February 21, 2025 • 51 mins
On this episode, Alex Bozich is joined by Rick Bozich of WDRB.com to talk IU's separation from Mike Woodson at the conclusion of the season and the ongoing coaching search.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Welcome back to a new episode of Podcasts on the
Brink Friday, February twenty first. Indiana, of course, coming up
this weekend is going to host Purdue on Sunday afternoon
at Assembly Hall. The Hoosiers had a chance for a
little bit of momentum after that Michigan State win, but
fell flighting against to UCLA. Now I've had a week
(00:39):
off to prepare for Sunday's game. Before we get to
this week's episode of Podcasts on the Brink, I want
to take a moment to remind you that Podcast on
the Brink brought to you by our friends at visit Bloomington.
Visit Bloomington as a proud partner of Podcasts on the
Brink in Indiana University Athletics. If you're ready to take
your hoo's your basketball fandom to the next level, then
plan your trip to Bloomy Indiana. From iconic eats like
(01:03):
Nick's English Hut to exploring the scenic trails of Griffy Lakes,
Bloomington is your gateway to all things who's your in beyond.
Order your free visitor guide and begin planning your adventure
at visit Bloomington dot com. Also coming up. I think
IU baseball is going to be getting into full swing.
Supposed to be a pretty good team there in Bloomington
as well, So make your way down to Bloomington check
(01:24):
out some IU baseball as well this spring. This week's
episode of Podcasts on the Break my dad Hall of
Famer Rick Bosch WDRBWDRB dot com and Louisville. It's covered
Indiana basketball for as long as anybody I know at
this point, going back to his days as a student
(01:45):
at the Indiana Daily Student and then spend some time
in Bloomington and longtime columnists in Louisville at the Louisville
Times I think, first in the Louisville Curry Journal nowt WDRB.
So it has a great perspective on IU basketball. And
we had a podcast that I was looking back at
the numbers for it back in late December. I'm pretty
(02:06):
sure you remember we kind of talked about the state
of Value basketball. I think it was the most downloaded
podcast we've had in the last year or so, definitely
the most watched on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
But we just kind of.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Talked about the direction of the program everything with Mike
Woodson and at that point I don't think we either
one of us had a full understanding of kind of
what was going to unfold, But just what's been your
reaction to maybe since we recorded that show, and I
think we kind of both gave our feelings on this
wasn't working with Mike Woodson and Indiana probably needed to
(02:37):
go in a different direction. And I think the record
so far this year in Big ten play the last
couple of months has kind of shown that. But just
how everything's played out as it surprised you at all
how the season has gone in terms of the wins
and losses, and then just the way that Indiana went
about separating from Mike Woodson.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, rise me the way the record's going, because they're
a better team than what the record is. They should
have more wins, They should be firmly in the NCAA
tournament instead of just outside the bubble. They shouldn't have
gotten blown out as many times as they have, and
they shouldn't be in the end of February and still
sort of tinkering around with the lineup and trying to
(03:23):
figure out what the best group is to play. But
then the story really of the last couple of years
and it's why they're in the state they're in. In
terms of what's happened, I think it was absolutely the
right call. I think for a variety of reasons. One
would be the inconsistency of play and lack of the
kind of success that Indiana basketball aspires to have on
(03:45):
a consistent basis. Two because of the resources they put
into it this year to get this team right and
it not working. And three because Mike Woodson have lost
the fan base, and once you get to a certain
point on losing the fan base, you're not going to
(04:06):
get it back. And we all know what happened in
terms of the the booze at the Illinois game and
the other grumbling that we've seen and after they lost
those couple of games and we're coming home to face
Dusty may Er. Wise, it really was the only decision
they could make, and that was evidenced by the tone
of the statement five paragraphs or whatever it was. It
(04:29):
was mainly a pep's PEP doc to IU fan saying,
we understand you're disappointed and annoyed. We're annoyed too, but
please do the right thing and bactice coach the rest
of the way without any kind of a statement from
Mike Woodson, which is a whole other story.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
So you wrote it. I think at one point that
some people may have been confused by it. But you
wrote the Louisville game in many ways was kind of
a knockout blow for this season. Why did you think
that was? And because obviously at that point there was
a lot of seasons still to play. But was that
more based on just kind of it was a foreshadowing
(05:07):
of what was to come. How unprepared and how uncompetitive
they really looked in that game. It was their first
I guess real major tests away from Assembly Hall of
the season, and they failed miserably.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. Last year they had
the same problem with not being a competitive to the
number of games. They got blown up by Yukon, they
got blown up by Auburn, they got blown out in
the very last game of the year by Nebraska when
Mike Wotson got ejected and didn't even finish the game.
There was a lot of a call for a change
last season for whatever reasons, it didn't happened, and the
(05:42):
marketing or pr spin was let's run it back, not
my words, one more year. Let's spend five million dollars
in the portal. We're going to get really good players.
And according to the rankings, they did get good players,
and let's see how it goes. As the season approached,
a lot of people were very critical of the schedule,
(06:04):
saying they didn't schedule themselves a difficult or you know,
enough of a mixture of squad one games and other
games to really give themselves an opportunity to win some
games in the non conference. That didn't put it all
into the big ten of what they had to do.
But when you looked at the schedule, it was like, okay,
(06:24):
they got to do well in the Bahamas. And the
very first game in the Bahamas, they played Louisville, which
we all know won eight games last year and forty
year before that, had an entirely new team. Every player
except for one walk on, entirely new coaching staff, entirely
new weight trainings, weight and performance staff, training staff per person,
(06:48):
the medical staff, the whole deal, a whole new program.
And they went out and got embarrassed. They lost by
twenty eight, but they were down by moster to forty,
and that just said two things. One name. As the
year before. They're capable of good teams. Don't get beat
like that where they're just run off the floor. And two,
(07:13):
it happened against that. That wasn't you know, Duke, that
wasn't Auburn, that wasn't Alabama. Louis was a very good team.
They're gonna make the NCAA tournament. They're probably a seven seed.
Pat kelse Stone a phenomenal job, but they shouldn't be
running Indiana off the floor like that. And then that
(07:34):
to me said, I've already seen all I need to see.
They're not any better. It's the same team with the
same issues on offense and defense, and when things feel bad,
they crack and surrender. That's what I meant by that,
and it showed up the next game against Gonzaga. They
did come back and beat a mediocre Providence scene, but
(07:55):
then they got in the Big Ten and lost against Nebraska,
and I mean, we all know what's happened. They got
blown up by Illinois, and ben beat Maryland, couldn't beat Wisconsin,
got blown up by Wisconsin, got blown up by a
terrible Iowa team that's going to fire Fran McCaffrey. The
worst defensive team regularly gives up ninety to one hundred
(08:18):
points what indiescore and I'm sixty. It's just not good.
It's not a team that's well conceived. It's not a
team that's well put together, and it's certainly not a
team that's well coached. And it's a team that is,
you know, in many ways delusional in terms of thinking
about what the world thinks of them. They think they're
(08:44):
better than they are, and they need to step away
and look at the reality.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So when you talk about just the coaching aspect of it,
the talent was obviously there, but again last year it
was kind of looked at as a Offstra construction issue.
This year, is it kind of the same thing. I mean,
they may have more talent, but are the pieces the
right pieces to fit together? Or is it this kind
(09:11):
of one of those things where maybe it doesn't matter
what pieces that they are together. If the plan on
how to win games consistently isn't the right one, it
really doesn't matter who the players are.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, I think it's a rioty of things. One is
the pieces don't fit together. You've got three front court
players in Embaco and follow and Renew who skill sets
are too similar. And not diverse enough among those three guys,
(09:45):
they really need to have one guy who can really
attack off the dribble, beat his man off the dribble,
force a double team, and is a good lasher score
as well as passer. That isn't Embaco. He likes to
be a you know, a jump jump shot guy and
maybe a mid range guy, but he's not a guy
(10:06):
who's looking to pass the ball to somebody else and
run up his ass total. He's decent attacking the rim,
but that's he's not great. Malik Renew at his best
as a back to the basket player, mainly a one
handed player, usually over his right shoulder with his left hand,
whose ability to ride this year has been limited by
(10:29):
his injury. He's not he He wasn't maybe an average
to above average quickness guy going to this year who
really got buying guile and strength. His quickness has been
reduced this year, and he's kind of methodical in the
way he gets down the lane and bollow is a
back to the basket underneath the basket player. He's got
(10:54):
maybe a little twelve foot shot, but he's not somebody
you have to guard away from the rim, and he's
he's an ok passer I think, you know at the
top of the key when you give him a ball,
and but he's not a guy who can pass the
ball off the dribble. You have to have somebody in
the front court who can stretch the floor, pull defenders
away from the basket, and help other people out. Indiana
(11:16):
really hasn't had that kind of a frontcourt player. In
my opinions, it's Troy Williams, you know, Justin Smith. That
was always my big knock on him. He was a
very athletic and dynamic player, but his assist totals were
absurdly low because he wasn't a good ball handler or
decision maker. You have to adjust to the way the
game is played now. So that was one thing too,
(11:38):
is they're not a good defensive team. If you routinely
watch them on defense, you usually have one or two
guys you jog back on defense. You don't run back
on defense consistently, and they get beat on fast breaks
because of it. And also you have a couple of
guys if you watch them play dan straight up and
(11:58):
down defense, and if they get they're like want to
pick up my guy or get my guy, They're not engaged.
