Back on the Indiana basketball bandwagon

When you grow up in Bloomington, it’s hard not to catch the IU basketball bug.

In a state known for little more than its corn and motor speedways, claiming your home as basketball country means a stab at pride and legitimacy.

Hoosier could mean more than an anonymous hick with a farmer’s tan. It could mean a nationally recognized athletic juggernaut.

When I was a kid, I definitely felt Indiana was basketball country.

Bob Knight coached the Hoosiers to the NCAA Tournament every year for the first 10 years of my life. Though I wasn’t quite conscious for the Sweet 16, Final Four and Elite Eight bids from 1991 to 1994, their lingering pride seeped into the community and got me excited for the coming years.

Throughout my childhood I made it to more Chicago White Sox and Bears games than IU basketball games, but I still have fond memories of watching the Hoosiers from half court with my grandpa and attending Hoosier Hysteria with my family.

Then something happened: Middle school arrived, and I became a nerd. Or a freak, as I like to say.

My friends and I didn’t ignore IU athletics, we just spent more time at concerts and loitering around downtown. I still watched the Bears play football on Sundays and kept a vague grip on the goings on of Hoosier basketball.

Even our like made it to Scotty’s to watch the 2006 tournament game against Gonzaga. Still, adolescence marked a weird falling off with Indiana athletics that I kept into college. That’s all finished now.

Even the most dedicated non-afficionados probably know IU will be playing Kentucky on Friday in the NCAA basketball rematch of the year.

It’s managed to ignite an amazing wave of basketball fever in this city, on this campus and in me, the likes of which I haven’t seen in years. It’s also helping me to unlock an emotional archive from my childhood.

My family didn’t bring home banners or pennants to hang on our walls, but my dad brought home a Herald-Times newspaper with him every night from his position at the sports desk.

I paraded his award-winning headline “15 3s = Final Four” around school with me. He still keeps a prized alternate edition of the 2002 NCAA championship issue, which celebrates IU’s victory against the Terrapins. If only.

Remembering all this and being surrounded by this hysteria is bringing me back into the IU basketball scene. What the Hoosiers are doing has rekindled my spirits.

My roommate and best friend helped me to get back into the game, lending me his No. 2 away jersey to wear during IU’s upset against Kentucky.

It was an old A.J. Moye jersey, not a Christian Watford jersey, but I didn’t tell anyone that when we were screaming on Kirkwood Avenue.

My season-ticket-holding freshman little brother has done his part, too. He never lost his Hoosier pride, and I text him whenever I’m watching a game. He said he was going to have a heart attack after our win against VCU.

All this means I can say “we” and “our” when I talk about IU basketball. If you ask me, a sense of belonging is almost always something to be valued, even if it should be questioned.

I can’t tell you how dumbly happy I am to rattle off the time I played backyard football with Jordan Hulls in a lightning storm at a sixth-grade birthday party.

Pathetic? Probably. Proud? Totally.

Even if basketball isn’t going to solve the world’s problems, it can at least build friendships.

I know this is an imagined community, which you can write off as romantic or meaningless or distracting from actual political issues. I like to look at it from the standpoint of survival as a student.

Many of us are juggling jobs, extracurricular activities, relationships and schoolwork all at once.

I cherish how playing D&D and participating in the Feminist Action Coalition at IU help me let off steam. But these kinds of activities are illegible and invisible to the larger IU community.

If I can sit back with my best friends, drink a beer and shatter my ego in the name of cheering on something loved by thousands of students, I call it cathartic belonging — tangible excitement and connection between people that keeps me going.

IU basketball is a special thing, deeply rooted in this city’s history and my own.

I might have neglected it, but only because I forgot how fun it is to dig deep into Hoosier basketball, celebrate its victories and mourn its defeats. To watch the mechanics of the game unfold and try to coach the team from the couch.

If that means I’m jumping back on the bandwagon, I don’t care.

You won’t be able to tell when I’m crying tears of joy and chanting “Hoo-Hoo-Hoo-Hoosiers” Friday night.

­— ptbeane@indiana.edu