I spoke it into being, I apologize. I have been joking that John Beilein will be Indiana's coach next year and uhhhhhhhh:

After stunning his players in a film session Wednesday with a verbal suggestion that they were no longer playing "like a bunch of thugs," Cleveland Cavaliers coach John Beilein later reached out to players individually to insist he instead meant to use the word "slugs." …

"I didn't realize that I had said the word 'thugs,' but my staff told me later I did and so I must have said it," Beilein told ESPN on Wednesday night. "I meant to say slugs, as in slow-moving. We weren't playing hard before, and now we were playing harder. I meant it as a compliment. That's what I was trying to say. I've already talked to eight of my players tonight, and they are telling me that they understand."

John Beilein is one of about four people worldwide who could claim he wanted to use the word "slug" in that context without getting laughed out of the room, but even leaving aside the… uh… fraught terminology he may or may not have meant to use his team hates him in ways that are probably unrecoverable.

This is why Beilein leaving for the NBA seemed insane even if he was losing second-round picks to the NBA at a rate that made him crazy. The power dynamic is reversed at the pro level so if you walk into the Cavs situation you're a dead man.

[After THE JUMP: Almost got Northwestern'd]

And also. The other half of the Indiana-Beilein equation barely avoided a home loss to Northwestern last night. If you have not seen Northwestern play this year I cannot emphasize enough how humiliating this would have been. Not only are the Wildcats abominable but their highest-usage starter is a guy named Pat Spencer who was the top pick in the pro lacrosse league's draft—seriously—and looks way too much like a Pitchfork staffer to be on a college basketball court.

Vampire Weekend's recent foray into bongos left this reviewer cold, wistful, and baffled, like a salmon transported to the vacuum of space and given one last look at home before dying. 4.8.

Anyway, the Crimson Quarry has seen the end of Archie Miller:

In Archie Miller’s tenure at Indiana, he’s yet to have a team finish in the TOP 300 in the nation in three-point field goal percentage or free throw percentage. His current team is 267th and 212th in those stats, respectively. You can explain this comment in one of two ways.

One: Archie Miller cannot diagnose the single most glaringly obvious thing wrong with his basketball team despite, well, math.

Two: Archie Miller has reached the point where any Indiana basketball tenure begins to unwind, damp & mad about the discourse, and it’s slowly going to eat away at his braincells until the eventuality comes, whether it’s three months from now or three years.

Indiana is a 12-3 basketball team, a fine record, and a fine result in a vacuum. If you have no desire to be forward-looking, setting the doomsday clock at this point seems foolish. This is where I remind you that Indiana is a basketball team that cannot shoot, cannot score, has no cogent offense, is mildly decent at defense when it cares to be, and the amount it seems to care dwindles more and more by the day.

They think it's gonna take another few years before someone pulls the plug, but I have spoke it into being so Miller will be jailed for texting military secrets to Punky Brewster this February.

The culture Howard came from. A long article on the NBA's new load management trend is incidentally interesting for a lot of reasons and then at the end it details a spot that isn't having any of it, and is doing well. It's the spot Juwan Howard came from:

"In Miami, they had pre-practice," says Phoenix Suns guard Tyler Johnson, who now plays for Spurs disciple Monty Williams but spent his first four-and-a-half seasons with the Heat. "If you were a young guy or guy who just came in and had to learn what was going on, they made sure to teach you the concepts in practice before practice. They take that to another level. Player development was almost a daily thing. You were going to be in there and get a good sweat. If we had days in between games, we'd scrimmage. Here we scrimmage, but there we called it 'Braces and Mouthguards.' You were taped and ready to go.

"I remember once we were having trouble with a stretch 5. I can't remember who it was—Kevin Love, somebody like that—but he just killed us. The whole night we were coming into the huddle saying it's too hard to drop in and then close out to a big. We have to switch. The whole night, that's all we kept saying. The next day? For at least an hour, it was all about having the big drop and sprint out to a big. And then the whole time we heard [from the coaches], 'Oh, but I thought we couldn't do it.' If there was something we had to work on, when it came to load management, there was no such thing."

Early yet to see if this approach to preparation has come over from the Heat and if it will pay off like it has in Miami, which is one of this season's major surprises.

Draft bits. This is going to be a weird NBA draft. The top seven players in Jonathan Givony's rankings will probably not play in the NCAA tournament either because they're playing internationally, left school, or chose poorly. The three current college players in the top seven are Cole Anthony, Tyrese Haliburton (seriously?), and Anthony Edwards. UNC, Iowa State, and Georgia are all well out of tourney projections.

This might be relevant for the future of one-and-done. Givony:

A number of scouts are concerned that the lowering of the age limit back down to 18 could cause elite prospects to take the drastic step of skipping their senior years of high school altogether, which would lead to further confusion in player evaluation. So it's no surprise that the chatter around one-and-done going away has screeched to a halt, as executives have encouraged their owners to tell NBA commissioner Adam Silver how opposed they are to making draft decisions on high schoolers yet again.

One-and-done was indisputably bad for Michigan basketball under John Beilein; under Juwan Howard it looks like a net benefit. If one and done does stick around that also creates a circus around Emoni Bates.

FWIW, the top-ranked Big Ten players in Givony's top 100 are Cassius Winston at 26 and Kaleb Wesson at 27. MSU's Aaron Henry is surprisingly 31st. No other Big Ten player is rated as anything but a late-second round pick: Jalen Smith is 55, Jon Teske 67, Aaron Wiggins 75, Ayo Donsunmu 77, Isaiah Livers 90 and Xavier Tillman 91.

Never say never these days but a couple of guys who everyone thought would be gone next year are currently rated in the "for the love of God, go back to school" range. So is Livers. If Michigan gets Josh Christopher and Isaiah Todd follows through minutes are going to be cutthroat next year.

Speaking of Christopher. Matt D had the good news—UCLA's 247 site saying he's all but sealed to Michigan—yesterday. Sam Webb has been a little more circumspect, which makes sense since UCLA folk aren't going to be mad at the UCLA guy if Christopher goes to Arizona State but Michigan folk will be mad at Webb in that eventuality.

ESPN's Jeff Borzello adds a little bit more to that:

The Wolverines, fresh off landing frontcourt pieces Hunter Dickinson and Terrance Williams in late December and early January, are gathering momentum for five-star guard Joshua Christopher. Christopher took an official visit to Ann Arbor in November and could make a return trip before the season ends. Arizona State and Missouri both have family connections to Christopher, while UCLA was picking up buzz over the past couple months. But Juwan Howard has positioned the Wolverines squarely in the mix.

A second cross-country visit would be a very, very good sign.

Enter the portal. Jaylen Kelly-Powell has entered the portal. That's a playing time transfer, as JKP bounced from safety to corner and back for the duration of his career without nearing significant playing time. In retrospect that slot fade against Wisconsin when he was a freshman was pretty much it: not fast enough to stay in the same area code as a Wisconsin WR, the end.

Etc.: If you want 25 minutes on Brad Underwood's offense this is the video for you. Sean McKeon was PFF's top graded B10 tight end. Not a banner year—#3 is barely above average by their reckoning. Nick Sheridan is probably Indiana's new offensive coordinator. Don't call it a comeback, call it falling ass-backwards into a job. Offensive rebounding is at an all time low.