If you watch a really good team defensively, they really
do work five minutes of one unit. They're talking. They
know who's supposed to help out who this team isn't that,
I mean they're not. They just a lot of them
are or one on one defensive players, and they're poor
(12:21):
health defensive players. And that's the third thing. And then
the third thing is just the fundamentals are lacking. If
you watch Indiana pass the ball sometimes compared other teams,
really good teams when they move the ball around the perimeter,
when they pass the ball to a guy who's ready
to shoot, the pass is to the guy with his
(12:44):
hands in the position where he wants it before he
can shoot the ball, or he doesn't have to reach
over here to get it or reach over here to
get it. They don't do that consistently. They do it sometimes,
but they don't do it consistently. Again, that's a lack
of fundamentals. And I guess one more thing I'd say
is I've really watched Louisville more than any other team
(13:04):
this year, and Chuckie Hepburn to me, Cooper Flag is
going to be the acc player of the Year. To me,
you can make a case for Chuckie Hepburn because he
is He dictates the way the game is played almost
every night for Louisville. He make sure that they're always
(13:26):
in the right offensive set. He gets the ball to
guys on his team where they can score it. He
scores big baskets when he has to. He can drive
or he can shoot. He plays major minutes, and defensively,
he applies pressure on the other team's ball handler and
makes them uncomfortable. Indiana doesn't have that. So when you
(13:48):
add all those things together, that's why despite their talent
and they won a number of games, they don't win
the tight games of the close games because they don't
make those collection of difference making plays that you have
to make to win, and they just don't.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, the fundamental thing is kind of the thing that
sticks out to me, like I've always just watching the
last couple of years, the lack of attention to detail
and the little things that over a course of a
season add up. It's just it's not there for this
Indiana team.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
From a media perspective, listening to Mike Woodson talk about
the team and his lack of I don't know if
it's his unwillingness to talk about these issues or his
maybe he just doesn't have his pulse on the thing.
But you can just tell that the small details are
not emphasized in terms of it's just kind of the
(14:50):
going back to what you said on the fundamentals. They
don't do any of those things consistently. There might be
a couple of plays within a game where they do
the small things, and I think that's one That's one
reason why Anthony Leal has been starting more lately is
because he.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Doesn't he'll read he acts like he cares.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Right for sure, I agree that the.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Two players that jump out at me and are emblematic
of that. And I'll explain exactly to you why when
they lost the Maryland game, they had two chances to
either tie the game or win the game. The first time,
they got the ball out to Malik Murreau. Okay, Malik
Rinew right uh in the corner by the EU bench.
Malik Renew is a left handed UH heavy basketball player. Correct,
(15:31):
he gave him the ball on the baseline uh down
by the EU bench where he can't go left because
the baseline is there. Maryland's smart enough to know that
they got him the ball and I don't remember if
it was knocked out a bouncer you had to call
time out or whatever it was, but yeah, you had.
(15:52):
That's a terrible place to give him Alak Renew the
ball because he's left handed driver. He can't drive left there.
That's coaching one on one. Secondly, then there was all
that confusion on the second time out. You're in, you're out, No,
you're in, No, you're really out like what Leo went
in and out like once or twice, and was miscommunication
on the bench between assistant coaches and Woodson who was
(16:14):
really supposed to be in. And then when the ball
came in, they threw it in to Rice in the
corner and Renew was also standing in the corner. You
had two guys in the same space already bad enough,
plus two defenders, and the only shot they could get
was a forced, desperate three point shot with four guys
(16:36):
standing in about six square feet of court space. I mean,
that's bad coaching. I mean, that's really that. That says
it all. But the thing that I always watch Indiana
when they played Purdue on Saturday, when they come down
on defense after the initial emotion of the game wears
off and it settles into back and forth up and
(16:58):
down the court and walk. How many guys on defense
are not down in the defensive stance. They're kind of
standing up straight up and down and maybe then if
the guy comes in their area, they get in a
defensive stance, but they're they're kind of resting or taking
it easy on defense. They'll be at least two out
of five. I guarantee you and you watch good teams,
(17:21):
that's not how they play defense.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah, you watch some SEC games with a little regularity
and you'll see a completely different level of effort and
defensive mentality. Just just go down the list of some
of those teams at the top of the SEC and
even some of the teams at the top of the
Big Ten. Maybe not as good as the SEC teams,
but the teams that are winning consistently are are doing
(17:43):
those little things and like you talked about, on a
consistent basis, and that's why they're winning more regularly. It's
not for a lack of talent. But if everyone's not
working towards the same goal and you have two or
three guys who are not doing the little things, it's hard.
It's hard to overcome that and win games. I want
to switch a little bit do the ongoing coaching search.
There's not a whole lot of information obviously at this
point where I think a couple of weeks in. It's
(18:06):
a little bit unique in that Indiana's moving on for
Mike Woodson, but he's still coaching the team. So in
the background of the season finishing, there's an effort being
made by obviously Scott Dolson, I believe, start the vet
candidates and probably doing a lot of back channeling talking
to agents seeing kind of what could be available. Is
(18:32):
there any advantage from an IU standpoint of having this
out there now that he's not going to be back
so that they can do this research in the background,
or that he could have been I guess Dolson could
have been doing this anyway. But does it make the
job maybe a little bit easier to fill or give
you a head start when you know that the position
is going to be open with what a little less
(18:54):
than a month ago, probably until we start hearing some
more firm in for teams that probably have to start
losing the tournament before before we know for sure what's
going to happen.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, the tournament, well, the real part of the tournament
after the playing game starts four weeks or yesterday. So
at the end of four weeks from this weekend, we'll
have forty eight teams knocked out, sixteen teams left. Yeah,
there's an advantage because you've had time for your search
(19:25):
firm and they've they've higher Turnkey, which is the same
group that did the Signetti search and is probably the
most well respected search firm in the country that not
only does sports searches, but they do executive searches and
all different kinds of corporations and endeavors to get the
word out through their back channels, which they go through
(19:47):
through many, many years of talking to agents of like, Okay,
is your guy really interested or not? And if he
is interested, what's he looking for and what would it
take to get in So they can come back to
Scott Dolson at some point in a few weeks and
say these are the guys that I think would be interested,
(20:09):
and also do the due diligence on some of these
guys on these are the pluses, and these are the
things that you might have issues with. You have to
decide whether you're comfortable with these things or not, But yeah,
I mean I think they they did the right decision
from that standpoint because it gives them the head start
of the search. It makes it hard for the fan
(20:32):
base and for immediate people because there's so much dead
time to fill and nobody likes dead time. So people
have to come up with stories and hot lists and
rearranged hot lists and quotes from Celtics presidents and all
that stuff to sort of fill the dead airtime. But
it's the right thing to do, and people are just
(20:53):
gonna have to be patient because I don't think we're
going to know anything at all of any substance for
three or four weeks, and as we get closer to
the tournament, it's going to get a little bit uncomfortable
for some coaches because they're going to be asked about
the Indiana job, I think at different places, just like
the last two coaches who've come into assembly hall, Dusty
May and Nick Cronin, have been asked about it, but
(21:14):
they bill handled it really well. So we're just gonna
have to sit and everybody's going to come up with
their list and argue about it and say who would
you like it and who do you don't like and
who needs to be moved up the list. And I'm
still waiting for a real, real, real, true dark horse
to emerge. And it's just some off the wall coach
(21:35):
because most of the names I read everywhere the same names.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, do you think that could come from a situation
where there's a coach who's worried about Rev. Schaer and
Nil at their particularticular school maybe going down or being
a challenge going forward with football, And and look at
the Indiana situation and say, hey, this is a school
(22:02):
that I know is going to put the resources in
to give me a chance to be successful. I'm not
trying to insinuate any particular names, but I'm just kind
of curious when you say dark horse, what do you
think what comes to mind there? And do you think
that could be maybe a characteristic of someone that could
be looking to get out of a situation where they
(22:23):
think going forward it's going to be tougher to get
resources for their program.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I think two things. I think one would be a
coach from outside the Big ten of the SEC because
those two leagues have so much more money than the
other schools that they have career to resources. You could
have a coach in one of those leagues in the
Big twelve, especially where that's a doggy dog league that's
really competitive, and until this year was the best league
in college basketball where a coach could say, you know,
(22:51):
it's going to get harder and harder to win this
league against everybody else because I don't have the resources
of other schools to have. Or the second thing, it's
going to be with a with an ego who says,
that's a prettier job in college basketball. And nobody's won
there since Bob Knight, and I'm really good and I
can go in and win there. If I do, I'm
(23:14):
going to be remembered as the guy who fixed Indiana basketball,
and I'm going to be I can go there and
try and win a national championship, and I'm going to
be one of the biggest names in college basketball. And
a lot of these guys do have big egos, and
I think there are one or two of them that
that kind of a challenge would appeal to them. And
(23:36):
I think that we know from the signetti higher that
Scott Dolson and the rest of them IU administration are
serious about getting this right. Football was a much bigger
thing to get right, and so far they've gotten it right,
and I think they're determined to get somebody in here
(23:58):
who has twenty five years of a lot of mediocrity
is too much. This has to end.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
What type of personality do you think is most important
to find in a coach, Because the thing that's been
most striking obviously I've been I've covered obviously wasn't going
to games when Samson was there at the end, but
I've covered most of the Crean era, dealing with with
press conferences there in him and I think at times
Crean was really good in terms of communicating with the
(24:29):
fan base and how he tried to bring people together.
And but then you look at the last two coaches.
Archie Miller really wanted no part of that that aspect
of the job, and Mike Woodson, I think from a
media perspective, and how he, you know, connected with the
fan base has been very underwhelming. But what type of
(24:51):
personality do you think it takes to succeed in this job.
