, Archimelor, they at least finished 500 in the big 10

and kind of won some games toward the end

and played some other teams close.

And so I'm probably wrong on this

because I do think Mike, the point that you made

that was, I think, the best one is when you saw this team

in matchups where the talent was equal,

you kind of saw what it should look like.

And Indiana often took advantage of those matchups.

And so, like, mentally, you know, rationally,

I'm trying to tell myself that,

but if I'm being honest viscerally,

I feel about as low in terms of confidence

and the future of the program as I ever have.

And I realize, like, that's an emotional reaction

that odds with rational thought.

So I want you guys to talk me off that ledge and white so wrong

because there's other people listening to this

who are feeling the same way.

I think what you're experiencing is a decade of struggles

and not having a lot of bright spots

and that's what's holding you down.

I think objectively the program is in a better position now

than it was after year one of Woodson,

than it was after year one of Archie.

The reason being, I think that you have a coach

who, for the first time since Tom Kreen,

plays a modern system of basketball

that can win at a high level.

I don't think, I think Archie,

we were hoping that would be the case.

We're hoping he would be sort of like, you know,

Brad Stevens and Butler up games and make him ugly.

And then, you know, we even said after year one,

he needs to get an offensive coordinator.

He doesn't always doing offensively,

but the defensive stuff, you know, I mean,

we felt not great, we extended grace,

but I don't think we felt great about season one.

With Mike Woodson, it felt like it was going to be fly by night

barely make the tournament forever after year one.

I didn't see a high ceiling long term thing there,

especially so much was predicated on Trace Jackson Davis.

This, I mean, a lot has been predicated on Lamar Wilkerson,

but when the team said it's best,

it's several guys contributing, it's several guys playing.

So I think, I think this year, a lot of it for me was,

I see what he's trying to do.

I see what he's trying to do.

And you guys made a great point that when they play a team

of a certain athletic ability,

they usually run circles around.

It's that they just don't have the guys to do that

on a higher level.

Now, is Deverese going to be the guy that returns Indiana

to where it belongs?

I don't know, but I can't really judge right now.

I mean, I genuinely can't.

I will say Lamar Wilkerson became a better player

playing in this offense.

Lamar Wilkerson had a great year last year.

He was better in this offense.

I think that he showed that he can take a top level score

and make them even better and make them an NBA guy.

And now you can take that and show that to people like,

look, this guy barely even had the athleticism

to be in the big 10.

Look what he did.

What's it going to do for you?

Sam Alexis, improving tremendously throughout the season.

You can take that to a big one.

It's like, this guy was like six, nine, maybe,

and way smaller than the guys running.

And look what we did with him.

You know, he's ripping off, you know,

double digit point games up in Atlanta.

Imagine with a guy with your talent

could do in that spot.

You have proof of concept for guys.

That's what gives me hope.

If everybody, if they play had this record

and nobody got better,

and there was nothing to show perspective recruits,

then I would be with you.

Now, a year from now,

I may not feel the same way that I do today

when he has better guys.

And I'd agree with that 100% Ryan.

It's like, I do feel that there's an optimism here.

Okay, so let's do the 180.

And I'm going to go ahead and quote Mike's theory of opposites.

And this is actually a theory of opposites

in many respects to the result as to anything else.

That under Mike Woodson, I felt like

they could under Woodson after the first year

and then going into year two

and even kind of jumping in that portal season,

going two to three,

I thought that there was a possibility

that Woodson might be able to out talent

whatever issues were, you know,

whatever schematic issues they've had.

That was always the way to do that.

That was always the hope.

With Archie Miller, for me,

it was always a matter of, well, look, the guy.

And again, we, you know,

Mike, I've talked with us a bunch of times.

And, you know, deep, not deep.

We're, oh, what's his name?

Holtman up at Ohio State.

And you had Mack at Louisville.

You had Miller at IU.

All three coming in pretty much at the same time.

And all three of them are gone now.

And no one would have thought that the three of them

based on where they were in the coaching hierarchy

and what people wanted.

There was no way you could see the three of them.

All three of them not being there

to a second contract.

It happened.

This one, it feels more like,

okay, can he get the guys that he needs to get to play

at the level that he wants to play at?

And I don't know at this point.

And that's, and that's again, like I'm going to, you know,

I'm going to say this probably more times than I care to it.

You know, that anybody cares to hear,

but I'm going to keep saying,

we're going to know by Mother's Day more,

how, what next year is going to look like?

On Mother's Day, if we're looking at a similar type of proof

of concept roster,

if we're looking at certain types of players of Mike and I

and the bunch of us talking about this,

start looking at a certain demographic

and a certain kind of player profile.

And if it becomes, you know,

if we use don't have those,

have guys that can get up over the rim,

guys are going to tack off,

attack a close out effectively.

If you don't have those guys,

then we'll know more.

But.

Bob, you and I were discussing accumulated grief

about a week or two ago, is that right?

That's correct.

That was it.

That's what this guy is going through right now.

Yes.

Jared and all the,

Jared and all the rest of the fans are basically,

you know,

pitch perfect example of what you see with accumulated grief.

There's no reset button once a new coach comes in.

There's a little bit when it comes to basically

all the past losses that have taken place,

but basically the crap piles up within programs in terms of

just the dissatisfaction of just year over year

underperforming relative to where you think you should be.

And also just compared to where your rivals are.

I mean, I think everyone kind of forgets

or maybe just doesn't pay as much attention to this,

but it does matter the fact that Purdue is doing as well as they have been.

I think it's not one of those things that maybe it's not always top of mind,

but rivalries always kind of play that,

that mind game on us as fans.

And thinking might work anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I haven't seen the senior night speeches tonight.

I'm sure they're fascinating.

But yeah, I mean,

I think I will say Jared for your sake is that when I look at

coaches going from say year one to year two,

the coaches that are in most trouble are the ones that actually

do have a good roster in year one and still underperform.

Like when you actually have a premaxed out roster,

I mean, I would say that even though

dealer won this game,

I think what Bob said is actually true is that if you look at his roster,

I mean, he's basically on the bubble.

He's not in year one.

You've got binom, royal,

Thornton,

Moby, Chatham.

Those are all top 50 recruits.

I don't know how consistently he's going to be able to keep that up.

I mean, how many more top 50 recruits does he need to get to say

this, you know,

the 6C line or the 5C line?

I use not really in that category right now.

So the actual silver lining to the fact that this roster isn't very good

is the fact that you were nowhere near where the ceiling of this

program could be now.

Now, of course,

the stipulation of that is you have to kill it in the portal.

I've been saying this, you know,

sort of privately enough, you know,

said at least one of the pods is that I think this thing could

really go off the rails if the portal does not hit.

