Michigan State vs. Indiana: Breaking Down Tuesday's Clash

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00:00Spartans at home tonight in East Lansing, hosting Indiana. Let's start with the game itself.

00:06How can, if at all possible, John, the Hoosiers keep this game competitive?

00:11Well, for Indiana to have success, I think the one thing we need to see is a consistent flow

00:17on offense and, you know, consistent floor spacing, which is going to coincide, obviously,

00:21with outside shooting. I think when you look at Indiana, when it played probably its best

00:25basketball in the Big Ten this season, it was because it went and downshifted into a smaller

00:31lineup that had Mackenzie McBocko at power forward. But look, I want to take a minute here,

00:35Ben, and I just want to do a little bit, you know, of a deep dive and break out the fine-toothed

00:40comb when we look at the history of Indiana basketball. Indiana has been to the second

00:45weekend of the NCAA tournament four times since 1994. Indiana, if you look at the coaches that

00:52have been there since Bob Knight, nothing has ever been good enough. Mike Davis went to four

00:57NCAA tournaments in six years. He was asked to go. That included a trip to the national title

01:03game in 2002. Kelvin Sampson was removed from his post after a couple years after, obviously,

01:08he broke NCAA rules, which obviously, in typical NCAA fashion, shortly thereafter were ruled legal.

01:14Then Tom Crean, three Sweet Sixteens, two outright Big Ten regular season titles,

01:19and in his last year, Indiana was 13-6 with wins over Kansas and Carolina when OGN and OB tore his

01:26ACL. There was an appetite for change. They went and they hired Archie Miller, who was the hot

01:31young coach on the rise. He didn't go to the NCAA tournament. So they wanted somebody who could make

01:36the NCAA tournament and bring back, obviously, the gap that existed between Indiana and its fan base.

01:42Mike Woodson then followed somebody who didn't go to the NCAA tournament, won a game the first

01:47year in the first four against Wyoming, won a game in his second year against Penn State,

01:52and now, all of a sudden, he misses last year. And this year, this is a team, again, that's still

01:57probably five, six, seven spots away from Dayton and the school ops to force him out in mid-February.

02:03So my question is this. Why, all of a sudden, if those are the facts, is Indiana such a great

02:10basketball job? And why would somebody who is currently in a great situation of power conference

02:16want to leave that to go to the fishbowl? And as I say, and I've said it before,

02:20I'll say it again, just four trips to the NCAA tournament second weekend since 1994.