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(02/04/09 4:44am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s been 56 calendar days since the IU men’s basketball team last tasted victory. Defeat, in that span, has come in all forms: large, small, close – and heartbreaking.Though in that one statistical column that matters above all others, one cannot see the hard work these Hoosiers have put on the parquet floor behind the tall doors leading to Branch McCracken Court. IU coach Tom Crean said it’s starting to wear on his charges.“It is starting to wear on these guys a little bit, the fact that they’re working so hard, but they’re not seeing that success for it,” Crean said Tuesday at Assembly Hall. “But they are working hard, and that’s what we’re continuing to try to focus on.”It’s an old cliche that winning never feels as good as losing feels bad, and anyone who’s ever played organized sports knows it’s true. But there ought to be a second part of that little adage – one in which great achievement can outweigh even the pain of defeat.Most years, such achievement would come in the way of trophies or championships, the promise of future banners to be hung and rings to be handed out.This not being most years, that kind of achievement can come – and judging by the actions and reactions of IU players, coaches and fans at many of their near misses, will come – with every Big Ten victory the Hoosiers can mark on the schedule in 2009.That’s why tonight’s game is so important.There are already so many forces this year working against the Hoosiers that are out of their control that morale can’t become another.This team has already shown a remarkable ability to persevere in the face of blinding criticism. Many in the college basketball world, including yours truly, gave them little chance even at respectability this year, a trait they’ve begun to earn in these last games.But the corner must be turned, and soon, because it’s clear that keeping the faith is becoming harder and harder to do.In lean, dire moments when a season seems to be slipping out of a team’s grasp, it’s usually up to veteran leaders to present themselves both in the locker room and on the court. Obviously, that option isn’t present here.That these Hoosiers don’t have anyone save Kyle Taber they can look to right now “is not their fault,” Crean said.“We’ve just got to continue to try to keep making them feel as positive and be as motivated as they can possibly be,” he added. “But with young guys that haven’t been through, that’s sometimes easier said than done.”Fan support is important, perhaps even more so than usual with a team in need of all the weapons it can get.But in the end, no amount of cheering has undone what opposing teams have been able to do to the Hoosiers these last 11 games.Crean himself said this experience will bring out the “moxie” in those willing to punch back and those with the will to win at any cost. Desperate for victory, 14 Hoosiers will take the floor tonight to prove themselves made of such stern stuff.We’ve spent this whole year wondering what kind of basketball team those 14 individuals might become.Tonight, it will be time to learn of their individual resolve. That lesson, above any test of skill, strength or basketball ability, will provide a forecast of what kind of base these young Hoosiers can provide for years to come.
(02/03/09 5:24am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>ESPN commentator Dick Vitale said Monday he believes former IU men’s basketball coach Bob Knight is interested in coaching at Georgia, while former Hoosier basketball coach Dan Dakich said Knight would be good for any program.No one at Georgia is saying if the school has interest in Knight. But after Georgia fired head coach Dennis Felton on Thursday and named assistant coach Pete Herrmann the interim coach for the remainder of the season, rumors began to surface that Knight could make a comeback.Vitale said Georgia should make Knight, his longtime friend, an offer “in a heartbeat.”“I don’t even know if he would take a job, but I know Georgia has a lot of positives going for it in the scenario there and I think he’d be interested, I really do; but I can’t speak for Bob Knight,” Vitale, who works with Knight as an television basketball analyst, said in a telephone interview to The Associated Press.“To me it’s no contest, if Bobby Knight is interested in Georgia basketball, it’s no contest,” Vitale said. “He’s so good I’d come with him as an assistant. I’d be his chauffeur.”Knight won 661 games in 29 years at IU, including 21 20-plus win seasons, 11 Big Ten Championships and three national championships. Also while with the University, Knight led the 1984 U.S. basketball team to a gold medal in the Olympics.A former player and assistant coach under Knight, Dakich said he wishes his old coach would return to the hardcourt, though he did not comment on Georgia’s situation.