Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Indiana Basketball – Where is the “fierceness” – the toughness, the will to win?

Being compared to Bob Knight might be unfair for Indiana coaches, but it’s part of the reality of coaching in Bloomington.

Indiana lost again Saturday, and I’m not sure what it meant to the Hoosiers.

Winning used to be the reason people competed, and you had to prove that winning was important in order to be recruited to a program like Indiana.  At some point, coaches decided different criteria trumped hunger for winning, so they recruited length, verticality, speed, and other measurables at the expense of attitude and grasp of the game.

Maybe times have changed and parents have grown to care more about stats and offers than winning.  Kids have become meal tickets, and ability for potential earnings trumps banners and trophies.  It’s not that parents and kids are averse to winning – it’s just not the primary measuring stick of a basketball career.

As a counterpoint to this new and highly evolved impersonal brand of sports, I played in a New Albany High School alumni soccer game last month.  I can still run and kick, so I thought it might be fun to compete at soccer again.  Five minutes into the game an opponent passed the ball to a 40-year-old midfielder and I had a clear path to a slide tackle, which is a fundamental part of soccer I used to be good at.  I sprinted toward the guy and began my slide with the intent of knocking the ball out of bounds and having him trip over me as I popped up.

Midway through the slide tackle, I realized that a guy in his 50s slide tackling another guy in his 40s during an exhibition match for charity was the height of competitive idiocy.  I collapsed, skinned my knee, and avoided the midfielder.  That was the first time I have ever pulled up during any sort of competition.  I felt soft.  We won the match 2-1, and I’m still pleased with the result, if not my decision to avoid contact.

That’s the way we used to roll.  Not anymore.  Watching basketball these days can be difficult because winning appears to be a secondary concern to players.  Last night, the Los Angeles Clippers – a team many believe has a legitimate chance to win the NBA Championship – trailed the Dallas Mavericks 77-27 at halftime.  I mean, what the hell is that?

As a guest on 1075 The Fan’s Dan Dakich Show today, legendary Indiana play-by-play voice Don Fischer lamented a lack of “fierceness” with the Hoosiers and other basketball teams, and it’s true.  Regardless of the level, when was the last time you saw a player for Indiana or anywhere else look like he would rather bleed than lose?  Sometimes, there are Purdue players who border on the psychotic.  At Butler, Matt Howard, Ronald Nored, and Zach Hahn were built a little bit differently too.  That’s why they went to two national championship games.

At Indiana, it has always seemed as though players showed up on campus having already won something.  I’m not saying they don’t work hard, but like Sean Connery explains in The Untouchables, winning is about the willingness to do more than your opponent, “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun.  He sends one of yours to the hospital – you send one of his to the morgue!”

This is year four of the Archie Miller era, and I’m still unsure of what his vision for IU’s culture is. It’s clear he prizes defense, but there have been few players under him who have developed into winning players.  Indiana has won a few more games in each of his three seasons, but the offense has not evolved into anything predictably efficient – unless the torrent of missed three-pointers by anyone not named Armaan Franklin counts as predictable.

It’s unfair to blame Miller for the entire 17 years of comparative futility that followed the 2002 Final Four team, but expecting a little progress is not greedy for fans who want nothing more than a little hope for brighter days.  For God’s sake, Tom Crean’s teams won two Big 10 championships!  Tom Crean!

But to ask Miller to answer for whatever this team becomes in year four is entirely reasonable.  So far, the results are lacking.

If Indiana is going to get better, it will be because of the team’s collective will more than its talent.  Will is always measured by the player with the least, and Indiana has a few candidates for that dubious honor.  Franklin and Trey Galloway appear to give a damn enough to know where they are supposed to be and get there.  The backcourt of junior Rob Phinisee and senior Aljami Durham have yet to show winning leadership.

This is a big year for Miller.  At some point, meaningful progress needs to be made or the illusion of progress will be impossible to see to a fanbase that understands what a will to win looks like.

Indianapolis Colts – Good is the enemy of great, and Philip Rivers is the king of good

Philip Rivers has helped the Colts level rise to good this season. If that is enough, keep him for another year.

Anyone who has worked with a competent manager for 15 minutes has heard the phrase “Good is the enemy of great.”  Anyone who has watched the Indianapolis Colts play football this season mutters it to himself in his sleep.

The Colts are good, and they have been mostly good for a long time.  Only three times in the last 19 seasons have the Colts posted a losing record, and all came with backup quarterbacks (Curtis Painter and Jacoby Brissett – 2X) serving as starters.  That means the Colts have had few opportunities to draft in the top 10, which leads to greatly diminished opportunities to land a championship level quarterback.