I mean, obviously, any coach that wins at high enough
level that's not going to matter too but I do
think that it's important to have someone that can be
effective in communicating with the fan base and getting people
all on the same page rather than just what Archie
(25:12):
Miller was was I just want to coach the team,
and Mike Woodson a time seems annoyed by the fact
that he asked to answer questions or have any scrutiny.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Tom Crane was clearly the best of all the coaches
they've had since Bob Knight, and being the coach of
Indiana basketball, he embraced that part of the job, as
I've said on numerous occasions. I can remember a time
when he came down to Jeffersonville, Indiana, to appear for
a fundraiser to raise money for after school sports programs
(25:44):
for Clark County schools and stayed an hour after the
event to make sure he took every picture and sawned
every autograph. After the tornado hit Henryville, he went to
Henryville and talked at a lunch in there and helped
them raise money. Again, stayed after was over, signed every
picture in every autograph. He viewed the job as what
(26:05):
many people think it is. It's the most visible person
in the state of Indiana. If you're winning there, you're
more well known than the governor or US senator or
you know anybody else in town or the quarterback of
the kolt Is that mandatory to be that, No, it's
not mandatory, but it makes it better, it makes it
(26:27):
easier for you. It was a bad job by the
search firm inventing Archie Miller that he was so miscast
for that part of the job. I mean, he looked
miserable doing it. He gave off the vibe of and
you're in Seymour at the basketball regional or sectional, like,
don't come bother me. I'm not going to sign your
(26:48):
autograph or take a picture to me. The number one
thing is a tremendous self confidence, the ability to withstand
or ignore criticism. Uh. And three uh uh, a proven
philosophy of this is how I'm won in the past,
(27:10):
this is how I'm gonna win in Indiana, this is
why it works, and that's who I am. Those are
the things thatn't And then the fourth thing I'd say
is I've read a number of different, so many different
stories about this is I think to really get the
kind of coach they need to have, they need to
have somebody who's proven at wherever he has been that
(27:30):
he's capable of taking that particular job the levels that
nobody else has taken it to. I guess what I
mean by that is that would differentiate somebody like uh
and I'm not advocating for Scott Drew, but what Scott
Drew is done Baylor goes. He did something nobody else
has done. He took over a terrible program with no
(27:50):
basketball tradition, im pretty quickly made an NCAA tournament team,
They had a sustained NCAA tournament team, won an NCAA championship,
and really good. Whereas, by contrast, mc cronan, I know
mc cronin, I like mc cronan, but he took over
a bad job at Cincinnati where people were upset that
(28:11):
Bob Huggins was fired. But what he did at Cincinnati
wasn't as good at as what Bob Huggins did at Cincinnati,
and what he's done at UCLA hasn't been any better
than what Steve Alford's done at UCLA. So you need somebody,
in my opinion, who's shown that at a previous job,
they've done something at one of those previous jobs that
(28:33):
other coaches haven't done, because that's what Indiana's looking for.
They're just not looking for, you know, a guy who
come in to be good. They need to get a
guy who will come in and take his place and
make Indiana what Purdue in Michigan State and Wisconsin are,
which are perennial contenders in the Big Ten.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Obviously, a name that's going to come up a lot
is Dusty May. The job he's doing at Michigan this season,
it's hard to know kind of what his interest level
is in the job, if any. At this point, he
did a I think, as you mentioned, a pretty good
job of answering questions in the aftermath of that game
in Bloomington. There's been some speculation that Michigan's obviously trying
(29:16):
to lock him up with a longer term deal. Does
the fact that it's a job in the same conference
and the fact that he's only been there a year
make it more difficult for him to leave? I mean,
is that something you see as being an obstacle that
would be too big to overcome or or do you
think that's something where if he has legitimate interest in
(29:38):
the job, he would be someone that Indiana would potentially
be able to get.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, I mean, obviously it's not optimal, but I don't
think it's too big to overcome for two reasons. One
is he's from IU and two his mother and sister,
and I think is in loss living the blooming to
the area, so it's home. And so let's be realistic, okay.
(30:06):
I if he really wants to do it, what would
there would be a pr hit? I guess for maybe
a few days of columns of people saying he walked
out on Michigan or whatever, and anytime he went back
to Michigan, he'd probably get jeered. But it's not anything
that couldn't be overcome if that's what he really wants
to do. I don't know what he really wants to
do to me either. Thing about Dusty Mayleops I'll say
(30:35):
at this point is he's he's in a fantastic situation
and he's in a delicate situation. It's a fantastic situation
is because at the very least he's going to get
a big raise out of this to stay at Michigan,
because he's got leverage, and Michigan's going to have to
(30:58):
come with a package that really impresses him. And he's
in a delicate situation. Though, because although he handled the
questions about I you really well in Bloomington, it's going
to come up again at the Big Ten Tournament again
if he hasn't signed an extension by then. So he's
going to have to dance that dance all the way
(31:20):
until he finally says, hey, I'm not going to Indiana.
I'm not interested in the job. I'm the coach at Michigan.
I just signed an extension. It's over. He hasn't done
that yet. Maybe he's still negotiating to try and get
more money out of Michigan or an extended contract or whatever.
But Michigan and Dusty May, I've already had plenty of
(31:41):
time to put an end to this and it hasn't
happened yet. So I still think Dusty May is a
candidate in Indiana. And I think that for that reason.
And I think that for the second reason is, and
I know some people think Greg Doyle or somebody wrote
something from one of Uskedi's friends saying that like whoever
(32:01):
said it was his dream job, I mean, from what
I know, is his dream job. And if he doesn't
do it this time, he may never get it. And
if he really wants to be the coach at IU.
He this is his chance, in my opinion, and it's
not going to be a fun three or four or
(32:22):
five weeks to get there. But in my opinion, if
he really wants the job at IU, it, in my opinion,
it's his job to go after or to have. But
we'll see whether he wants to.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Who are some other names that you think could potentially
be good hires. Obviously every we thought Archie Miller was
a good hire, I think was a little bit more
of a mixed bag on Mike Woodson. There was a
lot of people who thought, why are you hanging a
guy that's never coached in college? He's an assistant coach
with the Knicks. Who else would be looking at him?
But I think in that cycle you look back at
(32:56):
Archie Miller, it was Chris Holtman, Archie Miller, and Brad Underwood.
I think most people would have probably ranked Archie and
Holtman over Underwood. And you know, now what eight years later,
Brad Underwood clearly the best of the three. So it's
not a perfect science, but you know, you've seen, you've
digested a lot of these different hot boards. You've seen them. Obviously,
(33:16):
inside the Hall. Other websites have written about it. Who
not asking you like a specific name, but is there
anyone that kind of stands out as as someone that
you think would be a maybe a good fit or
a good hire for Indian if they were able to
land them.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, I'll just go down some of the names. I
mean McDermott. I give him a B minus. He's been
a good coach at Creighton the end, been a fin
you know, unbelievable coach, like you're in the Big East.
But he's not like winning the Big East. Seems to
have a lot of players that leave every year in
(33:57):
the portal and he was that I was and failed,
So you know, good not He's not a world beater.
Cronin I've already mentioned. I think he'd be solid, but
he's he wouldn't be a home run in my opinion.
And I like Mick and I've known him for a
long time. Got Drew I tend not to really focus
(34:17):
on because I was involved in covering coaches searches last year.
He really never showed any interest at all in Louisville
other than having a conversation. I think his agent had
a conversation with you of l and despite a very
strong relationship with Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhardt. He sent
(34:39):
his family to tour Lexington for a day and I
don't know whether that was just a cursory visit or
whether they really were looking it out, but he immediately
after that, Bratch contented from the list. He's been at
Baylor now for so long. That's his program. I'm probably
gonna name the arena or the court after him at
some point. I don't see him lee an effort. People
(35:00):
saying he's from Indiana, He's not really from he's from
the state of Indiana. He's not from Indiana. He's he's
from Valpo, which is the opposite end of the state.
He played at Butler. He doesn't really have a strong
IU pedigree in anyway. Brad Brown el interesting name, solid coach,
(35:21):
but he's been at Clemson for fifteen years and he's
never really done anything extraordinary. I mean, he's been on
the hot seat there several times. His career has been
better the last couple of years. Some people think it's
improved since Nil's leveled the playing field and allowed Clemson
to get some better players. He'd be a Bee he's not.
(35:42):
I don't think he's a home run higher in any way,
he'd be fined. Buzz Williams. I kind of like he's
did well at Marquette. He did better than most anybody
does of Virginia Tech. And he's done better than a
lot of people do at Texas. And has he done
elite stuff. No, he's got to the Elite eight once,
(36:05):
but he hasn't really had like, you know, Mercedes type jobs.
The question a lot of people have about Buzz is
wherever he goes after about five or six years. He
kind of like, where's that as welcome or things don't
(36:25):
go as smoothly as they do in the early years.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
So is that a personality thing or Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Bus? I like Bus, but he's a little different. He's
very intense, he's a good coach. I think he's very
structured oriented. Yeah, I'd say that's it. Maybe he just
said and then found the right mix. He's a Texas
guy though, so I don't know if he would leave
Texas a and he's got four kids, he's from Texas.
Is he going to pick up his life in his
(36:52):
mid fifties and moved to Bloomington? What more is I
are you going to give him the Texas A and
n gives a Texas guy Chris Collins after beating Ohio
State last night, moved to the top of the list.
And I'm just kidding. He's a good sleeper pick. I
know a lot of people would groan. I know a
lot of people would be unhappy with it. But he's
(37:17):
done things at Northwestern that nobody else has done. And
that means just even going to the NCAA Tournament, winning
a couple of games, and that's nothing to really dismiss.
He's got a good personality, he knows the lay of
the land in terms of the Big ten in the Midwest.
He's got the coach k pedigree. He's always talked very
(37:39):
respectfully of Indiana basketball. I think he's a solid dark
horse pick, and I know people are going to grumble
about that. Ben McCollums the wild card. I mentioning for
Iowa because McCaffrey might not make it to the end
of the year. He's done things nobody's done, but he's
done him at the Division two level. But he has
(37:59):
followed it up this year by going what is he
twenty five and three or twenty five and four. They
lost the other day at Drake. Going to win the
Missouri Valley in his first year though, But that's a
big step up in two years from Division two to
Drake to IU and recruiting a whole different level of player.
