Yes, Robinson.. I also think wit the two of them to prepare for it was a little tougher. It just seems like even when Sudfeld has had time to throw, and admittedly he was pressured a lot by Maryland, he was off target often.. Several times, the receiver was in the open, behind the defense, and was a sure touchdown, if he had connected, but missed on all of those. Seems like he was hitting those a lot more frequently last year.

IMHO, the other kid (Robinson?) offered the element of surprise; and that spread the field some. That “might/could run” opened up passing lanes. Thus, even though his arm was/is weaker, he was quite successful.
They know Sudfeld is going to drop back and pass. Actually easier to plan for defensively.
You do have different receivers this year as well.

I know, from some comment you posted, you questioned that and I thought you were wrong. I thought Sudfeld was the guy. But why is it that he really isn’t nearly as accurate as he’s been in previous years? And why is the offense struggling so much? They seemingly scored so easily last year… in most games anyway.

Ok, I didn’t really mean to get a hanging party going, so let me try to explain my post. You weren’t overtly “Crean Bashing”, but the covert (subliminal) msg came thru .. wether you intended it to or not. You could have stopped your post after the ” competive every year” portion, everything after that sounded like an attack, but only in context of all your little zingers to Creans abilities. I absolutely have no problem with you or your zingers, just get tired of them sometimes. Just trying to be positive which means I shoulda kept quiet in the first place … LOL. On a side note .. this is really tough to do on a phone!!!

He called you the king. That’s high praise.

I liked your comments which focused on team discipline being a major issue last year. I really don’t hate the Head Ball Coach, but neither do I think he has the requisite skills & abilities to put IU back among college basketball’s elite teams. (He brings back memories of DePauls’ Ray Meyer in so many ways, but that’s another story.)
Obviously a lot of repairs were made during the off-season w/respect to the roster. I hope the coaching area was also tuned up over the summer. It won’t take long to see what’s changed besides 8 new faces on the roster.

Overlooked Gallegos’s graduation–thanks for correcting me on that! Inherent/developed talents coupled with their experience and maturity levels lead me to feel that Petteway & Shields will get their numbers in most of the games they play. My #1 concern center upon how and w/whom will CTC try to contain Walter Pitchford and Leslee Smith so that neither of them has a career night when we open B1G play on Dec 31 in Lincoln.

We all are, OM. But that is what a discussion of “Who has the most talented roster” is about. We have a lot of talent this year. It may or may not translate to a good record, though. Potential doesn’t win games on its own, but it is nice to have a more talented roster this year.

I just don’t see it, Grampy. First, Gallegos has graduated, so we don’t have to worry about him destroying us again! But outside of Petteway, Shields and Pitchford, they aren’t that great either.

I alluded to this somewhere else, but they appeared to be a more cohesive team than we were last year, so they performed better. The entire argument about talent is really looking at what you have on paper. On paper, I think we have more talent than Neb does. That doesn’t mean we have a better team, though.

We are if you still want it. I love your poor taste, lol.

And I’d say given the context of Crean’s situation, he’s done a pretty good job. Not on Izzo’s level, let me be clear about that. But taking over MSU in the mid 90s is apples an oranges vs. what Crean dealt with in 2008. I’m just saying, we, as a fanbase, wouldn’t be thrilled with the 2014 recruits at MSU given how much immediate playing time is available and we certainly would feel last year’s Elite Eight appearance was a major let down.

What’s the opposite of someone who supports Crean?

I thought we were friends?

Please point out “CTC bashing” in my post. Be specific. Or are you making it up?

Not really Crean bashing in that post, Tom.

There you are. This is who I was talking about, Tom.

I hope they make a bowl, Ken. I really like this coach. Honestly, I was one of the few that questioned whether we kept the right quarterback. Hope I turn out to be wrong.

Let’s be honest for a sec: if Crean was only able to secure three 3-star recruits to replace Harris, Payne and Appling, you’d be livid. But he’s Izzo so he gets a pass.

Izzo had the same expectations last season as we did in 2012 – they won one extra game but were upset by a much lower seeded team. Regardless of whether UCONN won the championship, that team failed.

If you’re going to use this space to bash Crean, also understand that even the best coaches can’t win and recruit to meet your absurd expectations.

I think the word here is “discipline”. Nebraska is a far or at least last year was a far more disciplined team than us. I think we have them beat on talent and I think we had them beat on talent last year, but the question is “have we become more disciplined?” We were by far the least disciplined team in the conference last year. We lost somewhere between 4-7 games last year based purely on lack of discipline in my opinion. We would have at least won 21 games and made the big dance if discipline wasn’t an issue. And I have to be honest, I’m not a Crean hater by any means, I think he does alot of things well, but lack of discipline ultimately goes back to the coach. But, its a new year, and I think Crean has fixed some of that, so we’ll see