“I hope he does,” Dakich told the Indiana Daily Student on Monday night in a telephone interview. “I think it’d be good for basketball. I think it’d be good for whoever he gets to coach.”Dakich said he has not contacted Knight since reports of him being interested in Georgia surfaced recently, but said he thinks Knight would be great for any program. “He’s won wherever he’s been,” he said. “I think he’d bring good people into the mix, whether it was his coaches or his players.”Dakich, who now hosts a sports talk radio show in Indianapolis, went on to say he believes Knight would not go to a school where basketball isn’t important.“He’s not going to go to a place where he can’t win and he can’t have interest,” he said. “I think that was part of him leaving Texas Tech. He was kind of tired of being at a place where there’s no interest.”Knight, the all-time winningest men’s major college coach with 902 victories, began working as a studio analyst with ESPN after he resigned as Texas Tech’s coach on Feb. 4, 2008. He has expanded his duties with ESPN this season.In a comment on ESPN on Monday, Knight said, “I have never said that I wouldn’t coach again. I’ve simply said in the past, if the right situation came along, I would be interested.”Vitale said Georgia could be the right situation. He said the job would “excite” Knight, if he were offered it.“If you want to win, you want to graduate players, you want to stay within the NCAA rules, you want integrity, you want your players to get degrees, he fills all those areas,” Vitale said. “Plus he brings instant, incredible credibility, notoriety, publicity to your program, and knowing Bob as well as I do, he has at least 10 years left in him. This guy is in incredible shape and he loves to teach the game.”Georgia Athletics Director Damon Evans, returning from the Super Bowl on Monday, could not be reached for immediate comment. Evans said Thursday he would use a search firm to help assemble a pool of candidates.Georgia President Michael Adams had no comment on Knight. Adams is leaving Evans in charge of the search “until they get to the finalists,” said Tom Jackson, the university vice president for public affairs.-The Associated Press contributed reporting from Atlanta.
(02/02/09 5:40am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Matt Roth doesn’t look the type to bring 17,202 people to their feet. He’s certainly not one you would expect to drop Ohio State coach Thad Matta’s jaw.“I honestly wanted him to keep shooting,” Matta said after Saturday’s game, “because I was like, ‘This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.’”The “this” in that statement refers to Roth’s shooting performance Saturday. The word “performance” hardly does it justice.Roth hit nine 3-pointers in just 11 tries, one of the two misses an off-balance heave as the first-half clock died out, Saturday on the way to 29 points – easily a career high. The nine 3-pointers set a Big Ten record, while tying an IU record previously held only by Rod Wilmont for most 3-pointers in a game.Amazing seems awfully close to what it was.Roth is hardly the hero type, standing an unassuming 6-foot-3 and rarely answering questions beyond what he’s asked. True to form, he deflected most of his attention onto his teammates after the game.“I’m confident in my ability to shoot. My teammates are,” Roth said after the game. “My teammates finding me in open spots put me in a good position.” Shooters with a fetish for hitting from behind the arc have occupied a soft spot in Hoosier hearts since they first painted the line that Steve Alford tamed more than 20 years ago. Thus, Roth has gained something of a small following since coming to campus with the Illinois state high school record for most 3-pointers made in a career.Like the rest of this team, Roth struggled with confidence and on-court poise early in the season. But thanks in no small part to his increased success from behind the arc, Roth has looked plenty comfortable within an offense that’s getting more effective at creating shots for him in IU coach Tom Crean’s drive-and-kick and ball-motion-based offensive schemes.Saturday night, Roth did not disappoint, putting forth a seemingly effortless demonstration of the effectiveness of shooting from more than 20 feet and nine inches from the basket.“We’ve always had a saying: We need to let Matt Roth get lost in the offense a little bit more so his teammates could find him,” Crean said after the game. “We knew it was a matter of time with him.”That time came Saturday, Crean said, thanks to hard work in the gym outside of practice, something Roth said helps because “sometimes in practice, you don’t get enough reps.”The freshman guard added there’s little structure to these extra workouts, just shooting and more shooting. Free throws are the reward for good performance.Since Dec. 10 Roth hasn’t made a field goal that wasn’t a 3-pointer. Knowing that makes it easy to believe Saturday’s performance falls three makes shy of Roth’s personal record of 12 3-pointers, a number he hit in his junior year of high school.It won’t take 12 a game at this level, however.Crean backs the statistics that say the corner 3-pointer is a low-percentage shot, one he commands all his players to avoid – all except Matt Roth.If Roth consistently scores even half of his total Saturday, there’s really no reason that should change.“He’s pretty well in range,” Crean said, “when he crosses that half-court line.”