And is I think I saw and you would notice
(38:20):
better than me on Ken Palm. Then in terms of
style of play, it's one of the slowest tempos in
the country, isn't that correct? Yes, that is a very
deliberate basketball style, which you know it's okay, a lot
of people aren't going to like that, but be a
very fundamentally sound team. I don't know. And that's about
his personality to know how he would handle you had
(38:44):
a part of the job Buyington I think is not
really worth discussing. He's only been at Vanderbilt one year.
I hadn't done that much there. Just because he coached
at James Madison with Signetti, that's no reason to hire him.
Grant mccastlan as a EXAs Sky, I don't really think
he's going to come in Will Wade. Is that a
guy I think I you will touch because I know
(39:07):
people say, well, those rules that he broke out rules anymore,
But he did. They were rules when he broke them,
and it shows a lack of ethics and character. In
my opinion, Rick Patino's not going to come. He loves
New York City, He's seventy two years old. And Chris
Beard that's the most heart The most difficult one to
(39:29):
evaluate is just as a basketball coach, he'd probably be
higher on the list, But the incident with his former
of fance, what that cost him the job at Texas,
as well as other things that coaches say in terms
of his personality, makes me doubt that he would be
(39:49):
a good fit with Scott Dolson and probably not somebody
that a dan It would want to take a chance on.
Who am I overlooking? I mean, that's pretty much the
list as far as I know.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
That's I think that's what makes us so intriguing is
there's a there's at least some possibility that there's a
name out there that we don't know about that's not
in any.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Well.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I'm saying a sitting college coach, okay, looking to move again.
I don't want to speculate. I'm just saying, these are
all the names that everyone's throwing out, but who knows.
I mean, you mentioned the Big Twelve as a potential
league where coaches could be looking as to get out.
So I would look down, up and down that list
and talked about Scott Drew a little bit. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
The course, the course he had him on at the
top of one of his list, and he mentioned his good.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
He's a really good coach. The reason I've always discounted
osl Berger is because I think he's from somewhere in
that area, and his wife's a former Iowa State basketball star,
and that seems like a pretty strong draw to stay
where you're at. But you could argue in terms of,
you know, when you're making a list of the top
(41:08):
jobs in the Big twelve, Iowa State is at one
of them. It's Kansas, right, it's Arizona, it's I don't know,
I don't Some of these little jobs are better than
Iowa State. Might be the fourth or fifth best job.
(41:29):
Houston's probably a better job. Calvin Sampson certainly made it
that way. BYU might be a better job. With all
the nil I don't know Atzelberger enough whether he would
come or not.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Do you think there's a chance of anybody that's outside
coaching like a Billy Donovan or a Tony Bennett gets
a look or make a run. Any of those guys are.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Billy Donovan's been gone now from college basketball since what
twenty fifteen or sixteen? You know, I think he is
older bowl to getting fired by the Bulls because he's
really kind of settled into mediocrity at this point. But
he was really sour on basketball recruiting when he left
Florida to go to the NBA, So I don't know
(42:14):
if his view has changed on that. And who was
the other one you mentioned, Tony Bennett? No, I don't
Tony Bennett is sour on nil. Just because you're going
to come to Indiana and have more anil than you
would have at Virginia wouldn't be something that I think
(42:35):
would appeal to him. And whether you believe it or not,
a lot of people say that he's got some bill,
some left over hard feelings between him and his father
over the way his sister was the smiss since the
IU women's basketball coach twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, he was another
one that was on the course's list. So that's why
I kind of gave me a little bit of a
pause to look at him because, in fairness to Mike,
he last year I remember when the Kentucky job opened,
and I always bring this up when I have him
on the show. Everyone threw out all these names for Kentucky,
and his first list of Kentucky candidates, he had Mark
(43:13):
Pope at the top, which is where they ended up.
So he nailed that one. Not saying he's gonna nail
this one, but I do believe he has Olsselberger at
the top of his number one. He does, Yeah, he
did on his initial It's interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
I mean if I'm just looking here at the list
of teams and just thrown out names, I mean, Dyer's
not coming, girls too old, and I don't think he did.
Personality wise a good fit with Dolson the huge ego,
Calvin Sampson's not coming, Todd Golden has background issues, Rick
Barnes who old natoates his buyouts too big. I mean
(43:50):
with Greg guard lead and come to Indiana. There's a
wild card. How's that one? He's a good coach. Mcastle
and I don't see coming. The opsil Berger fuse never left,
kenzach A, Tommy Lloyd. I don't know. There's a name
I've heard at times. Dalen Clavio's made a big push
for Matt Painter. No, it was shut tongue in cheek,
but I thought it was hilarious. Ten million see what
(44:12):
he says, right, Yeah, Dennis Kate, I mean, there's one
for you, but he's got it rolling out Missouri. Kevin
Willard is a Patino, a coaching tree guy who's done
a good job at Maryland. But I don't see him coming.
Izzo's not leaving Patino, no hope, No Buzz Williams, Dusty May,
(44:34):
Randy Bennett's always been on the West coast, Bread Underwood,
who knows he might come. You know, now we're just
getting into throwing names out of board. And Darien Devrieze
at West Virginia. I don't know. If I had to guess,
I mean, I'm gonna say it's gonna come down to
Dusty May. Let's see. I don't know. I really have
(45:01):
a hard time why they should have done this last year.
They had it. It was set up last year to
hire Dusty May, and it was over going to be
Dusty May. I guess Scott Drew or Greg McDermott or.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Maybe I mean, but the buyout with cronin is maybe
too high. Yeah, maybe UCLA has got a lot of
from what I understand, a lot of financial issues in
the athletic apartment. I'm not sure they're just gonna let mccronin.
I think it's biots over ten million. I mean, you
hear about biots being paid like that in college football.
I'm not sure what the most with the biggest buyout
(45:38):
has been paid. I know the biots are paid all
the time for guys to get fired, but I can't
recall many schools going to pay another school ten million
to hire a basketball coach, especially when you know, I
use you know, an outsail anounce some some layoffs in
the athletic department earlier this year and this new system
coming in. I just think you know that's you mentioned
(45:58):
nan Oates having a high biot. I mean, I think
over ten million, that's that's a lot of money to
pay somebody to come on top of it.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, I mean in Natoes, like when Kentucky was opened,
didn't really show any interests. So that's I went through
this at two different jobs last year which are in
the same caliber of Indiana, which you're Kentucky and Louisville
and well, Louisville went after they talked to Scott Drew's
(46:27):
agent and never went anywhere. They went after Dusty May.
I think they thought they had a chance to get in.
Then Michigan got involved and he picked Michigan. And then
the third pick was pet Kelsey. Kentucky went after got Drew,
he gave him a look. He turned to Early right.
(46:48):
It went after Early second in terms of just making
him an offer or asking him to come. Look, he
wasn't interested. Uh, And they went after Mark Pope third.
So that's the way this thing goes. And it's you know,
it's not a it's not any I think too, it's
(47:10):
not it's not gonna happen quickly. So no, no think said, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
It's gonna be along three or four weeks for the
fan base, because the rumors are just anytime there's no
concrete information, the next step is to speculate and.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Or make it up, just like Adam Zegoria making up
the thing about Kurt Signetti was pushing for Mark Byington
to be a coach. I mean, how would Adam Segoria
have any connection Kurt Signetti that he would know that
I mean, that's garbage.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Well the best thing is Signetti actually responded to it
on Twitter, which was which made it even better. So
that was a fun, uh fun wrinkle to that story.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
But Dick Fatel throwing out Tony Bennett and you know,
I know it sounds good, but it's not real. So
I don't know. I mean, it's to me, it's Dusty
May's at the top until Dusty Nay says I'm not
coming to Indiana. He should be on the top. And
(48:23):
the thing about mccrona and I will say, is after
they lost the Minnesota the other night, once again he
criticized his players and the fans and the postgame press conference,
And if you wanted to, you can interpret that as
the words of a coach trying to create I don't know,
(48:50):
unhappiness with your administrators. I mean, the administrators can't be
happy when a coach is ripping the fans. And if
you look at UCLA, I looked it up on the
end a well stat board coming into this week before
the Minnesota game. You know what level of capacity they
were playing at in poly Pavilion this year forty seven percent.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
So it's like some of their attendants before they came
to Bloomington. I'm like, this is gonna have to be
one of the biggest crowds they've played in front of
the whole season. Some of these home games they're getting
like six thousand people at their game like that or this.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
That or the scene is in there filling forty seven
percent of poly Pavilion, which is only I think a
twelve or thirteen thousand seed arena. So it's not like
UCLA fans or Gaga about mc cronin. So what does
that mean? I mean, I guess that would mean that
maybe UCLA would say we can cut a deal on
(49:48):
this buyout. Okay, poly Pavilion is thirteen thousand, eight hundered
and that's all the speculation on my part. But he's
ripped his players two or three times U and then
Jay Billis ripped him, and then he kind of sarcastically
responded to Jaybillis. So the two parts about that that
are interesting is One, it's not the kind of stuff
(50:11):
a coach continuously says if he's really happy where he's at.
And two, is makes me wonder how I'm not sure
how those kind of comments would go over at IU
because his personality is not going to change when it
comes to IU. If he came die you.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Yeah for sure. Well, thanks for making okay time to
come on. Really appreciate it. Check out You're welcome. Check
out my dad's work over at WDRB dot com, follow
him on x at at Rick Bosich. And as for
podcast on the Brink, we will be back next week
(50:48):
with another episode, not sure on which day yet. If
you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and
a review over on Apple Podcasts, leave us a five
star rating over on Spotify. Those help us to continue
to grow the reach of the show. Maybe somebody that
hasn't listened to us before finds this as a result
of your review of your rating. Appreciate it, and we'll
be back soon with another episode of Podcasts on the Brain.