There's not I'm not not in terms of, you know,

what kind of decisions will be made?

We're just talking about the just the sort of down cycle that we see,

the cascade effects of getting to year two,

where you already know where this fanbase is right now.

We've already seen like online and just, you know,

even the fans that we talked to privately,

fans right now are kind of in a put up or shut up mode.

And this is just March of year one.

So I think the one thing that could get things going in the right direction

and actually show what the ceiling looks like for this program under

this staff is to hit on the kind of guys that you see playing

for Arizona and Michigan and or even just sort of like the

four and five seed kind of teams is getting some kind of momentum.

We're not getting absolutely blitzkrieg by teams like Ohio State

that are basically bubble teams.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's you I appreciate that you guys did make me feel a little bit better

from the only so much better.

You can feel after a loss like that, but incremental.

It does make sense.

It's an emotional game and, you know,

that's what these post game shows are for so that we can work out the emotion.

So.

All right.

Well, let's let's keep doing exactly that.

We're going to move on here into segment two.

We have some exciting news breaking news announcement that we were going to share.

And we're going to talk stats.

Maybe some from this game.

Maybe some season long stats that illustrate what we've been talking about.

Who else knows what we're going to talk about.

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Thank you, Christian.

You're listening to the assembly call IE post game show.

I'm Jared Morris, here with Ryan Phillips.

Along with the hosts of X's and Joe's.

Our show on the back home network.

But you guys just passed episode 52, 53, 54.

You're somewhere in there.

I mean, like me, we're somewhere in the 50s.

Hey, but you know what?

You know what?

You know what?

I used to like coach podcasters like way back in the day.

That's one of the things we always talked about.

There were kind of these cliffs where most podcasts didn't get past like seven to 10 episodes.

And the next one was kind of that 50 range.

And you guys just keep going.

You know, the hypothesis that we had when we launched that show, I think, has been far surpassed.

Because you guys are doing a great job.

The people are not listening to that show.

You definitely should be.

And you just heard some of the analysis, some of the reasons why.

And then there's.

And then there's some podcasts that just hang around kind of limped or hang around after a thousand episodes.

Talking about the glory day.

Oh, it's not a nice.

Oh, excuse me.

It's so funny.

Commudians, you know, there are bad teams.

They're just to show up and talk about them every week.

And nobody cares.

Shouting into the world.

Any more, any more film analysis.

That's what he does.

Well, yeah.

Well, speaking of it.

And we are doing a little more of that.

We're going to start getting some more short stuff to here where we're doing some some quick.

We're calling quick hitters.

So my.

I was talking literally about movies.

Oh, analysis.

We could do those two quick hitters.

What do you want to go over now?

This is our season.

Let's talk about the Western University versus Indiana game and blue chips and break that.

I'm going to start breaking.

We'll start breaking out white shadow episodes from the 70s.

I think I could do that pretty well.

Boy, these are.

These are some real hip references we're given now.

Really appealing to the younger.

Really.

Really lean into that somewhere in the 50s.

Bob Bob.

Oh, gosh.

Oh, gosh.

Um, okay.

Let's hit the breaking news.

Sounder.

Uh, we got some coaches in the like assembly call back home network extended family that are out there having some games.

Brent Tonsoni has again or coach Tony Adronia has got a game.

Uh, let's go.

Ryan first.

You have some news.

Some breaking news.

Brent Tonsoni's Rossville squad has won its sectional.

So.

And so the entire Tonsoni family including the big guy are incredibly happy right now.

Congratulations, Brent.

He's a JV coach there and, uh, just big time.

Uh, congratulations to everybody.

And I don't know how Tony's guys are doing.

We're trying to, we're trying to track that down right now.

Okay.

We're looking.

Wait, sectional wins.

A big deal.

Congrats to Brent and the team.

We're getting photos now.

Sent to our chat.

Uh, that is the meaningful moment of tonight.

There were some victories in the back home network universe this evening.

Which is excellent.

Quick one.

Congratulations to Columbus North High School.

Couple of my former players.

Zach Fedor in particular.

Uh, congratulations on their sectional win.

My old coverage area covered.

You're old.

A lot.

Your old coverage area.

Yes.

Memorial gym was the, was a side of the, of the sectional this year too.

So, you know, no, you know, that would well.

Nice.

Yeah.

Um, all right.

Yeah, the only, I mean, in terms of just halls of a moment from this game,

the only moment that just keeps sticking out in my head is when Indiana actually battled back

and made it a 10 point game late.

Yeah, it did get to 10 or nine.

It gets a 10.

It got to 10.

And it felt like there was like this inkling of a chance.

Like, like, are we actually going to make it come back?

I don't like all the three point shooters.

I was going to say it's like, oh, there you go.

I hope to not last long.

No.

But I mean, they did claw their way to that.

And the, like, and there was like four minutes left.

You're like, you get it under 10, like, I mean, look, the guys kept fighting.

And this is why, you know, I was just thinking about the band Roman.

I almost didn't want to say the one that I did because it's inevitably a shot at the players.

Yeah.

Because saying the players aren't good enough.

And I don't like that because the players got recruited.

They got offered scholarships.

They got offered NIL packages.

And, you know, we tried in the off season to paint the rosiest picture we could because we're fans.

And we want this to work.

We want this team to be good.

You know, so I'm not, you know, apologize for doing that.

But, you know, I guess to a certain extent, you know, it is fitting, given how this season is gone,

that it essentially ended with an untimely foul, which there have been many of.

But also the constant untimely fouling is very much a sign of a team that just doesn't quite have the athletic ability to defend.

Now, that one wasn't anything about athletic ability, which is kind of a bad play by Lamar,

who obviously is going to get the most benefit of the doubt of anybody because of how much he carried.

And to be fair for Lamar, like, he's into the game playing aggressively.

And just that was just not smart.

It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't a lazy play or something.

Like, I get more mad about that stuff.

It's situational.

It's like, just let him, just let him shoot it.

Like, I, you know, like, you know, it's.

But especially after, after how many threes at a wild state had been hitting that night, I mean,

they're not hitting.

They were kind of like, they were hitting like 60% from three.

They wound up at 45.8 for the game, which, I mean, they're a good three point shooting team, but not like that.

Yeah.

I think at half time, I was like, what, one for eight from three and, and stratum from Ohio State was three for four.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Well, I know I looked at the numbers and I thought it seemed like, and I know we're going to do stats.

And for briefly, I would hope.

But like, mobility, I thought was just killing us.

He was three of 11 from three.

So I, his second half.

Yeah.

But if you make your first few, it always feels like that's all you remember.

