1…I was thinking you might have music this morning, maybe something about “burning bridges”?

2…IU ranked in the 6-8 spot sounds good. Allows them to play basketball w/o the #1 target. Hit #1 some time around mid-March.

3…Please please please play Hanner & Jurking a lot during the next 3 games. Please. And Elston if ready.

4…Do like the Who-What-When-Where thing you write.

Back to the Butler game….

This will probably surprise most on here, but I’m going to give props to Bobby for 2 of his unorthodox motivating techniques.

One time after the team played very poorly, Bob was in the bathroom doing # 2 (trying to keep this family-friendly) and he came out of the stall with “used” toilet paper and told the team, “You’re playing like this.”

Another time, he taped tampons to all the lockers.

I thought both were great.

If there is one thing athletes don’t like, it’s when you challenge their manhood.

Many players under Knight said, “Sometimes I hated the guy so much, when I went out there to play, I just wanted to kick butt to say SCREW YOU Knight.”

Now, I don’t want Crean to be a complete jerk. But, one thing I really hated after the game was how he kept saying, “I was happy with our energy.”

Baloney.

Zeller got pushed around like a little girl and had zero fouls. You can not praise him for his “energy.”

Now, you may want to say, “He can say one thing in public and one in private so he isn’t throwing people under the bus to the media” and I’ll listen to that.

But he still doesn’t need to say, “They had great energy.”

That especially irks me after he said it was a “road game atmosphere.”

Hogwash.

Question their manhood.

Make them prove to him they have nads of steal instead of prancing around for the cameras.

Challenge them instead of slobbering all over them over with how much “energy” they have.

Two things give me hope right now:

1) Crean said the rebounding drills were going to be brutal.

2) Olidipo said “We have to stay together.” I think he knows they were awful and the key is to work thru it while holding the others accountable while at the same time having each others’ back and not pushing each other or going OFF like Will did.

Great post Laffy… Agree with all your points.

Yes, some excellent points.

We always hear how hard these guys work, but what I watched Saturday looked like a physically soft team. On top of that, you read that SI article in which the Butler players are talking about playing physical and “punching the other team in the mouth” (the other team meaning IU) at the beginning of the game, etc, and you realize, IU really never responded to Butler’s physicality. Maybe we could not afford to respond with the physical play Saturday with three big men not quite ready, but that needs to change immediately. The next time somebody “body-checks” Cody on the way to the rim and a foul is not called, Cody needs to respond so that the message is sent and received. The message goes out to both the opposing player and the refs. It’s saying, “O.K. if that’s not being called a foul, then I’ll respond in kind.”

After the game, my wife, who played High School basketball, made a great comment. She said, “Cody needs to spend some time practicing with Kent Benson.” EXACTLY!

Just saw this post. It is good (leaving out the more ‘creative’ anecdote even better). Zellers would have come off the bench at the next game coached by Knight, been sent in for three minutes in the third quarter and pulled out again. The more I think about it, the more I think he was intimidated out of the Butler game.

Intimidated.

They- Butler- had a statement to make and they made it.

I also agree with a comment I read somewhere(perhaps in the link you provided), that Coach Stephens wanted Hulls defending the last play. That’s just good coaching.