DISQUS

Taylor · 10 months ago

Because Knight was so successful at Texas Tech. Yep, I'm sure that he was the only reason we were any good.

Jordan · 10 months ago

This guy just wreaks of dooosh...

Hoosier_Hound · 10 months ago

Man, this guy is like the worst old-time alumnus that won't let go of Knight and move on with IU's future. Only he's not that old and not an alumnus, which makes him just despicable.

The first article just showed him to be ignorant of the facts and too lazy to find them out. But this second article shows him to be stupid by standing by his previous article in the face of all kinds of contradictory evidence.

jgongora86 · 10 months ago

Every program goes through this. There was a time that UNC DUke and UCla had long dead periods of unexciting basketball. I'm tired of people saying we will never be elite. Duke still doesn't have many as national championships as us, and unc finally matched us for titles four years ago, and we beat them in a national championship game. Nobody respects history. When IU becomes great and these same journalists join the bandwagon, I hope this blog calls them out for the frauds that they are.
Grrrr.

Hoosier_Hound · 10 months ago

North Carolina has only four championships. Kansas and Duke have three.

jgongora86 · 10 months ago

I live in North Carolina, and a lot of people hear claim five for an undefeated season in 1922 ( I believe). I agree with you ,because there really wasn't a tournament then, but over hear they live in dream land. I stop arguing because they come back to the argument that I might be jealous of them.

Alex · 10 months ago

Oh, Bloomington will still be a great basketball town, but what I mean by basketball backwater is that the Hoosiers will always take a back seat to Duke and North Carolina and UCLA and even Wake Forest and UConn.

This has nothing to do with the beauty of the campus and the community, which many of you have cited in emails. Um, what? San Jose State has a nice campus, too, but they're not beating Pitt.

Is he really bringing up Pittsburgh and Wake Forest? With their zero national championships and limited national relevance? A good season here and there doesn't make a program and a couple of down years doesn't bring you down from power house status. Drivel like this from Chandler is exactly why blogs get a bad name.

JohnM · 10 months ago

He's a clown. He meant exactly what we think he meant by "backwater," but he's not man enough to either take it back or stand by it. I wonder how Kansas has managed in a town remarkably similar to Bloomington?

Kelin Blab · 10 months ago

I will bet my house fans of Wake nor Pitt can name....10 players on either team between 1975-1995.....why because neither school has a rich basketball tradition...

Jeremy Hayes · 10 months ago

Knight was successful because he recruited well in Indiana. He had his teams play tough defense and tough man to man defense the best when done right. The motion offense worked when there was no shot clock and you could take all the time you wanted to get a good shot off. When the shot clock came that hurt Knight style of ball. Another thing that Knight did was make some enemies on the way. Knight for sure was a great coach as it shows. Crean though will bring back the tradition it will take some time.

T from Chi · 10 months ago

Why are we even acknowledging this guy? This is the problem with blogs.
One point of clarification, If he is Sooo Indiana Basketball, he would know that Joe Hillman was not a local boy. He hails from Califonia..the dope

dan · 10 months ago

which is why Durham and Chapel Hill are booming! Winston Salem is the place to be! UCLA is winning championships and can actually win a basketball game in any time zone other than PST...

this dude has no idea about college basketball!

If Crean isn't a good coach, Marquette should never have gone to the final 4! Isn't Crean responsible for helping Assemble, put togeather, and coach the Flintstones who went to 3 Final Fours in a row?!?! Doesn't Crean have a great recruiting class coming in next year?!?!?

How many championships does UNC have? How about Duke?!?! How about Wake Forrest? Outside of John Wooden, has a coach kept UCLA a nationally dominant team? one that wins championships? If this guy has been watching college basketball for the past 20 years, I bet he thinks that K.Sampson is a good coach...

he has no idea what he's writing about...

MillaRed · 10 months ago

Fact is you either back the Hoosiers or you don't. This Bobby Knight fan club vs. the world needs to GO AWAY.

