As one of the highest profile programs in college basketball, the Indiana men’s basketball job opening is bound to generate headlines and takes from some of the most visible people who talk about the sport.
Take, for instance, Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports.
Rothstein, known for his Twitter persona, breaking news and overall presence in the college basketball media scene, weighed in on the Indiana job recently and said the following:
“Indiana has been to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament four times since 1994,” Rothstein said. “Indiana, if you look at the coaches that have been there since Bob Knight, nothing has ever been good enough. Mike Davis went to four NCAA Tournaments in six years. He was asked to go. And that included a trip to the national title game in 2002. Kelvin Sampson was removed from his post after a couple years after obviously he broke NCAA rules which obviously, in typical NCAA fashion, shortly after were ruled legal. Then, Tom Crean. Three Sweet Sixteens, two outright Big Ten regular season titles and in his last year Indiana was 13=6 with wins over Kansas and [North] Carolina when OG Anunoby tore his ACL. There was an appetite for change, they went and they hired Archie Miller, who was the hot young coach on the rise. He didn’t go to the NCAA Tournament, so they wanted somebody who could make the NCAA Tournament and bring back, obviously, the gap that existed between Indiana and its fanbase. Mike Woodson then followed somebody who didn’t go to the NCAA Tournament, won a game in the first year in the First Four against Wyoming, won a game in his second year against Kent State and now all of a sudden he misses last year and this year this is a team, again, that’s still probably five, six, seven spots away from Dayton and the school opts to force him out in mid-February.”
“So my question is this,” Rothstein said. “Why all of a sudden, if those are the facts, is Indiana such a great basketball job?”