The 2020 Colts are good too – with a 10-5 record and hopes of getting to the playoffs.  They are quarterbacked by Philip Rivers, the king of good quarterbacks (ranked #19 in QBR).  Rivers is reliably good, showing up every game for the past 15 years and doing his dadgumdest to lead his team as far as they can go with a decided lack of mobility and arm that moves only slightly less awkwardly than his feet.

Rivers has never played in a Super Bowl, but is capable of leading a good team to a good result. The Colts need to play virtually mistake-free football to counter Rivers’ lack of dynamism.  Remove the first half fumble and second half defensive pass interference penalties against the Colts versus the Steelers yesterday, and the Colts win in a walk.  But Rivers did fumble, the flags did fly, and the Colts did lose.

The Colts are very likely to win the season finale against the Jacksonville Jaguars.  After all, the Jags are 1-14.  The single win came against the Colts in the season opener before the Jags came to understand the futility of their season.  Now, they know they are terrible and will likely play to form against a Colts team with a playoff berth on the line.

If the Colts win and the Titans lose at Houston, the Colts will be AFC South champions and the four seed.  If the Colts and Titans win, then the Browns, Dolphins or Ravens need to lose for the Colts to squeak in as a wild card.  That would be a good result for a good team with a good quarterback.

And then the Colts would likely bow out after a playoff game or two.  They are 3-4 this season against playoff teams, if the Bears qualify, and seven games is a meaningful sample.  Winning consecutive games against teams who finished with 11 of more wins would be strange for a team without any area of obvious superiority.  It’s not impossible, but January runs like the 1995 Colts put together happen seldom enough that we still remember that team fondly 25 years later.

If the Colts finish 11-5 and don’t make the playoffs, they would be the first of the previous 73 teams to start a season 10-4 or better and fail to make the postseason.  Not bad, but certainly not great. It would be good.

Again, there’s that word.

Because 11-5 is nothing to sneeze at, it’s likely that the entire coaching staff and Rivers will be welcomed back for another run at a good season.  No one wants the Colts to back slide to 5-11, so finding a way to incrementally improve will be the chosen path for a team with a bunch of good players led by a good quarterback.

This isn’t to call out the Colts as a pretender among contenders, and it’s certainly not to dog out Rivers for being a slightly diminished version of who he was at his best with the Chargers.  The Colts are in a position envied by every .500 or worse team in the NFL and Rivers is solidly in the middle of the pack among NFL starters, but if they want to achieve greatness, good is not the way to get there.  Terrible isn’t necessarily the way to get there either – the Jets are the Jets for a reason – but the Jags have sucked their way into Trevor Lawrence and that might make them very good very quickly.

It’s hard to be the Chiefs when the Chiefs are already doing a great job of that.  Finding the next great franchise quarterback is a job to which most of the 32 NFL teams devote significant effort.  The Colts are not alone there.  If it was easy, every team would have one and every team would finish 8-8.

The Colts are what they are, just as Rivers is who he is.  They and he are unlikely to ever be bad, but they are also unlikely to be great.  If the Colts are ever going to win another championship, they need to find the right answer at quarterback.

Indiana Basketball’s loss to Northwestern shows troubling backslide into confusion and passivity

This is Chase Audige, and it might have been a good idea to guard him over the last nine minutes of last night’s game. But he didn’t beat Indiana. The Hoosiers did that to themselves.

Even in Indiana’s previous two losses, at least they were fun to watch.  They were focused, selfless, connected defensively, and eager to shoot when open.

Last night, the Hoosiers were none of those things, and lost to the visiting Northwestern Wildcats 74-67.

No one expects Indiana win the Big 10 in Archie Miller’s fourth year.  They aren’t experienced or talented enough to prove themselves superior to a team like Iowa with its three talented seniors – one of which might wind up being the national player of the year.

But it’s not unreasonable to expect Indiana to show up for games ready to compete on both ends of the floor.  You would think that over the past three years they would have become bored with underperforming.

There is something about basketball that allows us to feel when it is being played the right way, and Indiana did not provide that feeling last night for long stretches.  That uneven effort harkened back to the previous three years, when it appeared the roster was filled with personal agenda-driven players coached by a guy who couldn’t reach them and wouldn’t sit them.

As the players recruited by the previous regime cycled out, it appeared IU embraced a collective personality of grit and determination.  Until last night’s uninspired performance.

The backcourt of Al Durham and Rob Phinisee passed up open looks all night long in an effort to force-feed their best player.  That’s a fine idea until opponents decide defensive attention is not required anywhere but on that best player.  That is exactly what Northwestern coach Chris Collins did from the opening tip.