Welcome back to a new episode of Podcasts on the
Brink Friday, February twenty first. Indiana, of course, coming up
this weekend is going to host Purdue on Sunday afternoon
at Assembly Hall. The Hoosiers had a chance for a
little bit of momentum after that Michigan State win, but
fell flighting against to UCLA. Now I've had a week
(00:39):
off to prepare for Sunday's game. Before we get to
this week's episode of Podcasts on the Brink, I want
to take a moment to remind you that Podcast on
the Brink brought to you by our friends at visit Bloomington.
Visit Bloomington as a proud partner of Podcasts on the
Brink in Indiana University Athletics. If you're ready to take
your hoo's your basketball fandom to the next level, then
plan your trip to Bloomy Indiana. From iconic eats like
(01:03):
Nick's English Hut to exploring the scenic trails of Griffy Lakes,
Bloomington is your gateway to all things who's your in beyond.
Order your free visitor guide and begin planning your adventure
at visit Bloomington dot com. Also coming up. I think
IU baseball is going to be getting into full swing.
Supposed to be a pretty good team there in Bloomington
as well, So make your way down to Bloomington check
(01:24):
out some IU baseball as well this spring. This week's
episode of Podcasts on the Break my dad Hall of
Famer Rick Bosch WDRBWDRB dot com and Louisville. It's covered
Indiana basketball for as long as anybody I know at
this point, going back to his days as a student
(01:45):
at the Indiana Daily Student and then spend some time
in Bloomington and longtime columnists in Louisville at the Louisville
Times I think, first in the Louisville Curry Journal nowt WDRB.
So it has a great perspective on IU basketball. And
we had a podcast that I was looking back at
the numbers for it back in late December. I'm pretty
(02:06):
sure you remember we kind of talked about the state
of Value basketball. I think it was the most downloaded
podcast we've had in the last year or so, definitely
the most watched on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
But we just kind of.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Talked about the direction of the program everything with Mike
Woodson and at that point I don't think we either
one of us had a full understanding of kind of
what was going to unfold, But just what's been your
reaction to maybe since we recorded that show, and I
think we kind of both gave our feelings on this
wasn't working with Mike Woodson and Indiana probably needed to
(02:37):
go in a different direction. And I think the record
so far this year in Big ten play the last
couple of months has kind of shown that. But just
how everything's played out as it surprised you at all
how the season has gone in terms of the wins
and losses, and then just the way that Indiana went
about separating from Mike Woodson.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, rise me the way the record's going, because they're
a better team than what the record is. They should
have more wins, They should be firmly in the NCAA
tournament instead of just outside the bubble. They shouldn't have
gotten blown out as many times as they have, and
they shouldn't be in the end of February and still
sort of tinkering around with the lineup and trying to
(03:23):
figure out what the best group is to play. But
then the story really of the last couple of years
and it's why they're in the state they're in. In
terms of what's happened, I think it was absolutely the
right call. I think for a variety of reasons. One
would be the inconsistency of play and lack of the
kind of success that Indiana basketball aspires to have on
(03:45):
a consistent basis. Two because of the resources they put
into it this year to get this team right and
it not working. And three because Mike Woodson have lost
the fan base, and once you get to a certain
point on losing the fan base, you're not going to
(04:06):
get it back. And we all know what happened in
terms of the the booze at the Illinois game and
the other grumbling that we've seen and after they lost
those couple of games and we're coming home to face
Dusty may Er. Wise, it really was the only decision
they could make, and that was evidenced by the tone
of the statement five paragraphs or whatever it was. It
(04:29):
was mainly a pep's PEP doc to IU fan saying,
we understand you're disappointed and annoyed. We're annoyed too, but
please do the right thing and bactice coach the rest
of the way without any kind of a statement from
Mike Woodson, which is a whole other story.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
So you wrote it. I think at one point that
some people may have been confused by it. But you
wrote the Louisville game in many ways was kind of
a knockout blow for this season. Why did you think
that was? And because obviously at that point there was
a lot of seasons still to play. But was that
more based on just kind of it was a foreshadowing
(05:07):
of what was to come. How unprepared and how uncompetitive
they really looked in that game. It was their first
I guess real major tests away from Assembly Hall of
the season, and they failed miserably.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. Last year they had
the same problem with not being a competitive to the
number of games. They got blown up by Yukon, they
got blown up by Auburn, they got blown out in
the very last game of the year by Nebraska when
Mike Wotson got ejected and didn't even finish the game.
There was a lot of a call for a change
last season for whatever reasons, it didn't happened, and the
(05:42):
marketing or pr spin was let's run it back, not
my words, one more year. Let's spend five million dollars
in the portal. We're going to get really good players.
And according to the rankings, they did get good players,
and let's see how it goes. As the season approached,
a lot of people were very critical of the schedule,
(06:04):
saying they didn't schedule themselves a difficult or you know,
enough of a mixture of squad one games and other
games to really give themselves an opportunity to win some
games in the non conference. That didn't put it all
into the big ten of what they had to do.
But when you looked at the schedule, it was like, okay,
(06:24):
they got to do well in the Bahamas. And the
very first game in the Bahamas, they played Louisville, which
we all know won eight games last year and forty
year before that, had an entirely new team. Every player
except for one walk on, entirely new coaching staff, entirely
new weight trainings, weight and performance staff, training staff per person,
(06:48):
the medical staff, the whole deal, a whole new program.
And they went out and got embarrassed. They lost by
twenty eight, but they were down by moster to forty,
and that just said two things. One name. As the
year before. They're capable of good teams. Don't get beat
like that where they're just run off the floor. And two,
(07:13):
it happened against that. That wasn't you know, Duke, that
wasn't Auburn, that wasn't Alabama. Louis was a very good team.
They're gonna make the NCAA tournament. They're probably a seven seed.
Pat kelse Stone a phenomenal job, but they shouldn't be
running Indiana off the floor like that. And then that
(07:34):
to me said, I've already seen all I need to see.
They're not any better. It's the same team with the
same issues on offense and defense, and when things feel bad,
they crack and surrender. That's what I meant by that,
and it showed up the next game against Gonzaga. They
did come back and beat a mediocre Providence scene, but
(07:55):
then they got in the Big Ten and lost against Nebraska,
and I mean, we all know what's happened. They got
blown up by Illinois, and ben beat Maryland, couldn't beat Wisconsin,
got blown up by Wisconsin, got blown up by a
terrible Iowa team that's going to fire Fran McCaffrey. The
worst defensive team regularly gives up ninety to one hundred
(08:18):
points what indiescore and I'm sixty. It's just not good.
It's not a team that's well conceived. It's not a
team that's well put together, and it's certainly not a
team that's well coached. And it's a team that is,
you know, in many ways delusional in terms of thinking
about what the world thinks of them. They think they're
(08:44):
better than they are, and they need to step away
and look at the reality.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So when you talk about just the coaching aspect of it,
the talent was obviously there, but again last year it
was kind of looked at as a Offstra construction issue.
This year, is it kind of the same thing. I mean,
they may have more talent, but are the pieces the
right pieces to fit together? Or is it this kind
(09:11):
of one of those things where maybe it doesn't matter
what pieces that they are together. If the plan on
how to win games consistently isn't the right one, it
really doesn't matter who the players are.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, I think it's a rioty of things. One is
the pieces don't fit together. You've got three front court
players in Embaco and follow and Renew who skill sets
are too similar. And not diverse enough among those three guys,
(09:45):
they really need to have one guy who can really
attack off the dribble, beat his man off the dribble,
force a double team, and is a good lasher score
as well as passer. That isn't Embaco. He likes to
be a you know, a jump jump shot guy and
maybe a mid range guy, but he's not a guy
(10:06):
who's looking to pass the ball to somebody else and
run up his ass total. He's decent attacking the rim,
but that's he's not great. Malik Renew at his best
as a back to the basket player, mainly a one
handed player, usually over his right shoulder with his left hand,
whose ability to ride this year has been limited by
(10:29):
his injury. He's not he He wasn't maybe an average
to above average quickness guy going to this year who
really got buying guile and strength. His quickness has been
reduced this year, and he's kind of methodical in the
way he gets down the lane and bollow is a
back to the basket underneath the basket player. He's got
(10:54):
maybe a little twelve foot shot, but he's not somebody
you have to guard away from the rim, and he's
he's an ok passer I think, you know at the
top of the key when you give him a ball,
and but he's not a guy who can pass the
ball off the dribble. You have to have somebody in
the front court who can stretch the floor, pull defenders
away from the basket, and help other people out. Indiana
(11:16):
really hasn't had that kind of a frontcourt player. In
my opinions, it's Troy Williams, you know, Justin Smith. That
was always my big knock on him. He was a
very athletic and dynamic player, but his assist totals were
absurdly low because he wasn't a good ball handler or
decision maker. You have to adjust to the way the
game is played now. So that was one thing too,
(11:38):
is they're not a good defensive team. If you routinely
watch them on defense, you usually have one or two
guys you jog back on defense. You don't run back
on defense consistently, and they get beat on fast breaks
because of it. And also you have a couple of
guys if you watch them play dan straight up and
(11:58):
down defense, and if they get they're like want to
pick up my guy or get my guy, They're not engaged.