Yeah.

You can miss some.

Seven in the second half.

And I'll just, you know, I'll kind of just just quickly on this.

Yeah.

A lot of it just comes down.

But it, it, it is that physical being, physical being physically outmatched.

And a lot of it is, no, doesn't matter what you throw at them.

They're going to come at you in a different way.

Like Nick Dorn fells on a mid range jumper with five seconds of the shot clock.

I'm like, oh, man.

How could that happen?

Well, then he doesn't fall on the next one.

And I think it was royal just drills it from 12 feet.

So it's, it's one of those deals where it's like, okay, so pick your poison.

Pick, pick, pick the way it's like money pipes.

I mean, you live going to lean to my 50 again.

Pick your, pick your, pick your way of dying.

And are you going to get chased off the cliff or are you going to pick something else?

And I, I don't know where you pick on this.

But you're, you're picking, you know, it's, it's, it's when you're, when you're that outmatched.

And you know, I'm matching the way that they've been.

It's, it's not out of the players really for being who they are.

It's just something, it just isn't what, it's kind of like when you watch a football team,

it gets called for a bunch of holding penalties.

That's, that's the way I can describe it.

All right.

Let me ask you guys this question.

Just in the interest of doing due diligence on the roster talk.

You know, there were two players that Indiana recruited that didn't play this year.

Jason Drake and Josh Harris want a guard and Drake and Josh Harris six eight, you know, kind of, you know, big guy.

I like Harris.

Both of them.

Yeah, both of them came from smaller schools.

So they're not immediately going to be answers to these questions that we've been asking.

But for a program that didn't have a lot of depth and a lot of options.

Like, how much do you think them being healthy could have impacted things?

Is that at all, like, is this just a non subject or?

I mean, okay.

So what they are is Drake's a smaller guard who is a really good three point shooter.

And Harris was, I mean, he was, you know, as a freshman was all.

Confirmed.

It was a, you know, all freshman all conference or something like that.

And average like 13 and seven.

I mean, those guys are useful.

Like, whether they can fit and Harris was a, had seemed to have a big 10 body.

You know, I didn't get to watch a ton of his stuff.

But from what I watched, he'd, he'd look like a guy who could, who could at least mix it up.

The problem with this team wasn't just that they didn't have big 10 athletes.

Although I just spent a whole rant saying that was the problem.

But so let me get, let me just step back a second.

It was also that they just didn't have that many guys.

And so early in the season, you're having six guys play 30 minutes a night.

You know, play, play in the, you know, 25 to 30 minutes a night.

That does where you down.

And then you're not getting your best when you play a game like this.

And that's not an excuse.

I mean, I still think it holds that they didn't have the best roster.

But you also wear your best guys down for a long stretches of time.

And they're not going to be as good as you are projecting them to be.

And so I think the depth next year, there needs to be usable depth on the team.

And I think that, you know, the one of the biggest problems was you didn't get to see what those guys can do.

Because in the beginning of the season, they're out.

And, and you know, wristage was out.

And, you know, they had just this, you know, but miles was out.

And dawn was out.

And you had all these guys who were injured early in the season.

And you never got a chance to see or let them develop or play into playing at this level.

You just kind of a couple of handful of them.

You just had to throw them into big 10 play and say, sorry, you know, you didn't really get to build up.

Do what you can.

And dawn rose to the occasion for a bit.

Really struggled after that.

But the other guys just, I mean, who knows what they could do because we'll never fall.

We may never find out.

And so, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll bet result just a little bit.

I think when Tate Conway went down to the Iowa game and not having a next guy up.

And one thing you can tell in the metrics was, I used tempo, went from about mid 60s, high 60s, a game to 60.

So they actually slowed their tempo down by about 10%.

And that was both of the offensive and defensive ends.

I would counter and we'll do more deep deep dives into into what it looked like, you know, what it actually looked like.

But they slowed their offense down to accommodate or to account for the fact that Tate Conway wasn't available to them anymore.

Because they had to get more off of cuts.

They had to get more off screens.

They had to get more just kind of setting up the gaps and trying to get strategic drives.

Versus just having the really the one guy on the team that was that came in, being able to get into the lane off the bounce effectively.

And when he, and then by the time he got back in, it was already kind of changed to a point of, okay, which what team are you?

Are you a pass and cut and pristine S team?

Or are you, do you still have those elements along with the ability to do to be able to attack from the slots in the action spots?

Get downhill quick and get in hit cutters kind of cut of the basket or kickouts.

And I think that little bit of kind of, you know, that sort of a jekyll and high type type of the offense was something that was a was a problem for this team, especially in these last five of these last six games.

Yeah, I saw Drake personally because he's out my way.

I mean, he plays for Drexel.

So I saw him play live a few times.

And what they all say that I think his presence on the team would have helped is just basic dribble speed.

I mean, what we said the beginning of the season was that because Connerway was like literally the only guy that was basically above the waterline in terms of dribble penetration.

That he's the one guy you cannot afford to basically go down in terms of whether it's injury or just not being able to be an active participant.

So once he did one of the biggest problems that you had is just that just the the simple ability to move the ball fast with, you know, with the ball in your hands just completely went out the window.

And so obviously all the other coaches figure that out very quickly and you see how they deploy their defenses going forward.

And you can tell just where the penetration lines are actually available to you because the few times you actually saw where Connerway was healthy and active.

You actually had several plays that were you can see like, oh man, that was wide open and Connerway, like, you know, got in there, did that.

I mean, against Northwestern people that kind of forget this, he went six or six against Northwestern.

And that Iowa game, like the one where, you know, Bob and I actually, you know, watch live.

I mean, he was the one guy that could actually effectively get paint touches.

And he was, you know, getting layups, but he was also like at least like generating some kind of collapsing of the defense so that you can actually create some kind of openings for degrees and Wilkerson.

So I think at least in terms of Drake's contribution, I think Bob's right is that you could probably like slot him in there before maybe you go straight to Conner and right.

And every one of these sort of like, you know, backup point guard situations, having him in there with and right may have helped out a little bit in terms of just basic movement of the ball, you know, aside from just trying to pass it to, you know, three point shooters.

And that's, you know, I mean, I think as we reflect on the season, that's going to be the story of the season, which is it was kind of a flawed roster build to begin with.

But there was this kind of very narrow path if everything went well and guys developed and you stayed healthy and you had depth where it could have worked to at least be eight, nine, 10 seed, something like that, you know, and didn't guys didn't develop guys weren't able to play at this level.

Some guys got hurt and it left Indiana vulnerable, you know, unfortunately to the kind of season that we had.

All right, last question before we go to stats.

