Sheila and Daisy

I just fixed a spot for the girls' food and water dishes. How's that for ready? GKK

Where are you?

Are you working today, Terry? How are you feeling?

Carolyn

Who is this C ro and how did she get on our blog? I mean first of all, I thought we needed a password to read and publish and second of all, how did she choose our blog? There must be millions of blogs out there about IU. Granny

Bronchitis

How are those poor babies today? Did Tyler's fever subside? Whoever sent his child to school with strep and/or bronchitis needs to be slapped silly. Tell me who did it and I'll be more than pleased to drive down and take care of it. Love, the Raging Grandma

Both the kids have bronchitis

And Tyler also probably has strep throat (the doctor said she thinks he has strep but didn't bother to do a throat culture because the bronchitis medicine works for strep too). Tyler had a 102.5 degree temperature last night when he went to bed.

Better now than 3 days from now though. Hopefully the antibiotics will work their magic quickly!

Quick thoughts on the game before trying to get some work done

( I think the final two weeks of the year should be a national holiday. *sigh* )

1. I thought Indiana played extremely well last night. We got open shot after open shot and we contested nearly every shot that Charlotte took. We played with effort, we played smart, we played with consistency, and we did it all on road. It was exactly the type of game I was hoping to see from the Hoosiers, but was worried that I wouldn't.

2. As someone who is occassionally perplexed by Coach Davis's substitution patterns, I thought he did a fantastic job last night of playing our lineup like a violin. It seemed like we had a different lineup out there every time down the floor, and yet it always seemed like we had the right mix of guys as well. I also thought DJ got just the right amount of minutes.

3. I liked that Charlotte tried to intimidate us verbally and physically and we didn't back down, and we also didn't let it get into our heads -- we continued to play our game.

4. Strickland and Monroe combined for 16 points (6-11 FG), 17 rebounds, 7 assists, and 3 turnovers.

5. I really like Jay Bilas. He's critical when he needs to be, compliments when it's appropriate, and isn't at all over the top. And he was right on the money about how Indiana needed to let go of last season's Charlotte loss a lot quicker than they did.

6. I think Rick Majerus is an incredible coach, but the dude is a (surprisingly) awful TV analyst. It's not that he's wrong, he just looks tired and uncomfortable all the time.

7. I loved the play in the first half when DJ missed a 10 footer and Marco was there for the weakside rebound and putback. I've been dreaming about seeing that for 6 months now.

8. If anyone actually kept stats on it, I bet Indiana is #1 in the country on percentage of 3-pters made off of an assist.

9. It was really nice to see Wilmont get some quality minutes and take advantage of them - he took 3 shots and every one of them was a good shot, plus I thought he played really good defense.

10. I'm going to the Butler game!

Recruiting by state

I decided to do a little research. I went back five years (not 10 as THEHOOSIER ordered, I hope y'all will forgive me) and as usual used the RSCI rankings. I decided to look at 3 groups of states.
1. States that are generally agreed to produce the most talent - California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Virginia
2. Indiana and the bordering states that make up our local recruiting stomping ground - Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan
3. Geek that I am, I also needed a control group that could be used as a comparison point. I decided to use states that are home to recruiting powerhouses that aren't considered great recruiting states - Kentucky, Kansas, Connecticut, Arizona

Then I simply counted the number of recruits from each state. Here's the results.

Top States
California 46
Texas 39
New York 34
Florida 25
Virginia 25

Regional States
Illinois 24
Michigan 24
Indiana 17
Ohio 11

Control States
Connecticut 6
Arizona 2
Kentucky 1
Kansas 0

As expected, California and Texas were the top two, which will come as no surprise to anyone who follows recruiting. New York, Florida, and Virginia all produced recruits in large numbers, again as expected.

Illinois and Michigan were basically on par with Florida and Virgina, and a bit behind New York. Indiana produced a healthy 17 recruits, with Ohio producing only 10 (which I suspect is a fairly low 5 year total for Ohio historically). Based on glancing at other states as I was going through the exercise, I'd guess Indiana is probably around 8th nationally in producing Top 100 recruits over the last five seasons -- besides the 7 states listed here, Georgia also produces a ton of recruits, but I didn't add them up. I didn't notice any other state that likely had more than 17.