If you watch a really good team defensively, they really
do work five minutes of one unit. They're talking. They
know who's supposed to help out who this team isn't that,
I mean they're not. They just a lot of them
are or one on one defensive players, and they're poor
(12:21):
health defensive players. And that's the third thing. And then
the third thing is just the fundamentals are lacking. If
you watch Indiana pass the ball sometimes compared other teams,
really good teams when they move the ball around the perimeter,
when they pass the ball to a guy who's ready
to shoot, the pass is to the guy with his
(12:44):
hands in the position where he wants it before he
can shoot the ball, or he doesn't have to reach
over here to get it or reach over here to
get it. They don't do that consistently. They do it sometimes,
but they don't do it consistently. Again, that's a lack
of fundamentals. And I guess one more thing I'd say
is I've really watched Louisville more than any other team
(13:04):
this year, and Chuckie Hepburn to me, Cooper Flag is
going to be the acc player of the Year. To me,
you can make a case for Chuckie Hepburn because he
is He dictates the way the game is played almost
every night for Louisville. He make sure that they're always
(13:26):
in the right offensive set. He gets the ball to
guys on his team where they can score it. He
scores big baskets when he has to. He can drive
or he can shoot. He plays major minutes, and defensively,
he applies pressure on the other team's ball handler and
makes them uncomfortable. Indiana doesn't have that. So when you
(13:48):
add all those things together, that's why despite their talent
and they won a number of games, they don't win
the tight games of the close games because they don't
make those collection of difference making plays that you have
to make to win, and they just don't.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, the fundamental thing is kind of the thing that
sticks out to me, like I've always just watching the
last couple of years, the lack of attention to detail
and the little things that over a course of a
season add up. It's just it's not there for this
Indiana team.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
From a media perspective, listening to Mike Woodson talk about
the team and his lack of I don't know if
it's his unwillingness to talk about these issues or his
maybe he just doesn't have his pulse on the thing.
But you can just tell that the small details are
not emphasized in terms of it's just kind of the
(14:50):
going back to what you said on the fundamentals. They
don't do any of those things consistently. There might be
a couple of plays within a game where they do
the small things, and I think that's one That's one
reason why Anthony Leal has been starting more lately is
because he.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Doesn't he'll read he acts like he cares.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Right for sure, I agree that the.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Two players that jump out at me and are emblematic
of that. And I'll explain exactly to you why when
they lost the Maryland game, they had two chances to
either tie the game or win the game. The first time,
they got the ball out to Malik Murreau. Okay, Malik
Rinew right uh in the corner by the EU bench.
Malik Renew is a left handed UH heavy basketball player. Correct,
(15:31):
he gave him the ball on the baseline uh down
by the EU bench where he can't go left because
the baseline is there. Maryland's smart enough to know that
they got him the ball and I don't remember if
it was knocked out a bouncer you had to call
time out or whatever it was, but yeah, you had.
(15:52):
That's a terrible place to give him Alak Renew the
ball because he's left handed driver. He can't drive left there.
That's coaching one on one. Secondly, then there was all
that confusion on the second time out. You're in, you're out, No,
you're in, No, you're really out like what Leo went
in and out like once or twice, and was miscommunication
on the bench between assistant coaches and Woodson who was
(16:14):
really supposed to be in. And then when the ball
came in, they threw it in to Rice in the
corner and Renew was also standing in the corner. You
had two guys in the same space already bad enough,
plus two defenders, and the only shot they could get
was a forced, desperate three point shot with four guys
(16:36):
standing in about six square feet of court space. I mean,
that's bad coaching. I mean, that's really that. That says
it all. But the thing that I always watch Indiana
when they played Purdue on Saturday, when they come down
on defense after the initial emotion of the game wears
off and it settles into back and forth up and
(16:58):
down the court and walk. How many guys on defense
are not down in the defensive stance. They're kind of
standing up straight up and down and maybe then if
the guy comes in their area, they get in a
defensive stance, but they're they're kind of resting or taking
it easy on defense. They'll be at least two out
of five. I guarantee you and you watch good teams,
(17:21):
that's not how they play defense.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah, you watch some SEC games with a little regularity
and you'll see a completely different level of effort and
defensive mentality. Just just go down the list of some
of those teams at the top of the SEC and
even some of the teams at the top of the
Big Ten. Maybe not as good as the SEC teams,
but the teams that are winning consistently are are doing
(17:43):
those little things and like you talked about, on a
consistent basis, and that's why they're winning more regularly. It's
not for a lack of talent. But if everyone's not
working towards the same goal and you have two or
three guys who are not doing the little things, it's hard.
It's hard to overcome that and win games. I want
to switch a little bit do the ongoing coaching search.
There's not a whole lot of information obviously at this
point where I think a couple of weeks in. It's
(18:06):
a little bit unique in that Indiana's moving on for
Mike Woodson, but he's still coaching the team. So in
the background of the season finishing, there's an effort being
made by obviously Scott Dolson, I believe, start the vet
candidates and probably doing a lot of back channeling talking
to agents seeing kind of what could be available. Is
(18:32):
there any advantage from an IU standpoint of having this
out there now that he's not going to be back
so that they can do this research in the background,
or that he could have been I guess Dolson could
have been doing this anyway. But does it make the
job maybe a little bit easier to fill or give
you a head start when you know that the position
is going to be open with what a little less
(18:54):
than a month ago, probably until we start hearing some
more firm in for teams that probably have to start
losing the tournament before before we know for sure what's
going to happen.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, the tournament, well, the real part of the tournament
after the playing game starts four weeks or yesterday. So
at the end of four weeks from this weekend, we'll
have forty eight teams knocked out, sixteen teams left. Yeah,
there's an advantage because you've had time for your search
(19:25):
firm and they've they've higher Turnkey, which is the same
group that did the Signetti search and is probably the
most well respected search firm in the country that not
only does sports searches, but they do executive searches and
all different kinds of corporations and endeavors to get the
word out through their back channels, which they go through
(19:47):
through many, many years of talking to agents of like, Okay,
is your guy really interested or not? And if he
is interested, what's he looking for and what would it
take to get in So they can come back to
Scott Dolson at some point in a few weeks and
say these are the guys that I think would be interested,
(20:09):
and also do the due diligence on some of these
guys on these are the pluses, and these are the
things that you might have issues with. You have to
decide whether you're comfortable with these things or not, But yeah,
I mean I think they they did the right decision
from that standpoint because it gives them the head start
of the search. It makes it hard for the fan
(20:32):
base and for immediate people because there's so much dead
time to fill and nobody likes dead time. So people
have to come up with stories and hot lists and
rearranged hot lists and quotes from Celtics presidents and all
that stuff to sort of fill the dead airtime. But
it's the right thing to do, and people are just
(20:53):
gonna have to be patient because I don't think we're
going to know anything at all of any substance for
three or four weeks, and as we get closer to
the tournament, it's going to get a little bit uncomfortable
for some coaches because they're going to be asked about
the Indiana job, I think at different places, just like
the last two coaches who've come into assembly hall, Dusty
May and Nick Cronin, have been asked about it, but
(21:14):
they bill handled it really well. So we're just gonna
have to sit and everybody's going to come up with
their list and argue about it and say who would
you like it and who do you don't like and
who needs to be moved up the list. And I'm
still waiting for a real, real, real, true dark horse
to emerge. And it's just some off the wall coach
(21:35):
because most of the names I read everywhere the same names.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, do you think that could come from a situation
where there's a coach who's worried about Rev. Schaer and
Nil at their particularticular school maybe going down or being
a challenge going forward with football, And and look at
the Indiana situation and say, hey, this is a school
(22:02):
that I know is going to put the resources in
to give me a chance to be successful. I'm not
trying to insinuate any particular names, but I'm just kind
of curious when you say dark horse, what do you
think what comes to mind there? And do you think
that could be maybe a characteristic of someone that could
be looking to get out of a situation where they
(22:23):
think going forward it's going to be tougher to get
resources for their program.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I think two things. I think one would be a
coach from outside the Big ten of the SEC because
those two leagues have so much more money than the
other schools that they have career to resources. You could
have a coach in one of those leagues in the
Big twelve, especially where that's a doggy dog league that's
really competitive, and until this year was the best league
in college basketball where a coach could say, you know,
(22:51):
it's going to get harder and harder to win this
league against everybody else because I don't have the resources
of other schools to have. Or the second thing, it's
going to be with a with an ego who says,
that's a prettier job in college basketball. And nobody's won
there since Bob Knight, and I'm really good and I
can go in and win there. If I do, I'm
(23:14):
going to be remembered as the guy who fixed Indiana basketball,
and I'm going to be I can go there and
try and win a national championship, and I'm going to
be one of the biggest names in college basketball. And
a lot of these guys do have big egos, and
I think there are one or two of them that
that kind of a challenge would appeal to them. And
(23:36):
I think that we know from the signetti higher that
Scott Dolson and the rest of them IU administration are
serious about getting this right. Football was a much bigger
thing to get right, and so far they've gotten it right,
and I think they're determined to get somebody in here
(23:58):
who has twenty five years of a lot of mediocrity
is too much. This has to end.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
What type of personality do you think is most important
to find in a coach, Because the thing that's been
most striking obviously I've been I've covered obviously wasn't going
to games when Samson was there at the end, but
I've covered most of the Crean era, dealing with with
press conferences there in him and I think at times
Crean was really good in terms of communicating with the
(24:29):
fan base and how he tried to bring people together.
And but then you look at the last two coaches.
Archie Miller really wanted no part of that that aspect
of the job, and Mike Woodson, I think from a
media perspective, and how he, you know, connected with the
fan base has been very underwhelming. But what type of
(24:51):
personality do you think it takes to succeed in this job.
