Team readies for conference tournament

If you had to label IU men's basketball coach Mike Davis as either a pessimist or an optimist, you would have to go with the latter. In an up-and-down season, Davis has spent much of this year with a positive outlook. He hit a low after the loss to Southern Illinois, but he has been optimistic since.\nAnd Davis' positive thinking is probably needed now more than ever as the Hoosiers try to get rolling for the postseason after blowing chances to win the Big Ten title outright. \nIU (19-10, 11-5 Big Ten) won its first league title since 1993 Saturday after beating Northwestern 79-67 but will have to share it with Wisconsin, Ohio State and Illinois. \nBut Davis will take it.\n"I know some people are disappointed we didn't win it outright, but we have a lot of years to do this," Davis said to the Assembly Hall crowd after the game. "This is one."\nDavis said the Hoosiers had three goals this season. They wanted a Big Ten championship, they wanted to win the conference tournament and they wanted to get to Atlanta, the site of this year's Final Four. \nIU took care of step one, and now the Hoosiers enter the Big Ten tournament as the fourth seed and play fifth-seeded Michigan State Friday morning in the quarterfinals of the tournament.\nDavis said his team is playing well despite losing two of its last three games to end the regular season.\n"I think people have forgotten we had a chance to win at Michigan State," Davis said. "It was a play here, a play there. And we didn't have (sophomore Jared) Jeffries. We also had an opportunity to beat Illinois. If you attended the game at Illinois, you saw we fought hard.\n"I think we're going to win the Big Ten tournament title. I really do."\nA big factor in the Hoosiers' future is junior guard Tom Coverdale. After a couple of average performances, Coverdale had a team-high 20 points Saturday. During the deciding stretch in the second half, he had 10 consecutive points for IU.\nThis season, Coverdale has been up and down. When he has been up, he has been unstoppable. When he has been down, the Hoosiers have lost close games.\nCoverdale began the season by hitting 15-of-35 three pointers in the first eight games of the year. He followed that by hitting just 1-of-17 threes in the next four games. In the next 12 games, he hit 36-of-74 three pointers before hitting just 4-of-21 in the four games before Saturday.\nCoverdale is also second in the Big Ten in assists with 139 this season.\n"He's so important because he is the only guy we have who can handle the ball for us," Davis said.\nStill bothered by a right ankle sprain, Jeffries has been unable to play at the level that had him leading the conference in scoring a few weeks ago. \n"We worked extremely hard to get to the point we're at right now," Jeffries said. "If we play the style of ball we can do we can take three games."\nJeffries didn't think he would play Saturday but was able to get on the floor for 32 minutes. He said it's hard to say just how close he is to being at full strength because he has never had to deal with this kind of injury before.\nJeffries has five days to get ready for the Big Ten Tournament. Five days that he will be happy to spend resting.\n"I think having a solid five days off is going to be what I need to get me back to where I want to play," Jeffries said.\nThere will be no second chances to win a championship this weekend at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, and there will be only one champion by Sunday night. Davis said the Hoosiers are where they want to be and if Jeffries is ready and Coverdale is streaking, IU might turn Davis from optimist to accurate prognosticator.\n"We just have to come out ready to play," senior guard Dane Fife said. "(Big Ten Champions) is the lowest goal we have set. There's two more tournaments that I'd like to get a ring with"