Your life depends on one team getting a stop and you're playing the game tomorrow.

Indiana Purdue, who are you picking defensively?

Oh, boy.

Shoot me.

Just was ever been playing worse defensively.

Yeah, just just get over it.

That'd be great.

I actually forget.

Forget the cigarette.

I got I got a flathead 770 in a scotch. I'll drink on the way out. Just just put me into the poll.

I'll also guard the drink and end it. I don't I don't get. Yeah, no.

Mike, you have a thought on this because I'm literally sitting here thinking I don't know.

I mean, they played better recently. Maybe the IU women's team.

Yeah, I would say so. Hey, and by the way, congrats to them for turning their season around.

Yeah, when six out of the last eight or seven out of nine, you obviously had the bad loss to Ohio State to end it.

But that was an impressive turnaround by Terry Moore and the crew.

It's done that pretty consistently the last few years, you know, I mean, having at least like some momentum going towards the end of the season.

So let's talk stats, guys.

I'm honestly just not that interested in the actual stats from this game.

But you know, when you look at the overall season stats now that we've got, you know, the full 20 game slate of conference play done.

If you look at Ken Palm.

Boy, you know, some irony here, I think in that Indiana finishes the season.

First in the conference in two point field goal percentage at 61.1%.

Wait, wait.

Not again.

I think that you would have expected that obviously the Indiana first in the country offensively in two point field goal percent in the country.

Oh, sorry.

First big 10 first big 10.

Okay.

First in conference play 61.1%.

No, obviously the bottom of shots.

Yeah.

But really, I mean, yeah, it would have been seven.

It went up to seven.

No, no, no, no, no.

They said he would be like first or second in the nation.

If you'll go precision, if you had enough attempts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you do or do you know where IU is currently in attempts for two point shots?

Take a guess.

This is going to be fun.

I've got it up.

So I'm out.

I know we're 13th in the conference.

Just a range.

What do you think?

Oh, 250.

Keep going.

Second from last.

Wow.

That's what happens.

You don't have a big guy.

I mean, 365, 365, 365.

Why does this program have to be such a pendulum?

You know, it's funny.

Like we have all these stylistic differences.

We want.

We have differences.

But the end result.

Always the same.

Oh, no matter how you add the numbers up.

It's always a bubble team for some reason.

reason. Um, but what I wanted to talk about was, can you guys still hear me? I'm having

a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, was the defense Indiana finishes a season in raw defensive

efficiency. 14th, which for a long time was dead last in the big 10 conference now because

it's expanded to 18 teams. And we're still, you know, there's still a pile of crap underneath

you, but 14th is still obviously not very good. 16th in free throw rate allowed to the opponents.

That's, um, which certainly makes sense. And then that's one of the, if you have to pick,

if I had to pick one thing that has to change next year, it's the fouling. That's like, I mean,

there's plenty of plenty of things, but the foul rate and, and the, the free points you're

allowing other teams, that probably cost you three games this year. And those three games,

which you in the tournament, yes. Well, it's, and it's not just that. It's also Indiana 13th

in the conference and turnovers forced 14th and block percentage, 16th and steel percentage.

And what it all goes to, Ryan, is it was just a team that by the end of the season,

offenses were just so comfortable playing against Indiana. You saw it, you know, because you know,

you're either shooting free throws or you're basically having these unmolested possessions or

you can kind of get whatever you want. And so you're just getting, you know, good, good shot in

Indiana, you know, still to their credit, honestly, like seventh in the conference and two point

fuel goal percentage allowed. That's actually relatively impressive given some of the other numbers.

But, you know, that to me, I mean, the offense wasn't good enough. And certainly, you know,

being 16th in the conference and offensive rebounding percentage, the offense was at least

efficient enough shooting wise to give you a chance. Yeah. But the other thing that we just saw

all season is shot volume killed this team because you're not getting extra possessions with turnovers

defensively. You're not getting extra shots with offensive rebounds. And so unless you go this

really narrow path where you're making a whole bunch of threes to compensate, you know, efficiency

wise, you're just at such a huge disadvantage. But that is typically something that you see

with teams that are at a physical disadvantage is they just can't get as many shot attempts up

as the other as the other programs. And I know that sounds simplistic. But really, when you actually

start to like drill into like what wins and loses games, there's a lot of different equations that

can get you there. But that that's a big one. And so, you know, we talk a lot, we've talked a lot

about the math problem with this program. And they fixed it in terms of three point shooting. And

they added efficiency there. The problem is they were just such a leaky bucket in other areas.

You know, but and I guess here's my, my, we're now I swing the pendulum to feeling a little bit

more optimistic. Some of that stuff really does feel fixable. If you just have replacement level

athleticism. Yeah. Big 10. 100. And so that's what I'm going to cling to. I'm trusting you guys.

You guys. So if this doesn't, it doesn't get fixed. Come on, man. We're jumping chip next year.

If it's the same thing, I mean, he's the roster guy blame him. So anyway, that's what jumped out to

me numbers. Why is Ryan curious where take anything off that or something else? I just thought

interesting today, given how the game played out, Indiana had five guys and double figures.

It was a balance scoring effort. And I think, you know, we, I've praised Sam Alexis a lot this year.

And so I just want to point out his stat line in. He only played 18 minutes. He was infallible.

14 points on five of five from the field. Four five three fouls. And he had three fouls.

We put him in foul trouble. Yeah. 100 percent. But 14 points on five and five shooting. That's

what the guy did all year. I mean, you know, and I'll say this, I remember when he came in,

the thinking was kind of, you know, he's going to be a reserve guy. And he's got experience

with Florida and all this stuff. He became one of the most valuable players on the team easily.

And one of the more underrated players that I've seen at Indiana in a long time. And I said it

last week, you know, during the Minnesota game. And he started, you know, get some, some teams that

didn't have exceptional size and all that stuff. He played really well. And he played really

well against teams that did have that. He just didn't score at the same level. And he just

physically couldn't do as much. But that's one of those guys. Man, I, what I wouldn't give for

the have that guy for one more year. What I wouldn't give to have one more year with Omar

Wilkerson and what they could do with him and if they put better guys around them. And so I just,

I wound up loving Sam Alexis and what he brought. And I didn't expect to. I didn't expect,

I thought he'd be an energy guy, you know, a leader kind of veteran guy who'd be fun to have. But

I genuinely loved watching that guy play and and use every inch of his ability to the maximum

level he could. And I think of the guys on the team, he maxed out more than anybody this year.

And so I really appreciate it. I hope they can get a couple more wins so I can watch Sam Alexis

playing in the uniform a few more times. But that guy really impressed me this year. I agree.

Well, I agree with that 100%. But it's also the reality of, you know, he was a reserve on a

championship team. 100%. No, you know, and that's on a on a roster that can compete at that level.

That's probably the role he plays. Yes. But given that he really needed to kind of have this

expanded role and, you know, Bailey just wasn't very consistent. I agree with you. I mean, you know,

I would say, I mean, I'm probably overall more impressed with Wilkerson than anybody because

the scoring, but I kind of expected that from him. Yeah. Alexis was like the better than

advertised type guy to hold an old reference out from from the shows past. You know, he, I

agree with you, Ryan. And just and really came around and became someone you could count on

on a team where there weren't any guys that can count on. The last stat I'm going to throw out

there was Indian out scored Ohio State 45 41 in the second half. The problem is they wanted to

halftime down 17. You get that a little bit closer. You battle them a little tighter. It's a

different game going that stretch that last 10 minutes. But they just, they got, they dug themselves

too deep a hole. And some of that was, Ohio State was on fire in the first half. And it's what we

said, they were fully comfortable getting whatever they wanted against Indiana and knew they could

get whatever they wanted. And, you know, Bruce Thornton is done torturing Indiana, hopefully,

knock on wood. We don't have to see him again. But 25.7 of nine from the field, nine of 11 from

the free-throw line. And yet seven assists too. So, you know, good for that guy. He's been a,

you know, tough player. The Indians had struggled with him for years, even though they beat him,

but as the five times in a row coming in at a night or today, he, he, he's a guy who's a real

good basketball player. All right. Mike, any numbers that stand out to you, either micro or macro?

Yeah. I mean, I guess, where you're seeing before is the stats, which actually lead to extra shots.

IU was not just bad. They were just completely bottom 10%, you know, almost across the board.

Just looking on the sports reference here, they are,

see offensive rebound, 340th at a 365. So that's, and if you think about a team that wants to have

as many three-point attempts that are clean, one of the, one of the best three-point shots you

can get in modern college basketball is an offensive rebound and neatly kick to an open shooter for

three. I mentioned in the other way at that point. Exactly. And they're scrambling. They're out of

position, you know, exactly right. So, and again, this is what we talk about like building a good

three-point shooting squad in roster. It's not just loading up on shooters. You have to get all the

other guys that do all the other little things, you know, in terms of rebounding, drill penetration,

all that, that actually create quality open shots for your three-point shooters. And I think that's

just, you know, that's just one part of it. And you think about just like the trade-offs that

this team had to make. I mean, like all the trade-offs they make trying to get more shooters into

into the roster, just think about like, okay, we talk about the fouling. Now typically teams that do

what IU was trying to do and try to be really hands-y and try to like basically challenge every

pass every time someone drives, you have guys that are basically digging in on there. Usually the

trade-off for having a lot of files, you get a lot of steals out of that. IU finished, I use right

now, three hundred and fifty-third nationally in steals of three of sixty-five. Jeez. So again,

like it, so there's, so when you say like, oh, they foul a lot. I would say that if you're

fouling a lot, but you're creating a crap load of pick six kind of steals, where you're just

getting steals, you're just getting like, you know, lead ahead for, you know, dunks the other way,

you take that trade-off. But the trade-off is, oh, you're, the other team is living at the three-throw

line. Oh, at the same time, you're not actually getting these steals at the same time. Well, that's

the worst of both worlds. Bob. I threw in just a couple ones of micro. They were plus ten in the

paint tonight. And they were plus five and hustle points, including winning second chance points

by three and points upturner by two or flip them, whatever. But it's like, it comes down to today.

If you want to talk about tonight, basically, they hit threes. We didn't. Sounds a lot like

past years and not this year. So again, pick your poison. Talk about ending where we started.

Yeah, it's a shoot. Here we go. But I would just add a couple of quick ones of the macro. One of them

is block percentage. So this team was seven in the country at 60.7%

according to Ken Palm at two point makes 10% of their two-point attempts were blocked.

So think of think of that weird little dichotomy. Most of those were read Bailey. Let's be real.

There's a lot of those. Yeah. And and and that's so finessebigs not working in the big 10.

Lessons to be learned. But the other thing, if you want to look for anything even remotely,

optimistic about defense, their average two-point attempt. This is a new and Ken palmry is

tracking. There were eighth in the country at seven feet and there's some breakdowns on this.

But eighth in the country means that basically they held their opponents to taking more mid-range

jump shots than most every team in the country. Now in the conference, they were fourth. So I mean,

Michigan's up there. I think Michigan states up there in that in that two-point distance.

But they they did, you know, keep their you know, they really didn't get killed at the rim like

we've seen in years past under Pac-Lan constructs. So whatever they're doing was kind of doing

something. The problem was they were playing against guys like Bruce Thornton and Devon Royal who

can hit 15 footers and did it regularly on a night like tonight. So that again points to

schematically you may have some things that are in your favor. A little more physicality,

a little more athleticism, a little more length, a little more speed might get you to the point.

I think that's where again when we start looking at, you know, what happens between St. Patrick's Day

and Mother's Day, I still wear this thing really goes. Yep. All right. Let's take a break. Let's get ready

for segment three as we continue breaking down. Well, if Indiana's 13-point loss to Ohio State,

and just the season overall, hand out our Game Balls, House of the Lord, and look at what's ahead

in the Big Ten tournament. Talk about that next, they'll go this.

This is Anthony Leo. What's the only thing better than being a hometown

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Thank you, Anthony. You are listening to the assembly call IU Post Game Show. I'm Jared Morris,

here with Ryan Phillips, Mike Weymouth, Bob Motz from XS and Joe's. We are breaking down Indiana's

13-point loss to the Ohio State Buckeyes and the season at large. It's time now for our Game Balls.

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All right, let's go to Game Balls. Ryan, why don't you go first? You get your Game Ball for tonight's

Indiana loss. I'm going to give it to Tucker D'Avery. He had 17 points, three or bounce five assists.

He was one of seven from three, but seven of 14 overall, which meant he had a pretty good night

from the field given despite that. I just thought he was the guy leading the way. I know Lamar had

one more point than him, but I just thought the Tucker was sort of everything for the offense.

Again, just showing an all-around floor game. I thought he played pretty well given

despite the obvious defensive deficiencies for the team. He was my pick.

I'm with you. The shooting efficiency, rebounding. You have three steals or three blocks,

three of one of them. Yeah, the three steals. Here, a quick trivia question for you guys.

Tucker D'Avery is 17 points tonight. Who can get the closest to Tucker D'Avery's current career,

scoring total. Do you know how many points Tucker D'Avery has scored in his career?