I mean, obviously, any coach that wins at high enough
level that's not going to matter too but I do
think that it's important to have someone that can be
effective in communicating with the fan base and getting people
all on the same page rather than just what Archie
(25:12):
Miller was was I just want to coach the team,
and Mike Woodson a time seems annoyed by the fact
that he asked to answer questions or have any scrutiny.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Tom Crane was clearly the best of all the coaches
they've had since Bob Knight, and being the coach of
Indiana basketball, he embraced that part of the job, as
I've said on numerous occasions. I can remember a time
when he came down to Jeffersonville, Indiana, to appear for
a fundraiser to raise money for after school sports programs
(25:44):
for Clark County schools and stayed an hour after the
event to make sure he took every picture and sawned
every autograph. After the tornado hit Henryville, he went to
Henryville and talked at a lunch in there and helped
them raise money. Again, stayed after was over, signed every
picture in every autograph. He viewed the job as what
(26:05):
many people think it is. It's the most visible person
in the state of Indiana. If you're winning there, you're
more well known than the governor or US senator or
you know anybody else in town or the quarterback of
the kolt Is that mandatory to be that, No, it's
not mandatory, but it makes it better, it makes it
(26:27):
easier for you. It was a bad job by the
search firm inventing Archie Miller that he was so miscast
for that part of the job. I mean, he looked
miserable doing it. He gave off the vibe of and
you're in Seymour at the basketball regional or sectional, like,
don't come bother me. I'm not going to sign your
(26:48):
autograph or take a picture to me. The number one
thing is a tremendous self confidence, the ability to withstand
or ignore criticism. Uh. And three uh uh, a proven
philosophy of this is how I'm won in the past,
(27:10):
this is how I'm gonna win in Indiana, this is
why it works, and that's who I am. Those are
the things thatn't And then the fourth thing I'd say
is I've read a number of different, so many different
stories about this is I think to really get the
kind of coach they need to have, they need to
have somebody who's proven at wherever he has been that
(27:30):
he's capable of taking that particular job the levels that
nobody else has taken it to. I guess what I
mean by that is that would differentiate somebody like uh
and I'm not advocating for Scott Drew, but what Scott
Drew is done Baylor goes. He did something nobody else
has done. He took over a terrible program with no
(27:50):
basketball tradition, im pretty quickly made an NCAA tournament team,
They had a sustained NCAA tournament team, won an NCAA championship,
and really good. Whereas, by contrast, mc cronan, I know
mc cronin, I like mc cronan, but he took over
a bad job at Cincinnati where people were upset that
(28:11):
Bob Huggins was fired. But what he did at Cincinnati
wasn't as good at as what Bob Huggins did at Cincinnati,
and what he's done at UCLA hasn't been any better
than what Steve Alford's done at UCLA. So you need somebody,
in my opinion, who's shown that at a previous job,
they've done something at one of those previous jobs that
(28:33):
other coaches haven't done, because that's what Indiana's looking for.
They're just not looking for, you know, a guy who
come in to be good. They need to get a
guy who will come in and take his place and
make Indiana what Purdue in Michigan State and Wisconsin are,
which are perennial contenders in the Big Ten.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Obviously, a name that's going to come up a lot
is Dusty May. The job he's doing at Michigan this season,
it's hard to know kind of what his interest level
is in the job, if any. At this point, he
did a I think, as you mentioned, a pretty good
job of answering questions in the aftermath of that game
in Bloomington. There's been some speculation that Michigan's obviously trying
(29:16):
to lock him up with a longer term deal. Does
the fact that it's a job in the same conference
and the fact that he's only been there a year
make it more difficult for him to leave? I mean,
is that something you see as being an obstacle that
would be too big to overcome or or do you
think that's something where if he has legitimate interest in
(29:38):
the job, he would be someone that Indiana would potentially
be able to get.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, I mean, obviously it's not optimal, but I don't
think it's too big to overcome for two reasons. One
is he's from IU and two his mother and sister,
and I think is in loss living the blooming to
the area, so it's home. And so let's be realistic, okay.
(30:06):
I if he really wants to do it, what would
there would be a pr hit? I guess for maybe
a few days of columns of people saying he walked
out on Michigan or whatever, and anytime he went back
to Michigan, he'd probably get jeered. But it's not anything
that couldn't be overcome if that's what he really wants
to do. I don't know what he really wants to
do to me either. Thing about Dusty Mayleops I'll say
(30:35):
at this point is he's he's in a fantastic situation
and he's in a delicate situation. It's a fantastic situation
is because at the very least he's going to get
a big raise out of this to stay at Michigan,
because he's got leverage, and Michigan's going to have to
(30:58):
come with a package that really impresses him. And he's
in a delicate situation. Though, because although he handled the
questions about I you really well in Bloomington, it's going
to come up again at the Big Ten Tournament again
if he hasn't signed an extension by then. So he's
going to have to dance that dance all the way
(31:20):
until he finally says, hey, I'm not going to Indiana.
I'm not interested in the job. I'm the coach at Michigan.
I just signed an extension. It's over. He hasn't done
that yet. Maybe he's still negotiating to try and get
more money out of Michigan or an extended contract or whatever.
But Michigan and Dusty May, I've already had plenty of
(31:41):
time to put an end to this and it hasn't
happened yet. So I still think Dusty May is a
candidate in Indiana. And I think that for that reason.
And I think that for the second reason is, and
I know some people think Greg Doyle or somebody wrote
something from one of Uskedi's friends saying that like whoever
(32:01):
said it was his dream job, I mean, from what
I know, is his dream job. And if he doesn't
do it this time, he may never get it. And
if he really wants to be the coach at IU.
He this is his chance, in my opinion, and it's
not going to be a fun three or four or
(32:22):
five weeks to get there. But in my opinion, if
he really wants the job at IU, it, in my opinion,
it's his job to go after or to have. But
we'll see whether he wants to.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Who are some other names that you think could potentially
be good hires. Obviously every we thought Archie Miller was
a good hire, I think was a little bit more
of a mixed bag on Mike Woodson. There was a
lot of people who thought, why are you hanging a
guy that's never coached in college? He's an assistant coach
with the Knicks. Who else would be looking at him?
But I think in that cycle you look back at
(32:56):
Archie Miller, it was Chris Holtman, Archie Miller, and Brad Underwood.
I think most people would have probably ranked Archie and
Holtman over Underwood. And you know, now what eight years later,
Brad Underwood clearly the best of the three. So it's
not a perfect science, but you know, you've seen, you've
digested a lot of these different hot boards. You've seen them. Obviously,
(33:16):
inside the Hall. Other websites have written about it. Who
not asking you like a specific name, but is there
anyone that kind of stands out as as someone that
you think would be a maybe a good fit or
a good hire for Indian if they were able to
land them.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, I'll just go down some of the names. I
mean McDermott. I give him a B minus. He's been
a good coach at Creighton the end, been a fin
you know, unbelievable coach, like you're in the Big East.
But he's not like winning the Big East. Seems to
have a lot of players that leave every year in
(33:57):
the portal and he was that I was and failed,
So you know, good not He's not a world beater.
Cronin I've already mentioned. I think he'd be solid, but
he's he wouldn't be a home run in my opinion.
And I like Mick and I've known him for a
long time. Got Drew I tend not to really focus
(34:17):
on because I was involved in covering coaches searches last year.
He really never showed any interest at all in Louisville
other than having a conversation. I think his agent had
a conversation with you of l and despite a very
strong relationship with Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhardt. He sent
(34:39):
his family to tour Lexington for a day and I
don't know whether that was just a cursory visit or
whether they really were looking it out, but he immediately
after that, Bratch contented from the list. He's been at
Baylor now for so long. That's his program. I'm probably
gonna name the arena or the court after him at
some point. I don't see him lee an effort. People
(35:00):
saying he's from Indiana, He's not really from he's from
the state of Indiana. He's not from Indiana. He's he's
from Valpo, which is the opposite end of the state.
He played at Butler. He doesn't really have a strong
IU pedigree in anyway. Brad Brown el interesting name, solid coach,
(35:21):
but he's been at Clemson for fifteen years and he's
never really done anything extraordinary. I mean, he's been on
the hot seat there several times. His career has been
better the last couple of years. Some people think it's
improved since Nil's leveled the playing field and allowed Clemson
to get some better players. He'd be a Bee he's not.
(35:42):
I don't think he's a home run higher in any way,
he'd be fined. Buzz Williams. I kind of like he's
did well at Marquette. He did better than most anybody
does of Virginia Tech. And he's done better than a
lot of people do at Texas. And has he done
elite stuff. No, he's got to the Elite eight once,
(36:05):
but he hasn't really had like, you know, Mercedes type jobs.
The question a lot of people have about Buzz is
wherever he goes after about five or six years. He
kind of like, where's that as welcome or things don't
(36:25):
go as smoothly as they do in the early years.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
So is that a personality thing or Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Bus? I like Bus, but he's a little different. He's
very intense, he's a good coach. I think he's very
structured oriented. Yeah, I'd say that's it. Maybe he just
said and then found the right mix. He's a Texas
guy though, so I don't know if he would leave
Texas a and he's got four kids, he's from Texas.
Is he going to pick up his life in his
(36:52):
mid fifties and moved to Bloomington? What more is I
are you going to give him the Texas A and
n gives a Texas guy Chris Collins after beating Ohio
State last night, moved to the top of the list.
And I'm just kidding. He's a good sleeper pick. I
know a lot of people would groan. I know a
lot of people would be unhappy with it. But he's
(37:17):
done things at Northwestern that nobody else has done. And
that means just even going to the NCAA Tournament, winning
a couple of games, and that's nothing to really dismiss.
He's got a good personality, he knows the lay of
the land in terms of the Big ten in the Midwest.
He's got the coach k pedigree. He's always talked very
(37:39):
respectfully of Indiana basketball. I think he's a solid dark
horse pick, and I know people are going to grumble
about that. Ben McCollums the wild card. I mentioning for
Iowa because McCaffrey might not make it to the end
of the year. He's done things nobody's done, but he's
done him at the Division two level. But he has
(37:59):
followed it up this year by going what is he
twenty five and three or twenty five and four. They
lost the other day at Drake. Going to win the
Missouri Valley in his first year though, But that's a
big step up in two years from Division two to
Drake to IU and recruiting a whole different level of player.