(01/30/09 5:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The general wisdom surrounding Tom Crean at Marquette suggested he was a coach guards would love.His up-tempo, drive-and-kick system created lots of open looks for shooters and assists for passers, creating legends such as Dwyane Wade, Travis Diener and the impressive backcourt trio he left in Milwaukee to take the reins at IU.But implementing that same offense has not come without frustration this season. Just one guard in regular rotation – Devan Dumes – had significant minutes at the D-I level before 2008.Tom Pritchard stepped up early as a viable offensive option, and it’s worked well enough. Pritchard’s 12 points per game are the best among Big Ten freshmen, and he’s just inside the conference top 20 in scoring at No. 19.But the Hoosiers still lacked consistent guard play.Different players stepped up – Malik Story against Gonzaga, Dumes against TCU, Nick Williams and Dumes again against Iowa, Williams against Illinois – early.But the progression into the heart of the conference season has been accompanied by another progression: that of more consistent scoring from the Hoosiers’ headline guards. Talk of development and growth is being replaced with words like “synergy” and “unity,” heady stuff for a team that got together for the first time in May. “We’re getting more confident in one another and then ourselves as well,” Dumes said in a statement. “I feel like that’s why we’re stepping out and making better plays and smarter decisions at the end of games.”Statistics tell the story well: Of the five guards considered the greatest threats to score on the IU roster – Story, Williams, Dumes, Verdell Jones and Matt Roth – only Story and Roth have lower scoring averages in conference play than overall, and those numbers have shrunk just 0.3 and 0.1 points per game, respectively.Dumes has held steady at a team-high 13.6 points per game, while Jones’ conference average rose 1.2 points to 10 per game and Williams’ went up 0.7 points to 9.1 points per game. It should also be noted that Story’s best game as a Hoosier came last Sunday, when the freshman came off the bench to score 14 points in the loss to Minnesota.All this math might add up to nothing, pure coincidence, or the wonderful human capacity to read any statistic to say what you want.But the Hoosiers have also displayed a generally increased confidence through the Big Ten season that was only fleetingly there in November and December. Take away the blowout losses to Ohio State and Illinois, and the Hoosiers have lost their other five conference games by an average of 5.4 points. You obviously can’t just take away the two road meltdowns, but that number and Crean’s team’s newfound poise in those other five games seem to indicate something is working.The drive-and-kick game was also noticeably improved Wednesday, with the Hoosiers tallying 19 assists, their highest total in any conference game.“I feel like I’ve got to get better at it,” Dumes said of Crean’s drive-and-kick offense, “but I feel like I’m pretty comfortable with it. Verdell’s pretty good at it, and Malik’s getting better at it. I think we’re all getting pretty good at it.”Jones added in the same statement the biggest key, in his mind, was simply the fact that the Hoosiers have finally logged enough minutes together to feel comfortable as one unit.Whatever the reason or reasons for the apparent increase in confidence, IU’s backcourt is the hinge upon which most success this season will swing. Progress there, continuous and incremental all year long, is starting to shine through.
