Clean sl8

IU basketball and history generally form a glowing alliance. \nThere's very little in the annals of IU lore that needs to be shied away from. Five national championships rank IU as third best among all Division I programs, and 20 Big Ten titles are second most all-time to Purdue. But for perhaps the conference's most storied program, there still exists a black eye. The Hoosiers have never won a Big Ten Tournament. It's one of the few pieces of history that actually works against the cream and crimson. \nBut history can work in so many ways. And all this year's team is worried about is the present.\n"I think we've got a lot of momentum," sophomore forward Robert Vaden said. "Everybody's happy and everybody's playing together right now."\nBut for the eight years of the tournament's existence, momentum hasn't mattered. During that time, the Hoosiers have won a regular season title, even gone to the Final Four, but they've never entered the postseason on a winning streak. \nThen again, one could say history shines favorably on the Hoosiers this go-around. Nobody on their side of the bracket has ever beaten them in a Big Ten tournament. The cream and crimson are 4-0 all-time against Wisconsin, Penn State and Ohio State. Only Illinois, Iowa, Purdue and Minnesota have bounced the Hoosiers from the tourney. \nWhen looking at it that way, the team would have a good chance of getting into the finals. Whereupon, of course, it would be met by potentially more damning history. Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois are all alive on the other side, and the Hawkeyes and Illini are responsible for six of IU's eight tournament losses.\n"We're playing good right now, so it doesn't matter who we play," junior guard Rod Wilmont said. "We know that we've got to play with energy and fight."\nBut that's all overlooking the matter at hand Friday. Wisconsin enters the game in an eerily similar fashion to its last meeting with IU. The Badgers have dropped consecutive games and separated themselves from the conference elite. \nSeeing that Wisconsin dominated IU in that game and gave the Hoosiers their worst loss of the season, it would seem as though history sides with America's Dairyland on this one. \nOr does it?\nThe only time IU ever even sniffed Big Ten Tournament prowess was in 2001 when it lost by two points to Iowa in the finals. That year, the Hoosiers started their journey with a game against Wisconsin in a battle between the four and five seeds -- just like this year. IU handled the No. 21 Badgers and gave them a 12-point loss. \nSo if history has a tendency of repeating itself, IU's crystal ball would look a little less hazy. \nAll of this can either add up to something or equate to nothing. The Hoosiers can continue their streak of struggles in tournament play, or they can follow their alignment of stars back into another championship game.\nThe media and fans can use that history to clutter up the pre-tournament chatter. But at 2:30 p.m. Friday, 10 men will step onto the floor at Conseco Fieldhouse, and all the clutter will clear. The tipoff will be tossed from a clean slate.\nFor the rest of the weekend, the past will be left in the past, and IU will only be focused on one thing: Making history.\n"We feel good," IU coach Mike Davis said. "(The players) are over everything now, and there's no more uncertainty in the air about anything. We're just relaxing and playing"