Trayce Jackson-Davis still found a way to finish with a game high 22 points, but Durham and Phinisee combined for only six points on 1-9 shooting.  That makes Indiana way too easy to guard and forces TJD to work too hard for his points.

In transition after a Northwestern miss or live ball turnover, the Hoosiers were in rhythm, but when they needed to set their offense after the Wildcats made their shot and were well positioned, they had trouble creating a reasonable shot.  Indiana often moved the ball without attacking for the first 20 seconds of the shot clock before making a feeble or errant attempt to find an open man.

This harkened back to the Tom Crean era when almost any zone proved impossible for the Hoosiers to solve.  Through seven games this season, I thought Indiana had moved beyond being flummoxed by zones.  Apparently not.

The defensive work was no more impressive than the offensive sets.  Indiana allowed Northwestern to hit 56% from the field and a transfer from William & Mary named Chase Audige to score all 17 of his points during the last nine minutes of the game.  At some point during that offensive barrage it would have been nice to see the Hoosiers try to disrupt his rhythm just a little.

Even with the misery authored by Audige, Indiana still trailed by only five with 28 seconds left.  The Hoosiers looked lost trying to find an opening to attack, moved the ball aimlessly for 13 seconds, and then Durham dribbled the ball off his foot.  At some point, Miller might have called timeout to give the backcourt some direction, but he let the players try to sort it out.  Game over.

Now, one pathetic effort doesn’t negate the progress shown in the season’s first seven games, but if Miller doesn’t find a way to get the attention of his players to ensure consistent effort it will be time for a different conversation.

I’m choosing to exercise patience and look at this loss as an aberration – a lone evening of weakness among other games that showed a willingness to compete as a unit.

Indiana has another challenge Saturday at Illinois – a team the Hoosiers will not be able to just show up to beat.  The Illini are ranked for a reason with at least a couple of future pro’s that will make Northwestern’s pesky roster look puny and stiff.  Compete there, and all will be forgiven.  Fail to grind, shoot open shots, and defend with purpose, and the conversation will begin to shift toward the direction of the program.

Whatever that was last night – it can not be repeated.

Bad sports parents – 10 sure fire signs you might be one!

Will Farrell played a terrible sports parent in “Kicking and Screaming.” Don’t be like him!

These identifiers of crazy sports parenting are not meant to mock, but help those who might have a tough time with self-appraisal.  I’ve known great sports parents and terrible sports parents.  I’ve displayed some of the traits below, so there is no judging here.  All I want is for sports parents to evolve toward being a cause for kids to enjoy participating is sports rather than dread it.

Here is a very incomplete list of 10 traits that tend to identify a damaging sports parent:

10 – You buy gifts for the coach.  Buying favors on behalf of your kid is cheap and tawdry.  Saying “thank you” is plenty to show gratitude, and it is always appreciated.

9 – You don’t know the names of your child’s teammates.  The best part of youth, high school, and college sports is the lifelong friendship forged during the sacrifices made to compete at a high level.  Not having any idea who your child’s lifelong friends is a great sign you are way too focused upon the wrong things.

8 – You stand in the bleachers during the majority of the game.  If you are always standing, you are too invested in each individual moment of the game.  Relax.  If you need help relaxing, distract yourself with game related tasks.  I either videotaped games or kept a scorebook.  The point wasn’t to capture the games or stats for posterity, but to distract myself from getting too wound up.

7 – You bring a lawn chair into a gym.  There must be a reason you are uncomfortable sitting in the bleachers with others, or why would you go to the trouble to pack your own chair.  I’m not sure when this weird practice began, but I see it more and more.

6 – Your child cries in the car as you breakdown his or her performance on the drive home.  Dissecting your child performance is best done by a coach, who very likely knows more about the game than you do.  You love – coaches instruct.  Buy the kid ice cream and keep your thoughts about how to set a screen to yourself.

5 – Referees yell back at you.  If you are so relentlessly “helpful” with officials that they shout back, you are sharing too much criticism.  There will always be occasional whining about calls from fans and parents.  Refs and umpires understand that.  If you go beyond expected boundaries, refs may engage.  If they do, sit down and be quiet.

4 – You wear a jersey or shirt with your child’s name or likeness on it.  Worse, you may also have had your child’s national ranking printed on the shirt.  Don’t laugh.  I’ve seen it many times.  Advertising who your son or daughter is does nothing to enhance the kid’s enjoyment.  Focus on the kid – not your pride.