The control states were predictably light in recruits - meaning UConn, UK, KU, and Univ of Arizona are grabbing a lot of recruits from other states.

So, let's add up the recruits from the 4 regional states - 76 Top 100 recuits over five seasons. That's a bunch of talent in our recruiting backyard. On the other hand, 17 Top 100 recruits in Indiana over five seasons is impressive, but it also suggests that Indiana should continue to invest time in out-of-state recruits.

But then I thought, "C'mon, Terry, you're a bigger geek than this! How can you totally out-geek yourself with this post?"

And then it came to me. Population! Here's the population of the states above, in millions, based on 2004 data. I also put their population rank in parantheses.

California 35.9 (1)
Texas 22.5 (2)
New York 19.2 (3)
Florida 17.4 (4)
Virginia 7.5 (12)
Illinois 12.7 (5)
Michigan 10.1 (8)
Indiana 6.2 (14)
Ohio 11.5 (7)
Connecticut 3.5 (29)
Arizona 5.7 (18)
Kentucky 4.1 (26)
Kansas 2.7 (33)

Now it's just a simple matter of asking - for the states listed, how many recruits do they produce per million people?

1. Virginia 3.33
2. Indiana 2.74
3. Michigan 2.38
4. Illinois 1.89
5. New York 1.77
6. Texas 1.73
7. Connecticut 1.71
8. Florida 1.44
9. California 1.28
10. Ohio 0.96
11. Arizona 0.35
12. Kentucky 0.24
13. Kansas 0.00

Okay, so this stat isn't really that meaningful- it's the raw number of recruits that matter, not percentage. But I still thought it was interesting. And it's worth noting that Virginia's numbers are really inflated due to the concentration of "basketball academies" in Virginia. It supports what we all already know - per capita, Hoosiers know how to play basketball. =)

Gold

Being a religious person, I naturally could tell right away that the picture you sent me was of an important ceremony for Tyler. I immediately sent back a congratulatory message for gaining a yellow belt. It looked yellow to me! Then, I read Terry's blog and found out that Tyler got a gold belt. Was he upset that I got it wrong?

I've been checking the weather forecasts on Weather underground. So far, Thursday looks like a good traveling day.

The cuteness championship

In one corner, we have Carson giggling around the house with Daisy, playing ball with a plastic golf ball. In the other corner we have Tyler, smiling and singing along to the "Tom and Jerry Kids" cartoon theme song.

I think this one's going into extra rounds.

The next three games are critical for the Hoosiers

And I don't just mean that we need to win them. Obviously road games against mid-majors are always a bit dangerous. And Butler has already played two B10 teams on the road - a 4 point loss at Michigan and a 10 point loss at Ohio State. While Indiana ought to win these games, they're not gimmes like playing Florida A&M in Assembly Hall.

But here's why I think these games are important - we need to answer the question of whether the Indiana State game was part of a pattern or an abberation. Both arguments make sense.

On the one hand, if you look over the last few years, it's easy to see how losing at ISU fits a pattern of Indiana losing games it shouldn't, particularly outside Assembly Hall. Last year it was losing at Missouri and at Northwestern (badly - don't get me started). The year before it was losing... well, all over the place. And of course the year before that we lost at Northwestern as well. The point is, it's been awhile since Indiana has consistently beaten average teams on the road. Looking at it this way, it's easy to think that Indiana is not going to make it through the next 3 games unscathed.

On the other hand, if you look at this team, this season, the Indiana State game is an aberration. Indiana has played 7 games so far, and played reasonably well (Eastern Michigan) to extremely well (Kentucky) in every game... except Indiana State. And frankly, I think we played better against Eastern Michigan than the score indicated - EMU played over their heads, IMO. Certainly, if we play the way we did against Kentucky, Duke, Florida A&M, Nicholls State, and Western Illinois, we'll be 8-2 heading into the B10.

