Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support the IDS in College Media Madness! Donate here March 24 - April 8.
Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports men's basketball

COLUMN: IU basketball, the Chicago Cubs and beating demons

Freshman center Thomas Bryant reaches for a dropped ball against North Carolina on Friday at the Wells Fargo Center. Indiana lost 101-86.

“It’s tough. There’s a big pit in my stomach right now saying, ‘What if?”

That is what IU alumnus Kyle Schwarber said in 2015 after the Chicago Cubs lost to the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series. It was painful. Chicago was eliminated, and then, in the next year, the team won its first World Series in 108 years.

Schwarber will be in Assembly Hall this Wednesday as an honorary captain for the Hoosiers, and IU will have the same chance to make things right against the team that ended its season last year.

North Carolina was better. There were no ifs, ands or buts. After 40 minutes were through, the Tar Heels rightfully moved on to the 
Elite Eight.

Ranked No. 3 in the nation, North Carolina is back near the top. The difference from last year is IU is deeper and a better overall team than the season prior. The influx of freshman has been crucial, but this game will come down to the stars and which of those playmakers make
the shots.

The trouble with that is IU has yet to play a great game. IU’s victory against Kansas was impressive but far from passable on most nights, especially against top teams.

“The responsibility that they have to have for one another, there’s no blueprint for it. It’s not like you just insert it,” IU Coach Tom Crean said Sunday after the victory against Mississippi Valley State. “We have to just continue to grow through that, and I think that we will, but I think we got better this week. We got better today.”

In the upper echelon of potential, IU has seen moments of brilliance, but, on the other hand, there was that entire game against Fort Wayne.

What the Hoosiers bring to the table is an uncanny ability to play to their opponent. A loss in this game early on in the season against a top-tier opponent is to be expected, but a win in Assembly Hall could be a catalyst for the rest of the season.

After a slow start in the 2015-16 season, it was the back-and-forth victory against Notre Dame in Bankers Life Fieldhouse that set IU down a Big Ten Championship path. A win against North Carolina could have the same type of resounding effect.

A 3-point barrage is how the Tar Heels beat the Hoosiers last March, and it could be the deciding factor for IU to win Wednesday. Everyone on this IU squad, including sophomore big men Thomas Bryant and OG Anunoby, has the green light to shoot.

Along with Schwarber, the 1981 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship team and renowned Chicago Blackhawks National Anthem singer James Cornelison will be at the game.

The game starts at 9:15 p.m., but it seems to me the atmosphere is already building. IU will try to make it 21 consecutive victories at home.

The last time these two teams played in Assembly Hall, I was sitting on my couch as a precocious high school student still unsure of where I was going to commit. IU laid the smack down and emerged victorious 83-59 on Nov. 27, 2012, to cement its status as the best team in the nation. It wasn’t the reason I ended up a Hoosier, but there’s no proof that it wasn’t not the reason.

The Hoosiers will have another crack on national television to show their mettle against the best of the best on IU’s home court. Past Hoosier champions will be there. Dick Vitale will be in the building. Even a member of the Chicago Cubs World Series team will play a part.

This is going to be fun as hell.

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe