Dan Dakich has something to say about IU’s Miller
Dan Dakich has something to say about IU basketball and Archie Miller
Better days are ahead for Indiana basketball and coach Archie Miller.
At least Dan Dakich hopes so. Dakich, who was in town to speak at Andrean’s boys basketball banquet, never holds back.
The Hoosiers, he said, are going to improve without Romeo Langford.
A 1985 Indiana graduate who’s a college basketball color analyst for ESPN, Dakich saw plenty of IU last season.
It wasn’t pretty.
Langford, a 6-foot-6 freshman who averaged a team-leading 16.5 points, has declared for the NBA draft. Langford had a Damon Bailey aura when he arrived as the sixth best player in the country, according to Rivals.com.
Turned out the high expectations worked against everyone involved.
“I hate to say this, but sometimes guys are just good enough to get you fired,” Dakich said. “Langford is the kind of kid where the athletic director will say, ‘You need to win every game with him.’
“I thought he was a terrible defender half the year. He was decent in the second half of the year. He did a lot of standing around on offense. That’s on the coaches. The whole thing just didn’t fit well.”
Dakich can’t explain it, but he feels Indiana will improve without Langford, who sat out the team’s NIT run. Witchita State beat IU in the third round of the tourney.
“I think they’ll be better next year,” he said. “I just think the whole thing with Romeo and the team didn’t work out. I can’t explain why. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s weird. I think they played like a looser, freer team without him.”
IU created expectations for a monster season when the Hoosiers won 12 of their first 14 games. That included victories over Louisville and Marquette.
Inexplicably, the Hoosiers lost 12 of their next 13 games in the Big Ten after winning the opener against Illinois.
IU (19-16, 8-12) notched two wins in the Big Ten against Michigan State, a team that made the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament. IU finished in eighth place in conference.
Dakich dismissed multiple injuries as an issue. The only key player who missed time was freshman point guard Rob Phinisee.
“I don’t think they lost 12 of 13 because of injuries,” Dakich said. “Juwan Morgan wasn’t out. Romeo wasn’t out. They just didn’t play well. That falls on the coaching staff and players.”
Dakich, who was the interim IU coach in 2008 after Kelvin Sampson was fired during the season, blamed the collapse on an unknown “internal” issue.
“It’s clear something happened,” he said. “You don’t go from 12-2 to all of a sudden you can’t win a game. You play against Nebraska and Michigan and you look totally disinterested.”
Offensively, the Hoosiers were a wreck, making just 31.2% of their 3-pointers. The breakeven standard for 3-point percentage is 33. A number in the high 30s is good. Langford made just 27.2% of his threes.
Dakich called IU’s offense a “disaster.”
“They didn’t do anything innovative,” he said. “They had a post man, but they were spotty at best at getting him the ball.”
IU has missed the NCAA Tournament three straight times, making its rabid fan base apoplectic. Miller is 35-31 in two seasons.
Despite the shaky start, Dakich doesn’t see a scenario where IU pulls the plug on Miller next season aside from some unforeseeable disaster.
He said the Hoosiers can’t “be much worse than they were the second half of the season.”
“At some point, Indiana has to win and win big to keep the interest up,” he said. “They’ve got too much invested in (Miller). They’ll give him a full year and probably a couple more years.”