3 – You root for the failure of your son or daughter’s teammates.  Hoping for a kid to miss a shot, strikeout, miss a tackle, or (God forbid) suffer an injury is horrifyingly common among parents.  “(Insert kid’s name here) is only two ankle sprains away from starting” is a thought shared among parents far too often.

2 – You engage in any way with the coach about playing time.  How much run your son or daughter earns on the court, field, diamond, pitch, or rink is not your business, and it is not your fight.  It may pain you to watch your kid sit while others play, but it is just that adversity that fuels the work needed to improve so he or she can compete.  If you have a team coached by a parent, and favoritism is clearly an issue – pull the kid from the team.

1 – You are sitting alone through no choice of your own.  If you start the game sitting among other parents and end the game socially distanced from them, you are likely causing them discomfort through your behavior.  It helps if parents sit in pairs and trust one another to keep each other out of the weird space that is embarrassing to all – including the kids.

Jimmie Howell retires as Lapel’s basketball coach – parents need to back off before more good coaches pack a box

Jimmie Howell is no longer coaching basketball at Lapel High School, and that makes the game a little bit less special.

Every time a high school coach retires or simply quits, I wince.

I assume the cause has something to do with nattering parents, whose love of their children is matched only by their ignorance of the sport their kids play.  Coaches being forced to deal with this well-intentioned rabble is the chief cost of trying to help kids learn the two invaluable lessons that come from competing – how to overcome adversity and the joy of bonding to achieve a collective goal.  Both are crucial toward living as a productive adult, and sports are a great lever toward that result.

Parents, sadly, are unaware that adversity should be embraced rather than avoided.  Many pull strings, yelp, and cause a ruckus when their sons and daughters are exposed to it.  Coaches try to avoid the inevitable meetings about playing time by telling parents they are willing to discuss anything BUT playing time.

When I read that Lapel basketball coach Jimmie Howell chose to retire four games into the current season after 40 years of teaching his players life lessons through competing at Indiana’s game, my head fell into my hands and I muttered, “Not again.”

Then I read his quotes in the Anderson Herald-Bulletin about the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame member leaving, and there was no doubt the cause of his decision.  “Friday morning, some things occurred that, I just knew it was time.  I told my wife, ‘Tonight’s going to be my last ballgame.’ It just felt — it was time. It kind of happened the way people told me it would happen…When I was younger, my skin was quite a bit thicker than it is now.  As you get older, not only does our skin get physically thinner on us but emotionally as well. It’s just part of it. It’s part of the pressures you have to deal with on a daily basis.”

Oh boy.  Howell didn’t specifically identify parents as the reason he’s leaving a vocation that he loved through four decades, but what else could it be?  Who other than parents could wear out a coach “on a daily basis?”

As the parent of a former high school and college basketball player, I get it.  Nobody sees a son or daughter as parents do – and should.  Don’t coaches understand that son or daughter is the most important person in the world with a bouquet of gifts ready to be unleashed if the coach would just see the obvious?  That question is rhetorical, but the answer if you need one is “NO!”

The tragedy is that coaches who got into the business because of a love for their game and the lessons it can instill are being driven from it by parents who don’t understand that adversity is the magic bean for developing maturity.  Time on the bench is supposed to motivate a kid to practice harder, not parents to schedule a meeting.

And so another really good and caring coach is driven away, while parents likely try to get Howell’s replacement to see that one of the 10 all-time winningest coaches in Indiana High School Basketball history was a dolt for not seeing their son’s talent.  Yep, it seems the guy who led two teams to state championship was blind to the unique greatness of each and every individual on his current team.

Instead of reading a book in the stands like parents used to, they now work behind the scenes to litigate opportunities for their progeny.  Understanding that lessons learned are far more important than on-court/field accomplishment is beyond the capabilities of today’s mothers and fathers.  They want to manage their kids through a gentle and joyous adolescence, rather than prepare teen for the harsh realities of adulthood.

There are plenty of good parents out there, but the noisemakers are wrecking the experiences of coaches to the point that they are packing a box and leaving the bench for good.  High school basketball in Lapel was more special with Jimmie Howell in it.  Ironically, what was so good for a bunch of kids has ended because of the people who claim they want only the best for them.

It’s tragic that there are dozens of kids Howell won’t teach because of a few parents, but it’s a blessing for all of those he was able to impact – including his son J.R., who is a chip off the old block as Zionsville High School’s basketball coach.

If you are a sports parent and really want the best for your son or daughter, do your job and let coaches do theirs.  By the way, your job is to love your children.  The coach is there to help them dig a little deeper, try a little harder, and give a little bit more so the team can compete to its potential.