The B10 is going to be a real grind this season. There are 8 quality teams in the B10, and IU plays 6 road games against them. The key to winning the B10 will be consistency of effort, particularly on the road. If Indiana is going to win the B10, we have to be able to beat teams like Charlotte and Ball State on the road (and Butler on a "neutral" court). If Indiana goes 3-0 over the next three games (while playing well), the ISU is the outlier and I'll feel pretty confident heading into the B10. If they don't, then ISU is a pattern, and I'll be doubtful that IU will be able run the guantlet of B10 road games well enough to snare the title.

Gold belt

Yesterday, Tyler earned his gold belt in karate! So, he's no longer a white belt. Interestingly, the toughest part of moving up for him was learning to tie his own belt. He was a natural in terms of learning the blocks and kicks and punches, but he had no interest in learning the precise way in which you're supposed to tie your belt. He also had to learn his first "kata". Basically, a kata is a series of moves done in a precise order. We should have Tyler does his kata for you over Christmas - it's pretty cool.

He can also count to ten in Japanese. Loudly.

Stats

First of all it is unwise and the antithesis of a corporal work of mercy to bully a senior citizen into responding to your blog. As your wife is fond of saying...you have too much time on your hands. You could be refinishing the cabinets in the condo that Karen is renovating, thus being able to thump your chest at some later date with the phrase "if it wasn't for my contribution that place would have never sold"! Oh well, I fear my advice is falling on deaf ears.

I noticed that the Big Ten had 56 recruits vs the other conferences. But when you totaled up each B10 schools portion of that number it only added up to 55...youir credibility is very suspect.

If you researched the same data for the past 50 years it may be that you would discover (in general) that the Eastern schools have always out recruited the midwest and Pac 10. It may simply be a population thing. It is also true that, for example, if Duke recruits 7 kids from the top 50...only 5 can play at once.

You have to admit that the bottom line is not the number of kids each conference recruited but the results obtained. The Pac 10 leads all conferences with 15 NCAA titles; the B10 and ACC are tied with10 titles each; the SEC has 7, etc. Don't retort that UCLA is responsible for most of the 15 titles because Duke and North Carolina have most of the ACC's.

The Florida Marlins with 2 World Series titles, the White Sox, Arizona Diamondbocks and Minnesota Twins have all been champs, while the huge bankroll Yankees have only had moderate success considering all factors.

Yadah, Yadah, Yadah.

Recruiting over the last five seasons

I have this perception that the B10 is getting its collective butts kicked on the recruiting front, particularly compared to the ACC, but also just in general. Being the geek that I am, I decided to go look at the data and see if it matched my intuition.

I used the RSCI rankings for the last five seasons. I looked at the recruits ranked from 1-20, 21-50, and 51-100, then added the totals up for each team. Then I added them up by conference. I used this year's conference affiliation, not the conference affiliation at the time of the recruitment, because that was just too damn hard.

You can see the results below. Basically, my perception was correct - the ACC is stomping the B10 on the recruiting front. Duke, UNC, GTech, NC St, and Maryland out-recruited the entire B10 by themselves. However, there were a couple surprises to me as well. I was surprised that the Big East and SEC scored so close to the ACC overall, I was surprised by the huge gap between the top 3 conferences and the Big Ten/ Pac 10, and I was surprised that the Big 12 fared so poorly. Especially since Kansas got more Top 100 recruits than any other team, so the rest of the Big 12 is really blowing chunks in recruiting. Note that the ACC pulled in more Top 50 recruits than the B12 got from the Top 100.

It's also pretty easy to see the direct correlation between recruiting success and program success. Clearly it's possible to be successful in a given season without being one of the powerhouse recruiters, but more interesting is that if you ARE one of the powerhouse recruiters, it's unlikely you'll fare poorly. Looking at the teams with 8 or more Top 100 recruits, Michigan really stands out in terms of lack of success.

Draw your own conclusions, but I think one thing is clear - the B10 needs to start recruiting better. A distant 4th doesn't cut it.

One other note. Of the 500 top 100 players over the last five seasons, about 35 didn't go choose to go to play college ball. Some went NBA, some prep school, some JUCO, and one decided to play football at Texas A&M. Of the 465 remaining players, the six major conferences got 88% of them.