And is I think I saw and you would notice
(38:20):
better than me on Ken Palm. Then in terms of
style of play, it's one of the slowest tempos in
the country, isn't that correct? Yes, that is a very
deliberate basketball style, which you know it's okay, a lot
of people aren't going to like that, but be a
very fundamentally sound team. I don't know. And that's about
his personality to know how he would handle you had
(38:44):
a part of the job Buyington I think is not
really worth discussing. He's only been at Vanderbilt one year.
I hadn't done that much there. Just because he coached
at James Madison with Signetti, that's no reason to hire him.
Grant mccastlan as a EXAs Sky, I don't really think
he's going to come in Will Wade. Is that a
guy I think I you will touch because I know
(39:07):
people say, well, those rules that he broke out rules anymore,
But he did. They were rules when he broke them,
and it shows a lack of ethics and character. In
my opinion, Rick Patino's not going to come. He loves
New York City, He's seventy two years old. And Chris
Beard that's the most heart The most difficult one to
(39:29):
evaluate is just as a basketball coach, he'd probably be
higher on the list, But the incident with his former
of fance, what that cost him the job at Texas,
as well as other things that coaches say in terms
of his personality, makes me doubt that he would be
(39:49):
a good fit with Scott Dolson and probably not somebody
that a dan It would want to take a chance on.
Who am I overlooking? I mean, that's pretty much the
list as far as I know.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
That's I think that's what makes us so intriguing is
there's a there's at least some possibility that there's a
name out there that we don't know about that's not
in any.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Well.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
I'm saying a sitting college coach, okay, looking to move again.
I don't want to speculate. I'm just saying, these are
all the names that everyone's throwing out, but who knows.
I mean, you mentioned the Big Twelve as a potential
league where coaches could be looking as to get out.
So I would look down, up and down that list
and talked about Scott Drew a little bit. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
The course, the course he had him on at the
top of one of his list, and he mentioned his good.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
He's a really good coach. The reason I've always discounted
osl Berger is because I think he's from somewhere in
that area, and his wife's a former Iowa State basketball star,
and that seems like a pretty strong draw to stay
where you're at. But you could argue in terms of,
you know, when you're making a list of the top
(41:08):
jobs in the Big twelve, Iowa State is at one
of them. It's Kansas, right, it's Arizona, it's I don't know,
I don't Some of these little jobs are better than
Iowa State. Might be the fourth or fifth best job.
(41:29):
Houston's probably a better job. Calvin Sampson certainly made it
that way. BYU might be a better job. With all
the nil I don't know Atzelberger enough whether he would
come or not.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Do you think there's a chance of anybody that's outside
coaching like a Billy Donovan or a Tony Bennett gets
a look or make a run. Any of those guys are.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Billy Donovan's been gone now from college basketball since what
twenty fifteen or sixteen? You know, I think he is
older bowl to getting fired by the Bulls because he's
really kind of settled into mediocrity at this point. But
he was really sour on basketball recruiting when he left
Florida to go to the NBA, So I don't know
(42:14):
if his view has changed on that. And who was
the other one you mentioned, Tony Bennett? No, I don't
Tony Bennett is sour on nil. Just because you're going
to come to Indiana and have more anil than you
would have at Virginia wouldn't be something that I think
(42:35):
would appeal to him. And whether you believe it or not,
a lot of people say that he's got some bill,
some left over hard feelings between him and his father
over the way his sister was the smiss since the
IU women's basketball coach twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, he was another
one that was on the course's list. So that's why
I kind of gave me a little bit of a
pause to look at him because, in fairness to Mike,
he last year I remember when the Kentucky job opened,
and I always bring this up when I have him
on the show. Everyone threw out all these names for Kentucky,
and his first list of Kentucky candidates, he had Mark
(43:13):
Pope at the top, which is where they ended up.
So he nailed that one. Not saying he's gonna nail
this one, but I do believe he has Olsselberger at
the top of his number one. He does, Yeah, he
did on his initial It's interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
I mean if I'm just looking here at the list
of teams and just thrown out names, I mean, Dyer's
not coming, girls too old, and I don't think he did.
Personality wise a good fit with Dolson the huge ego,
Calvin Sampson's not coming, Todd Golden has background issues, Rick
Barnes who old natoates his buyouts too big. I mean
(43:50):
with Greg guard lead and come to Indiana. There's a
wild card. How's that one? He's a good coach. Mcastle
and I don't see coming. The opsil Berger fuse never left,
kenzach A, Tommy Lloyd. I don't know. There's a name
I've heard at times. Dalen Clavio's made a big push
for Matt Painter. No, it was shut tongue in cheek,
but I thought it was hilarious. Ten million see what
(44:12):
he says, right, Yeah, Dennis Kate, I mean, there's one
for you, but he's got it rolling out Missouri. Kevin
Willard is a Patino, a coaching tree guy who's done
a good job at Maryland. But I don't see him coming.
Izzo's not leaving Patino, no hope, No Buzz Williams, Dusty May,
(44:34):
Randy Bennett's always been on the West coast, Bread Underwood,
who knows he might come. You know, now we're just
getting into throwing names out of board. And Darien Devrieze
at West Virginia. I don't know. If I had to guess,
I mean, I'm gonna say it's gonna come down to
Dusty May. Let's see. I don't know. I really have
(45:01):
a hard time why they should have done this last year.
They had it. It was set up last year to
hire Dusty May, and it was over going to be
Dusty May. I guess Scott Drew or Greg McDermott or.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Maybe I mean, but the buyout with cronin is maybe
too high. Yeah, maybe UCLA has got a lot of
from what I understand, a lot of financial issues in
the athletic apartment. I'm not sure they're just gonna let mccronin.
I think it's biots over ten million. I mean, you
hear about biots being paid like that in college football.
I'm not sure what the most with the biggest buyout
(45:38):
has been paid. I know the biots are paid all
the time for guys to get fired, but I can't
recall many schools going to pay another school ten million
to hire a basketball coach, especially when you know, I
use you know, an outsail anounce some some layoffs in
the athletic department earlier this year and this new system
coming in. I just think you know that's you mentioned
(45:58):
nan Oates having a high biot. I mean, I think
over ten million, that's that's a lot of money to
pay somebody to come on top of it.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, I mean in Natoes, like when Kentucky was opened,
didn't really show any interests. So that's I went through
this at two different jobs last year which are in
the same caliber of Indiana, which you're Kentucky and Louisville
and well, Louisville went after they talked to Scott Drew's
(46:27):
agent and never went anywhere. They went after Dusty May.
I think they thought they had a chance to get in.
Then Michigan got involved and he picked Michigan. And then
the third pick was pet Kelsey. Kentucky went after got Drew,
he gave him a look. He turned to Early right.
(46:48):
It went after Early second in terms of just making
him an offer or asking him to come. Look, he
wasn't interested. Uh, And they went after Mark Pope third.
So that's the way this thing goes. And it's you know,
it's not a it's not any I think too, it's
(47:10):
not it's not gonna happen quickly. So no, no think said, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
It's gonna be along three or four weeks for the
fan base, because the rumors are just anytime there's no
concrete information, the next step is to speculate and.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
Or make it up, just like Adam Zegoria making up
the thing about Kurt Signetti was pushing for Mark Byington
to be a coach. I mean, how would Adam Segoria
have any connection Kurt Signetti that he would know that
I mean, that's garbage.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Well the best thing is Signetti actually responded to it
on Twitter, which was which made it even better. So
that was a fun, uh fun wrinkle to that story.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
But Dick Fatel throwing out Tony Bennett and you know,
I know it sounds good, but it's not real. So
I don't know. I mean, it's to me, it's Dusty
May's at the top until Dusty Nay says I'm not
coming to Indiana. He should be on the top. And
(48:23):
the thing about mccrona and I will say, is after
they lost the Minnesota the other night, once again he
criticized his players and the fans and the postgame press conference,
And if you wanted to, you can interpret that as
the words of a coach trying to create I don't know,
(48:50):
unhappiness with your administrators. I mean, the administrators can't be
happy when a coach is ripping the fans. And if
you look at UCLA, I looked it up on the
end a well stat board coming into this week before
the Minnesota game. You know what level of capacity they
were playing at in poly Pavilion this year forty seven percent.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
So it's like some of their attendants before they came
to Bloomington. I'm like, this is gonna have to be
one of the biggest crowds they've played in front of
the whole season. Some of these home games they're getting
like six thousand people at their game like that or this.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
That or the scene is in there filling forty seven
percent of poly Pavilion, which is only I think a
twelve or thirteen thousand seed arena. So it's not like
UCLA fans or Gaga about mc cronin. So what does
that mean? I mean, I guess that would mean that
maybe UCLA would say we can cut a deal on
(49:48):
this buyout. Okay, poly Pavilion is thirteen thousand, eight hundered
and that's all the speculation on my part. But he's
ripped his players two or three times U and then
Jay Billis ripped him, and then he kind of sarcastically
responded to Jaybillis. So the two parts about that that
are interesting is One, it's not the kind of stuff
(50:11):
a coach continuously says if he's really happy where he's at.
And two, is makes me wonder how I'm not sure
how those kind of comments would go over at IU
because his personality is not going to change when it
comes to IU. If he came die you.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Yeah for sure. Well, thanks for making okay time to
come on. Really appreciate it. Check out You're welcome. Check
out my dad's work over at WDRB dot com, follow
him on x at at Rick Bosich. And as for
podcast on the Brink, we will be back next week
(50:48):
with another episode, not sure on which day yet. If
you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and
a review over on Apple Podcasts, leave us a five
star rating over on Spotify. Those help us to continue
to grow the reach of the show. Maybe somebody that
hasn't listened to us before finds this as a result
of your review of your rating. Appreciate it, and we'll
be back soon with another episode of Podcasts on the Brain.
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