Obviously if you have already quit on the team, there is no need for discussion. I am interested in hearing ideas on ideas to fix this team. I've been taught not to criticize unless you can offer some constructive solution. It's easy to call for Painter's firing when you aren't the A.D. and actually has to hire someone to replace him (whom you are fairly certain to do a better job).

So, here's one observation: the full-court press against NW at the end seems to bring a little spark. Why not do more of those? Hey, at least are kinda forced to bring in some energy to press (which we didn't bring any pretty much for the first 38 mins of the game).

Obviously the counter-argument is, we have no bench! We are down to 10 scholarship players! However, I don't think that's necessarily a problem. Lawson, Sandi, and TC play so few minutes, as did Anthrop. They can certainly capable of putting in more minutes to help us cycle through the players once they get tired.

Moreover, we are a reasonably athletic group with Lawson and Hale while RJ is quick. Given how our half-court defense is letting IU and NW rain threes or wide-open layups, I'd rather take my chance in pressing them.

Of course this still doesn't help the underlying issue. Looking at how IU beat Michigan, two things stand out most to me. First, they really play like a team. Michigan clearly tried to attack whoever NBA prospect (according to one commenter) Hulls is guarding, and Hulls got beat so many times, and yet there are always help defense, from Zeller or Oladipo especially to help out at the right moment, and sometimes actually turned it into a Michigan turnover instead after Hulls got beat.

On the other end, Hulls rewarded them with his 3-pt shots. IU players seem very willing to make the extra passes, which result in a wide-open person taking a 3, which obviously helps your percentage. Help defense and extra pass all require communication among players, but as Dakich pointed out, our players aren't even slapping hands to each other or talking to each other after a miscommunication. So that's another area of focus to improve.

So if you still give a damn about Purdue basketball, and if you are sick enough of all the knee-jerk reaction that offers no real solution, I'd urge you to share your thoughts on possible solutions you can think of. I'd think coming from an engineering school, thinking about solutions is at least an exercise that is more fun than beating the "Painter can't recruit" dead horse.