Conference  1-20 21-50 51-100  Total
ACC         22   24    42      88
Big East    10   28    46      84
SEC         21   22    38      81
Pac Ten     12   16    27      55
Big Ten     11   14    30      55
Big 12      10   9     25      44

B10 School      1-20 21-50 51-100  Total
Michigan State  4    2     4       10
Michigan        2    3     4       9
Illinois        0    2     5       7
Indiana         2    1     4       7
Iowa            0    2     4       6
Ohio State      0    2     3       5
Wisconsin       1    2     2       5
Minnesota       2    0     2       4
Purdue          0    0     2        2

School          1-20 21-50 51-100  Total
NBA             27   1     2       30
Kansas          6    4     5       15
Duke            8    2     3       13
North Carolina  8    3     2       13
UCLA            4    4     5       13
Georgia Tech    1    3     8       12
Arizona         3    4     4       11
Connecticut     4    3     4       11
Florida         4    3     4       11
Louisville      2    4     5       11
Alabama         2    3     5       10
Michigan State  4    2     4       10
Syracuse        1    7     2       10
Memphis         2    3     4        9
Michigan        2    3     4        9
Missouri        1    4     4        9
NC State        2    2     5        9
Wake Forest     1    2     6        9
Florida St      1    6     1        8
Kentucky        4    3     1        8
Maryland        1    4     3        8
Miss State      0    3     5        8
Oklahoma        1    2     5        8
Texas           5    1     2        8
Villanova       1    4     3        8
California      2    2     3        7
DePaul          0    1     6        7
Illinois        0    2     5        7
Indiana         2    1     4        7
LSU             4    2     1        7
Notre Dame      0    3     4        7
Cincinnati      0    3     3        6
Georgia         0    2     4        6
Iowa            0    2     4        6
Marquette       0    2     4        6
Miami           0    0     6        6
Pittsburgh      0    1     5        6
Stanford        1    0     5        6
Washington      1    2     3        6
Arkansas        1    2     2        5
Charlotte       0    1     4        5
Iowa State      0    1     4        5
Ohio State      0    2     3        5
Ok State        2    0     3        5
Southern Cal    0    2     3        5
Virginia        0    2     3        5
Wisconsin       1    2     2        5
Minnesota       2    0     2        4
Seton Hall      1    0     3        4
Tennessee       0    0     4        4
Arizona St      0    0     3        3
Georgetown      0    0     3        3
Gonzaga         0    0     3        3
Oregon          1    1     1        3
Providence      0    0     3        3
UNLV            0    1     2        3
Xavier          0    0     3        3
Auburn          0    1     1        2
Boston College  0    0     2        2
Clemson         0    0     2        2
Kansas State    0    0     2        2
Purdue          0    0     2        2
South Carolina  0    0     2        2
Texas Tech      0    0     2        2
Vanderbilt      0    0     2        2
Baylor          0    0     3        1
BYU             0    0     1        1
Colorado        1    0     0        1
Florida Intl    0    0     1        1
Massachusetts   0    0     1        1
Nebraska        0    0     1        1
New Mexico      0    0     1        1
Rutgers         0    0     1        1
Texas A&M       0    0     1        1
Virginia Tech   0    0     1        1
West Virginia   1    0     0        1

A quick look around the Big Ten

Purdue, Northwestern, and Penn State all look really bad, so I'm not going to discuss them. Suffice to say that any game they win against the other 8 teams will constitute a big upset, even at home.

Seven of the other eight teams are ranked in the top 26 of the latest coaches poll (Michigan was the last team out of the Top 25). That's the rankings I use below.

#8 Illinois (10-0)

Best Wins: @ North Carolina (68-64), Wichita State (55-54)
Losses: None
Analysis: Illinois has played 8 home games against mostly suspect competition, along with two road games at UNC (a win that looks better as time goes on) and Oregon (the Purdue of the Pac10). They've had a couple single-digit home victories against Wichita State and Xavier. Dee Brown has struggled shooting and running the point, but seems to be improving over time. I think Illinois is obviously not the 8th best team in the nation, but they're probably good enough to be in the hunt for the B10 title... but not win it.