(01/29/09 5:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Heartbreaking” would be an appropriate adjective. So would “gut-wrenching.”But like anything else the Hoosiers do this season that doesn’t involve sleep or food, this two-point loss presents a great lesson: Every single possession counts.Consider this: Assuming we’re arguing with simple math, had the Hoosiers battened down at the end of the first half and not given Michael Thompson an easy layup, Northwestern might have been staring at a two-point deficit with 35 seconds left.I know that’s not the sturdiest argument, but there were plenty of moments Wednesday night that could fill in as that example. Open 3-pointers, backdoor layups and a few ridiculous Kevin Coble fadeaways inside the lane all had congruent effects.It’s easy to generalize when a game slips away in the final minutes and you lose by eight or 10 points, sure. But lose by two, and every minute, every step down the court will haunt you afterward.These Hoosiers did a lot of things well Wednesday – a lot of things they haven’t been able to do well for most of this year.The free-throw shooting was superb. The 28-16 rebound advantage was absurd. Nineteen assists to 22 turnovers, while also forcing 19 turnovers and thereby just about canceling that statistic out, was at least a little bit impressive.All are signs that the Hoosiers are starting to bring it together, whatever “it” may be in this particular cliche.But none, absolutely none, will warm the snow-white drive home from Evanston with the sharp details of many a possession surely to be on the collective minds of everyone on that bus.Should the Hoosiers have won, this column would have been something resembling a running diary, surely to bear a cheesy headline like “the road to victory.”But it’s Thursday now, and that road is still untrodden since Dec. 10, the last time Tom Crean and Co. won a game.Last night should at least quiet any doubts as to whether this team will win even one Big Ten game.Devan Dumes is finally developing into a reliable scorer, the bench is deeper and if Matt Roth will just keep shooting, the Hoosiers have at least six respectable scoring options on a team that once looked bare of any.The Hoosiers can rebound too, according to Basketball Prospectus guru John Gasaway, who pointed out last Saturday that these Hoosiers are pulling down 79 percent of their opponents’ misses. (Kudos to former IDSer Eamonn Brennan on that stat find).So there are positives, and not just the incremental ones talked about back in November and December.But for all they did well Wednesday, the Hoosiers got one of their most important lessons of the season, and they had to lose to get it.
(01/28/09 4:32am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The IU men’s basketball team heads up to Northwestern tonight, and while I’d love to regale you with witty repartee that would surely cut you all to the collective quick, well, frankly, I’m just not that good. Instead, I thought I’d bring you a melange of topics, briefly touched upon – or what we industry types like to call a notebook. So, without further ado:Get ready for the back cutSenior forward Kyle Taber is the only Hoosier to log any significant minutes against Northwestern’s notorious Princeton offense, which makes its money with moving bodies and plenty of backdoor cutting for layups; watch Georgetown play for 40 minutes – you’ll get the idea.Taber, who earned a bloody nose in a scramble for a loose ball in practice Tuesday, said the Hoosiers will “do some things differently” against Northwestern’s offense, though he wouldn’t identify specific strategies. He did say he thinks the Hoosiers have prepared well but added that facing such a beast is no minor feat. “Once you get out there, it’s a totally different thing,” he said. IU coach Tom Crean said having Jeremiah Rivers, a veteran of the offense at Georgetown, on the team has helped preparation. “He knows the intricacies of their offense and their defense so well,” Crean said of Rivers. “(The Wildcats) are so well-schooled at how to read your body, so we have to stay consistent with how we are trying to play.”But what about the defense, Coach?Northwestern also employs a version of the 1-3-1 zone, which the Hoosiers saw from Michigan and even ran a bit against Minnesota on Sunday. This particular rendition of the 1-3-1 is holding opponents to a shade under 59 points per game, good for fourth among Big Ten teams. Crean said his team has been prepping for the Wildcats’ particular edition of the scheme by running 6-on-5 and 7-on-5 offensive drills in practice. Speaking of preparation, Crean said as a whole he believes his team has begun to get to the level of performance and focus needed in practices, though “there’s still a lot of room for improvement.” “Every day, we’re better than we were the day before,” is the goal, according to Crean, “and the last couple of weeks, we’ve been that way, and hopefully that’s going to transfer into a game here pretty soon.”Oh no, not Kevin Coble again...When IU and Northwestern met in Evanston, Ill., last February, Kevin Coble dropped a career-high – and frankly, astounding – 37 points, nearly upsetting the then-No. 15 Hoosiers. Everything else about the matchup has changed, but Coble, third in the conference with 15.9 points per game, is still there. Coble’s inside-outside skill presents a matchup problem for the Hoosiers, whose best three-four spot defenders either surrender size or quickness to the 6-foot-8 senior forward from Scottsdale, Ariz. Taber said neither he nor freshman forward Tom Pritchard would be starting on Coble, but “we both might get a chance at him.”“We might do a lot of switching,” Taber said. “I think we’re going to try a lot of different people on him.”