Oh, his career scoring total. A drink to scoring. Yes, at all. It was an even number coming into

tonight. I'm going to get a round number. I know it's over 2,000. What?

I guess it's 2,100. I think it's over 23, but I don't know if it was 2,300 or you said it's

around. I'm going to go like 2,320. He entered tonight with 2,400 career points, so he now has

2,400 and 17. You get the extra season after being injured at West Virginia. He didn't play that

many games at West Virginia, but he played the game quite a career. Yeah, and quite a career

Tucker D'Avery is the sad. I think the ceiling people thought, can he be in all conference

player this year as a veteran? I thought he could have. At the start of the season, I said he was

going to be in. I was very wrong. Yeah, and he probably just isn't quite at that level,

but he's a really good big 10 player. He's a solid guy who can be like a glue guy

type on a good team, and I think we saw that from him. I think when he was playing his best this

year, he was kind of that glue guy that got some assists, got some rebounds almost. I was going to

say like a Colin Hartman who scored more, but that's probably underselling him a little bit,

but that's what you want. He really could have been the connective tissue on a team that had

other guys around on the roster. You could do the more athletic things and some of those things,

so I know he took some criticism and you know, okay, rightfully so you come in and this new age

of college basketball, that's going to happen. I thought Tucker did a lot. He was just probably

asked to be a runger too higher on the roster. You should have been, which isn't necessarily his

fault. You know, and I enjoyed some of the contributions of the IE basketball this year.

And you had this in you through him and I would agree on Tucker's reason game ball. I would

I would wholly agree with that tonight. But you also threw him into position where he had to

become more facilitator when things weren't going well with guard playing in particular.

And I think the big point with that was having him look more to facilitate the offense versus

hunting his own shot. And also kind of the schematics of like tonight, he did more of this.

Tonight, I you did more of this where he was actually hunting longer twos or hunting two point

shots. I think there were plenty of times where he passed up 15 and in 15 and in shots because he

was trying to get a better quality three point shot. And it just may not have been there. So one of

those things where I think sometimes you can actually over over overdue shot quality in your offense,

overdue preferred shot mic because I know that shot selections don't you're your biggest one of

your biggest Bob very good. I'm working on a different terminology. You know, I'll make him add it

another way later. But it's it's it's something that I think that's that was something that we,

you know, you really kind of saw him having to re evolve his game in that regard. And there were

also sometimes this year where to be truthfully honest, you had three guys on the court that were

basically clear to shoot two guys, especially this last 10, 15 games, you weren't going to see

much shooting out of like just five miles. Was that guy that was you're not going to see him

getting 20% shot by yeah, or at least you showed it. Same account or end right to be perfectly honest.

For people who didn't appreciate Tucker and complaint about him, because a lot of people digs,

they're respecting, you know, much more than than they wound up getting. I would argue that

Indiana's best three game stretch of the season was the blowout win at Rutgers, the home win against

Purdue. And then they went out and they were the only team to beat UCLA at Polly Pavilion this

year. We know they almost blew that, but they won. In those three games, Tucker had 10 rebounds at

Rutgers. He had 10 rebounds against Purdue and he had 10 rebounds against UCLA. That just showed

you that he would do something to help you win, even if he's not scoring 20 points a game like

Wilkerson was. He was out there to do dirty work at UCLA seven assists at home against Purdue,

three assists on the road against Rutgers six assists. Like he did things across the box score to

help you three steals and a block against Purdue. That this guy is a winning player. He just

didn't have the guys around him to win at the level that he should have. And also if you had

better scores around him and you had somebody who could drive and break down whatever opens things

up for him more offensively. So it was often it's probably what it got better to, but he was a guy

who played every minute like it mattered. And I really appreciate what he gave Indiana this year.

He's going to make a hell of a way. A lot of votes in the chat for Sam Alexis. So I do want to

bring that up. There were something else for Alexis. He might get named something else in a

couple minutes. He might. Mike, did you, did you go with Tucker as well? Yeah, I did. I mean, Alexis

would be in one A, but yeah, for all the reasons, you know, the other guy said, um, yeah, I guess

he was number one on assists tonight and also on, I think he had three, yeah, three steals. So

aside from the points and all that, he, I think he made the biggest contribution. We'll say

on Alexis, I mean, the fact that Alexis played so little, I mean, he just loved what 18 minutes,

scored 14 points and was five or five from the field. I think when he went out with like 10 minutes

left with his second foul, that was really when he kind of felt like, oh man, this thing might

get in a bad shape really fast once he went out and he kind of saw that unfortunately happened.

So, I mean, I think we did that though to protect him from getting that extra foul.

Right. Exactly. And you see what he did in the second half. I mean, he was a big part of the

reason why you actually, you know, made a little run, you know, wait in the second half. But yeah,

it at least just shows his value in terms of the team of, you know, what he can do at the five. So

really playing the hits here this segment with the shot selection with my,

I'll hit all of our pet peeves right here. Now we just need like an 11 a.m. tip time. So Ryan can go off.

Okay. All right. Let's go to the hustle award. Bob will start with you. Who gets your hustle

award for tonight's performance? Sam Alexis. I think that, you know, that I think that that's

a given with this one. I mean, you can make a case for Counter-Enright and some of this area,

you know, some of the areas you can make a case for just for several of these guys tonight who

did what, you know, did what they could to try to mitigate what this was. But, no, I mean,

I think interior, from an interior standpoint, the way he played when he was in. And even

aggressively, you know, yeah, he got two fouls because he was playing aggressively. And it wasn't

like they were, these weren't cheapies that he got. It was what I'm trying to say. I think it was,

it was more than he was trying, he was trying his damnedest to stop them from getting where they

wanted to go. All right. So I think we're all going Alexis. Anybody who's having a

game they're going to have on Sam Alexis sees mine too. Okay. So let's see. We finished the regular

season. Lamar Wilkerson with 10 game balls, Tucker de Vries with seven. And as far as hustle goes,

Sam Alexis ends the regular season with eight to lead Indiana. That seems, that seems correct.

Okay. So let's look ahead here to what's up. Indiana guaranteed to have one more game in the big 10

tournament. We certainly never expect more than that, although we hope. And maybe one of these

seasons, just, you know, the law of averages or luck will shine down upon us. Or, you know,

the team will just actually play really well and uncork some good performances. Do we know who we're

playing? I'm obviously, by the way, I just mentioned, the funniest graphic was during the Minnesota

game, where they popped up and it said both Indiana and Minnesota have clenched first-round

buys in the big 10 tournament. One of those phrases, like it sounds like an awesome achievement,

you know, like that just means that you don't play on like Tuesday of the big 10

tournament with like the schools that really should have the season ended already. So I saw

that and it couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of it. I did. We last, last prediction I saw

was they were going to play Penn State or Northwestern. The winner of that. I think the last I saw,

but I don't, I don't, I don't, that was, I saw that the other day. Might have been yesterday.