#12 Michigan State (7-2)

Best Wins: Arizona (74-71), Boston College (77-70)
Losses: Hawaii (84-62), Gonzaga (109-106)
Analysis: MSU probably has the best two wins of any conference team against Arizona and BC, but they also lost to Hawaii by 22. I tend to discount that game due to first-game-itis and cramps. The only other loss was to Gonzaga in a thriller. On the other hand, they also struggled to beat IPFW, Arkansas-Little Rock, and IPFW. Hard team to get a handle on. Their defense seems sub-par for MSU, but they've clearly got talent and some nice wins. I think they're still the team to beat in the B10, but they have plenty of flaws too.



#18 Indiana (5-2)

Best Wins: Kentucky (79-53)
Losses: Duke (75-67), @Indiana State (72-67)
Analysis: We all know about Indiana. Close loss to Duke. Lost to ISU. Thrashed Kentucky. DJ White out. Who knows?



#23 Iowa (7-3)

Best Wins: Kentucky (67-63), NC State (45-42)
Losses: Texas (68-59), Northern Iowa (67-63), Iowa State (72-60)
Analysis: As usual, Iowa seems to be getting worse as the season progresses. After a strong start, they've lost consecutive games to Northern Iowa and Iowa State. Jeff Horner is out temporarily, and Iowa will likely struggle without him. By rights, Iowa should contend for the B10 title, but given Alford's B10 coaching history, I doubt it'll happen.



#24 Wisconsin (7-1)

Best Wins: Old Dominion (84-81)
Losses: @Wake Forest (91-88)
Analysis: No particularly good wins for UW yet. In fact, their loss at Wake Forest might be the best positive indicator for the team. At this point, it's probably safe to say that Wisconsin is not going to crash and burn this season as some preseason mags seemed to think, but there also doesn't seem to be much indication that they'll seriously challenge for the B10 title either. I expect a 3rd-5th finish for the Badgers.



#25 Ohio State (4-0)

Best Wins: Virginia Tech (69-56)
Losses: None
Analysis: Four games?! That's it? Well, they haven't lost any games, but there's not much to go on. They won at St. Joe's (a down year for them) and beat Butler at home by 10. Too few games to gauge, but nothing so far to get overly excited about.



#26 Michigan (7-0)

Best Wins: @Notre Dame (71-67)
Losses: None
Analysis: Michigan has been fairly workmanlike so far (an unusual term for Michigan). it's hard for me to evaluate Michigan, because I dislike them so much, but to their credit they've avoided upsets so far... which is unusual for Michigan. Michigan looks improved this season, but they haven't done anything noteworthy either.



Minnesota (5-2)

Best Wins: @Arizona State (85-79), UNLV (72-67)
Losses: Maryland (83-66), Gardner-Webb (73-72)
Analysis: With Grier out for most of the season (he played against UNLV and scored 19 points a couple nights ago), it's hard to know how good Minnesota is. Losing to Gardner-Webb at home is embarrassing, obviously, but they're a different team with Grier. They don't look like a challenger for the B10 title, but I suspect they'll play plenty of team tough in the barn.



Based on results so far, it looks to me like Indiana and MSU are going to duke it out for the B10 title, with Illinois and Iowa making things interesting.

Sycamores

We've got some customers in town for usability sessions this week, so last night we took them out to dinner at a fancy steakhouse in downtown Raleigh, so I missed every second of the Indiana State game. Sounds like I picked the right game to miss. Nice to see Ben Allen playing well, but embarrassing to see us lose (AGAIN) to the Sycamores. ISU was picked around 8th in the MVC this season. Iowa lost to Northern Iowa, but Northern Iowa is the favorite to win the MVC and one of my preseason mags even picked them to make it to the Sweet Sixteen. Big difference.

I'm not going to be able to watch the Kentucky game live this weekend. I'm going to tape it and see who won first. Not because I'm nervous about the game, but because I simply can't bear to watch us lose to Kentucky again. If we win, I'll watch it. If we lose, I'll hit the "Erase" button on the remote.