Why is it impossible for some people to support the Knight years AND the future?

We are not the Bobby Knight or Tom Crean Hoosiers. We are the Indiana Hoosiers and it doesn't look like that will change over the next 500 years.

This argument is downright oooooooooooold........

generalfan89 · 10 months ago

What this guy is sayin is that the recruits that we will get in the future are going to be higher quailty than we have had in the past with Coach Knight. The reason is because Coach Knight had a system and he recruited by his system not by national rank or popularity. That is what he is saying when the Indiana Basketball as we know it is gone. I totally disagree that we will not be an elite team in the future. Coach Crean is turning this program in the right direction with his recruiting skills, which are different than that of Coach Knight.

Bryan · 10 months ago

I guess what really confuses me out of this whole ordeal is the notion of "Indiana Basketball as you have known it." It's kind of confusing. Is that in reference to the kinds of players recruited? The atmosphere? The university? A lot of ambiguity in there. Or is he simply trying to say that Indiana Basketball won't be the same because Bob Knight isn't here? It's confusing, Rick. Seriously.

Has any basketball program been able to sustain their success over a long period of time by recruiting the same players and running the same offense? That's an honest question because the game has evolved so much that I really cannot think of a single program that has had national success and stuck to a mold that seemed to transcend said evolution and remained successful over time.

I'm going to start writing my own college basketball blog full of spotty research and far-reaching assumptions.

IndianaJoe · 10 months ago

I don't know if he realizes, but the whole atmosphere around college basketball has changed not just Indiana. Top tiered recruits don't go to universities now for tradition they go for the coach mostly and to get a shot at the nba.

dabig · 10 months ago

Chandler's thinking is typical "flavor of the month" stuff--IU is down this season, so the glory days are gone. Fashionable, but pretty unimaginative. This argument would have looked silly a year ago, and it will look silly a year from now.
But, his own logic is faulty--IU is a "backwater" meaning, I guess, that it's hard to recruit nationally. But he acknowledges that Knight mainly recruited regionally. I won't go into what IU would look like this year if only a few of Indiana's blue chippers had been landed.

BobbyBeingManny · 10 months ago

This guy's a joke, Hoosier Report has a better take down with all of his factual inaccuracies...

http://hoosierreport.blogspot.com/2009/02/mike-...

Not Jason Shaw · 10 months ago

Ah, so Mr. Chandler is a Looper? Gojko has a new favorite blogger.

Wisco · 10 months ago

I'd never heard of this blog before a couple days ago. While his 2nd post makes it somewhat better, he's still way off on some things. The bulk of the rosters were JC players? As I recall, he didnt even take one the first 15 years or so.

I can agree that things will never be the same. Knight, the 80s, the less aggressive media, channel 4, short shorts, etc. The world itself won't be the same. That said, we'll win again. We may never get to hang another banner, but there's no reason to say we won't. I'd say we're in a better position than most given the dedication of the institution to go out and get Crean and spend a lot of money, building a new facility, having blue chips here next year, and selling out some games for the worst team in school history. It's built for success. In 30 years, we might be talking about how no one can ever replace Tom Crean. Who knows?

Ultimately, this is probably about what to expect when getting hoops comments from a California guy. Not that I don't loooove Cali. But, c'mon. And one of the comments, from some other troll with his own blog appears to claim Dakich coached all season last year.

tberry · 10 months ago

I think he uses the term "Backwater" to signify that IU is in a town that still holds a lot of traditional values where the thugs, with "bling" but can play basketball well, have no venue for carousing and getting into trouble with the law and the community.

If that is the case then, bring on the backwater and we will kick their collective *** the right way.

hollyhoosier · 10 months ago

"...and local kids (Bailey, Joe Hillman, Alford)..."

What an idiot. Joe Hillman was from California....not what I'd call LOCAL to Bloomington, or Indiana, or even the Midwest.

This guy is ridiculous...if he's really been watching "for more than 20 years" you'd think he'd know a thing or two more than he does.