Well, whatever, bring us whoever it is and obviously we'll play in someone I know we've kind

of been treating the show almost like a post-mortem on the season. We're of course going to have

shows for the big 10 tournament. But just I guess the lingering question is like, what do we think

this team has left in the big 10 tournament? I mean, we all want to be optimistic and positive and

go on a run and give ourselves a chance to make selection Sunday interesting. And maybe if match

ups fall, I mean, Penn State's, you know, seems like a match up Indiana could do, you know,

fairly well in. And so maybe if the bracket follows your way and you get some hot shooting,

but, you know, you almost kind of sound ridiculous trying to talk yourself into it. So I don't know,

I mean, Bob, let's start with you. Like just what is your, what's kind of your best case scenario?

You know, for the big 10 tournament, win two. I would say best case at this point just based on

this, based on how the roster performs at this point. Not seeing a bracket, obviously. I mean,

maybe you could win a third and just get to that semi-final. Maybe it's is that I am doing

this right mentally right where they play Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then that would actually

get them to the semi-final in Saturday. Yeah. All right. Here's what I'll say. I have no idea

what the bracket looks like. That's, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. You know what I think is the best case

scenario? Get us to Purdue. I want another match up against Purdue because I want to beat them.

So does everybody right now. I want to keep those seniors one more time. Feast.

I actually think, and I think away from Mac Urina. Well, actually, I'm playing well in Mac Urina

except when they play us. So I don't know. But I guess like, that's in a month. Yeah, I know.

But I'm looking at this right now. It looks like, as it stands right now, and it could still change.

If Indiana wins its game, its first game, it would likely face UCLA, who's currently the seven.

Okay. Which again, beatable. And if they win that,

they would face the number two seed who is Michigan state.

You know, well, they have shown signs of life against them for 30 minutes.

I would rather play Nebraska after Nebraska. I would too. I would too.

100% actually. I'm Illinois. Anybody but Illinois or Michigan? I honestly, I'd love to see

Iowa one more time. Just for that. I don't know. I would love to see Iowa, honestly. I'd like

to see us go with McCallum one more time and see how that goes. Just just out of curiosity.

But no, yeah, but I think I think three is, you know, three is probably your, you know,

getting getting getting three additional games is probably the most you're going to look at here.

Yeah. And look, no one expected the big 10 tournament run in Mike Woodson's first season,

not even at half time of the first game. You know, so look, sometimes it was because they certainly

not the tier. Well, yes. So, you know, I mean, look, it looks very bleak right now.

Obviously, you know, let's see what happens around the bubble. Let's see. I mean, Indiana,

at a minimum, they're going to have to win two games in the big 10 tournament to even entertain

dreams of selection someday. That's what all the Braketologists tell me. I trust the Braketologists.

So we will watch with great interest. And during those two hours of the game, we will cheer like

Keck, you know, for the Hoosiers to do it. But obviously, you know, I don't think it's a team that

were super confident and can make a run. But, you know, it's basketball. Let's go out. Maybe,

maybe this team can uncork some hot shooting and get hot and, you know, run into the right matchups.

That's probably, that's the most optimistic thing you can say right now. But as long as there's

games going, we'll keep watching. We'll keep talking about them afterwards and hoping for the best

for the Hoosiers. So I think we can wrap there for tonight guys. We'll do last call here in just a

second. But remember to go check out our friends at Homefield Apparel. Use the promo code Home23 at

checkout and get 15% off your first order. Homefieldapparel.com. All right. Final thoughts. Mike,

we'll start with you. Yeah. It's interesting. Like when Bob and I started, I guess at the beginning

of this season, we did our pre-season show. I think I, I think it my low estimate for what the

the team might look like. I think I described it as Creighton East. And unfortunately, I think this

team reminds me of a colleague of mid-tier Creighton team right now. It tries to hunt threes.

It tries to compensate for everything trying to be as efficient as possible in terms of shot

making. But at the expense of all the other stuff. And unfortunately, games like this tonight

just kind of reminded of us of that fact. And obviously we sold against Michigan. We sold

against the Michigan state. So a little bit against Illinois. So yeah, I think we're just kind of

finding ourselves explaining the same phenomenon over over again, just, you know, on against

different teams. And so I think it's going to be fun to look at maybe the next few weeks,

like next eight weeks to see exactly, okay, what can this, what can this staff actually bring in

in terms of talent? I think the good thing, I will say, you know, again, looking for any kind of

silver lining, typically when teams get beat so badly by certain kinds of teams, it kind of

sobers a program up in terms of, okay, this is actually what we need. It's like we're get, you know,

there's no doubt about like what the weaknesses are in this team in this program right now. And so

I think you kind of take that and hope that going forward in the next, you know, as we approach

the portal opening that we start to see like complete turnaround in terms of sort of the type of

players. Now, obviously you want the talent, obviously, to improve. But I think it's just as

important that the type of player start to change for this program. And I think, you know,

obviously the fact that Ryan Carr was brought in, I think you have a certain level of confidence

now that there's going to be several eyeballs on that particular goal going forward.

Bob?

Right there is why I love doing the show because I get to talk to him in depth for an hour and a half

ish longer every couple of weeks. Right, right there. And to all of that, I would just kind of

throw and I think that this staff probably would run and I, we were doing the Louisville game back

what feels like an Eon, Eons ago. And we were sitting there talking about, you know, just the

differentiation between year two and year one of the rebuild. And Louisville is where at that

point where we thought we'd want to be, I think we want to be a little better in some respects.

But I mean, a Louisville result for this team this year with good recruiting classes coming in

through the 2028, I believe, yeah, 2028 groups would be, would be good. Because I think

that the program has realized very, very quickly and just from what we're hearing

with Brian, Brian Carr, with where they kind of have pivoted in the high school recruiting.

All of these areas show that they need just, they need more firepower basically. They need,

they got to get a bigger boat. And at this moment, they're just there, you know, that's where we're at.

And it's kind of the Mike's point that, you know, you can go way too far on that.

Hey, it's Prince. How you doing, buddy? Um, you know, we can do this more on post game shows

after bad performances, dogs and puppies. Usually, usually Duke is sitting right there and just

with a, with a snout up so we could always just swing it around a bit. But no, but I, but again,

I'm just going to kind of close with that that it's like, you know, I think the staff has figured out

what they need. And I think this program is figured out what they need. And now it's, uh, go get it.