IU vs Eastern Michigan

I don't know about your network, but we had to wait until the Purdue game had ended before viewing the IU game. I think the score was about 22-14 at that time. I bring this up because I was wondering throughout the game about Earl Calloway (why he wasn't playing). The next days box score had him for 7 minutes...I must have missed all seven! Maybe Coach K wasn't stretching the truth when he suggested that Duke was intent on stopping the 3 point shot and allowing Marco to work one on one inside. He certainly looked more than human against Eastern because of the double team. My daydreaming during the off season was that if Marco was "as good as" D.J. White I would be quite satisfied, especially since I think White is first team all Big Ten! That may be the case. Ben Allen was quite impressive, but let's see what happens next time he plays. The opposition will have seen the film on him and adjust. In any case, he looks quite agile for a big man and isn't afraid to shoot.

Thoughts on the Duke game

1. Indiana is a good enough team to beat Duke at home in front of a crazy crowd like that, even without DJ, and I'm disappointed that we didn't do it. Duke is a really good team, and Reddick is amazing, but Indiana and Duke are close enough that the home court advantage should have made the difference. That's encouraging (I think we're good) and disappointing (we lost) at the same time.

2. Some of Killingsworth's seven turnovers were caused by bad passes from guards - at least 3 of them, by my count. He was amazing. And I liked that we took what the defense was giving us. Krzyzewski said he felt that could survive with Marco hitting two-pointers, but not with everyone else hitting 3-pointers, and he was right... but just barely. Our offensive efficiency was 1.09 last night. Lower than the ridiculous numbers we've put up the last three games, but perfectly respectable against a defense like Duke's. Duke's offensive efficiency was .98, by the way.

3. Let me be the first to admit that I was afraid that Davis would be immensely stupid this season and play a small lineup and sub Marco and DJ for each other.... and now I'm wondering whether that'd be such a bad idea. Sure, I want them on the floor together quite a bit, but I have to admit that I really like what Vaden brings to the 4 -- depending on the competition. He didn't have a great night last night (8 pts, 7 assists, 2 steals), but I'm impressed with how well he plays defense in the post. In terms of mismatches, I think we'll get the better end of that deal most nights. And clearly we don't want to play Marco more than 30 minutes a game.

4. Before the season, like everyone else I was worried about our PG play, just hoping that either Monroe or Calloway would be decent. Well, I couldn't be happier with how things have turned out - both are significantly better than decent, and will just get better as the year goes on. Calloway really impressed me last night. It was a huge game and he was up to the challenge. Yeah, he made a couple bad decisions, but overall I thought he was very solid, and his quickness caused Duke some problems. And that's not even mentioning how well Suhr has played (though last night was clearly not the type of game where Suhr is going to excel). We clearly are not going to need to fallback on Strickland again at PG, which is great because...

5. ...I'll admit it, I was one of those predicting that Strickland was going to end up riding the bench by the end of the season because Ratliff was going to steal his SG job and Monroe was going to steal his PG job. I'm eating crow on that one now. He didn't have a good game last night, but he still impressed me. He hit some big FTs, he didn't make mistakes, he didn't force shots (a welcome change of pace from our SG), and that's what we needed. Duke's defense was designed to prevent Strickland from getting open 3s, and they succeeded, and Strickland didn't try to shoot a bunch anyway. Basically, Strickland looked like a senior out there.

6. Sean Kline was overmatched last night and still a little hobbled, but IMO the Assembly Hall crowd should give him a standing ovation everytime he enters and exits a game this season to make up for last season's absolutely classless booing.

7. When DJ White returns and gets back in playing shape, I think Indiana is a Top 10 team. Based on what I've seen of MSU this season, I think Indiana has an excellent chance to win the B10 outright.

8. It annoys me when fans don't give the opposing team any credit for influencing the game. As if Indiana should be able to play however they want to play regardless of what the opponent is doing. Especially when the opponent happens to be #1 and coached by one of the best coaches ever. Duke is not going to let you play the way you want to play. You have to figure out how to take advantage of whatever it is they are doing defensively. Indiana did exactly that. It wasn't enough, admittedly, but it was the right thing to do and they did it. And Indiana did the same thing to Duke. Other than the early 16-2 stretch, Indiana played some very good defense, particularly in the second half when they did a GREAT job of disrupting Duke's offense.

9. Did anyone see MSU and GTech get 20 turnovers between them in the first 15 minutes of their game? I think they got called for about 8 walks. Even teams with excellent coaches get rattled in games like this.

10. Assembly Hall was beautiful last night.