And in the modern, in the modern landscape, would it be three guys, four guys and, you know,

with a role player, I don't know, but you definitely need a more dynamic lead in the, you know,

basically a three-level type score that can distribute the ball. You got to get guys that can play

above the rim. And you got to get guys not only you can shoot, but can attack closeouts and get

and get to the lane and, and make you play, pay for paying, playing too far or too close.

And then run your stuff and see what happens.

Well, son, Ryan, final thoughts.

You're muted.

And you're still muted. All right, well, maybe I'll give it. It's on sometimes.

Here he is. I think the microphone is done with the regular season.

No, I, look, I'm not going to sit here today after this performance. It's like,

to buy stock in Indiana's program. I'm not going to do that. I do think, as I've said all year,

I think that the fundamentals for this to work are there. They just need to get the material right.

And, and I think they need to go find the guys who can fit this system. And now you've got time

to do it where last year felt rushed. Now, I think there's some guys in house that you can keep,

whether it's role players for next year or whether, you know, you can develop them into more

lead players. I like the three freshmen that are coming in. I'm curious to see if the three

freshmen who are here stay. If they do, then that's six players on the roster right there.

You don't have to go get 13. You know, so I just, I think that we've seen enough examples

that this needs to change. And, and the one thing I'll say about Dernabri is that I appreciate

that is unlike the last two coaches in Indiana. He is a man who is willing to say, I was wrong.

Let's fix this as opposed to the system's fine. What I'm doing is fine. Everybody else just needs

to get out board. And, and you've seen him several times, Jerry. I mean, you know,

he was discussing Sam Alexis in the post game pressure. And somebody said like, you know,

why wasn't he playing more early in the air? He's like, sometimes his coaches were wrong. And he's

proving us wrong. How many coaches will say that? Like, how many will go out of the way and say,

they'll say, oh, we didn't think he fit. No, there was no excuse. There was, we were wrong about

that. And his humility in that heartens me that maybe the way they went about building this roster

last year was not right. And now he knows. And now we're going to move forward to do it the right

way. We brought in this guy who's an excellent talent evaluator and is, you know, with the

Pacers who gets a lot of, I got calls from people or text from people who the only thing they know

about me, I'm not friends with them. The only thing they know about me is that I went to

Indiana who were saying, this is an unbelievable hire. Perfect hire for them. I'm shocked they were

able to do it. I got a lot of those the day that Ryan Carr was announced. I don't know. I mean,

I know who Ryan Carr is. I know what he does. But I don't know him that deeply. Had to do some research

on him. But everybody who knows things loves this guy. And so again, I'm not going to sit here

and tell you Indian is fine. No, we got they got a lot of work to do. But there are things moving

in a positive direction. One, you got to coach who plays the kind of basketball that wins at the

college basketball level now. The kind of basketball you need to play to win in a modern world.

That's a big change from the last two guys over here. Two, you've recognized your deficiencies

in acquiring talent. You abroad in somebody to help you do that. You've also had a pretty good

recruiting class for first year on campus from a coach who, you know, it's not like you brought in

a guy who was really well known nationally. I brought in the guy who was a drink to the year at

West Virginia. People who know basketball know him. But these college kids, it's not like they're

seeing him in the final four every year. College and high school kids. And so I think there have been

steps put in place to feel good about this. Now they got to go do it. The hard parts actually

doing it. And so I'll say this season was not what we wanted to be so far. It's not over yet.

We'll be here for the big 10 tournament games. But there are positive things going on here.

It's hard to see him some days, especially on day like today. But give it a chance. And let's see

what happens. If we're here next year in the exact same position, I'll be the first one jumping

off the ship. But for now, I do still think there is a road to a lot of success for this program

with this staff with this system. We'll see if they get there.

That was not saying comment very well said. And I can't say anything better. So we are going to

leave it at that. That'll do it. If you want to see us do the show live and be part of the live

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for the music here on the show. Special thank you to John Ringer of rigdesign.com for designing

our logo. Thank you for listening. We'll be back to talk IU Hoops again with you after their

first game in the big 10 tournament. Until then, take it from me. Native Hoosier Mark Titus.

Keep your elbows in and your eyes on the rim and go Hoosiers.

Here I come. This is Don Sony.

Fun night in the Ton Sony house tonight with Rossville.

Congratulations, Brett. Yeah, we were talking. We were talking with the season started right before.

I think Ryan was in for that and Mike was in for it. We were sitting down at the tap when I was

ordering a beer. Then Tom Brett and I are basically just talking offensive concepts and I'm throwing

him some drills that I was going to run for the year. I mean, we had a great time and I couldn't

be more thrilled for the kid. Couldn't be more thrilled for him and that whole program.

And Tony, they tip off at 730 so we should get news at some point. You know, check the

TWIT box or whatever you want to go on to at that point. But I'm sure that candles will be going

off at Greenwood hopefully tonight. And so that's get cut down in the apples Lutheran with Tony wins

wins as a first year head coach at Greenwood. That's awesome. That is awesome. Well, Bob and Mike,

thank you guys for hopping on short notice. This was actually, I mean, it's always great having

you guys here. But this was like a perfect show to have you guys here to provide some perspective.

And I appreciate it. You guys, you know, help me find a little optimism because that was

a warning result for the Hoosiers, but I'm very well said. And, you know, one interesting stat,

Indiana currently 41st in Kenpom. If they end up 41st in Kenpom, they will certainly finish

higher comparatively in the metrics than either of Indiana's first two coaches did in their first

seasons. That means much. But just to counter what I said earlier about not feeling as optimistic.

There's a lot of way to feel like. I want to mention, I want to say as before we get off,

thank you to everybody who listened and followed us all year. I know it could be a tough year at

times. We got some tough years. The last couple of years on and off. You guys sticking with us,

being forever for the regular season really means a lot. And hopefully this off season will

will be more active than we were the last few. And we'll have stuff to talk about. It's a great

stuff to cover. But genuinely, this was our 15th regular season doing Indiana basketball. And you

guys sticking with us is always means a lot. Yep. And by the way, I'm glad you mentioned

the recruits too, because that is one of the reasons to feel optimistic is the recruiting class

Indiana has coming in three sweet spot kids. If you don't know what I mean by the term sweet spot,

you have not listened to X's and Joe's enough. So make sure that you go listen to their show. But

go watch some film of those guys. I don't make you feel a little bit better about the future.

Now, who knows how much they'll contribute next year, but they do all seem like solid building

blocks for the future. Yeah. All right. Everybody go enjoy your Saturday night. And we'll talk to you

soon. Thank you. Everybody better guys. Before we had AT&T business wireless coverage, our delivery

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