(01/26/09 4:30am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This one wasn’t so bad.Yes, it was at home. Sure, the crowd was raucous, perhaps even a bit desperate. Obviously, the Hoosiers had their chances and could have won the game had they made only half of their 10 missed free throws.But you know what? This one really wasn’t so bad. For the first time this year, the Hoosiers didn’t lose because they lacked focus, fire or mental fortitude.Minnesota was just a better team, plain and simple. And no matter how loud you cheer or how white your T might be, better teams usually win.“This is one of the tougher ones to swallow,” IU coach Tom Crean said at the outset of his postgame press conference, adding he felt Sunday was the first time he could feel his team’s “belief” that they could win.Never was this game too far one way or the other – in fact, IU held the largest lead of the day when it was up eight in the first half.Three-point shooting and an unexpectedly large performance from freshman guard Malik Story, scorer of 14 points, kept the game tight for the boys in white.The same sour notes that have played on repeat this year – missed free throws, turnovers, the inability to keep momentum in crucial moments – followed IU down in defeat.“There’s gonna be a day where we don’t kill our own momentum,” Crean said, “and right now, we do that.”That might be the understatement of the year, but it’s also reality for this team. This team’s shortcomings, some of which are mentioned above, are understandably frustrating to you out there in Hoosier Nation. But they are their own.Turnovers are this team. Missed opportunities are this team. Missed free throws are this team. This is just not a very good team.The Hoosiers play hard – I won’t take that away from them – and they have improved impressively over these last months. But despite the banners in the rafters, the stripes on the pants or the shirts at the door, the Hoosier are still young, small and overmatched by pretty much everyone. To lose by four to Minnesota, a team almost assuredly headed for the NCAA Tournament, really isn’t that bad.I’m not saying it shouldn’t bother you, William T. IUFan, to come so close and lose yet another Big Ten game. But realistically, if the only thing holding this team back from beating Minnesota on Sunday was five free throws, then consider for one moment how far these Hoosiers have come.Blown out by Notre Dame, St. Joseph’s, Illinois and Ohio State, IU missed out on beating a ranked opponent, a dark horse for the Big Ten title, by just five free throws. Not that smelly, eh?There are no moral victories – that should be universally understood.But this season was going to be riddled with losses anyway, no matter what the score. So again I say – this one wasn’t so bad.See you Wednesday.
(01/20/09 4:44am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Tom Crean calls it “winning time.”That moment – or more accurately, those moments – in every game when momentum hangs in the balance, when leads teeter on the edge of extinction, when winners and losers separate.That time has not been on the Hoosiers’ side for most of this season, but never was that more apparent than in Saturday’s 65-55 loss to Penn State. Example: With just under nine minutes left in Saturday’s game, the faithfully assembled Assembly Hall crowd was on its feet. Down just five with momentum clearly swinging IU’s way, Hoosier fans and players alike could surely feel victory in their grasps. One old-fashioned 3-point play later, courtesy of Jamelle Cornley, and the deficit was stretched from five to eight, and said momentum had vanished. Such was the case for much of the second half, which saw Penn State begin leading by eight and finish leading by 10, with most of the action going back and forth.The reasons for IU’s fifth Big Ten loss are many, but the most noticeable was this: These Hoosiers still cannot figure out how to hold momentum or take advantage of opportunities when the game is running hottest.It is becoming increasingly clear such behavior will not be learned until it is, simply, finally done. When that ability will blossom is anyone’s guess. “When we started to make little runs, our lack of maturity, basketball-wise, caught up with us,” Crean said after the game. “We take away our momentum so much right now, and we’ve got to continue to get through that.”The problem is that maturity can’t be taught. Maturity is a process, a learned characteristic that just comes, like learning to Rollerblade. So often this season, opponents have offered IU chances to cut into leads, extend momentum and so forth, but none more so than Penn State. Time and again, particularly in the second half, the Hoosiers would hit a small run, say four or five points, inspire the crowd of 15,626 to their feet, string together one or two stops – and falter. Even to the bitter end, the Hoosiers were given ample opportunity to wrest control of an otherwise unmemorable contest. But a pair of late Matt Roth 3s and a full-court folly of a turnover by the Nittany Lions weren’t even enough. Make no mistake, Penn State – while respectable as opposed to laughable – is not a good team. It showed Saturday evening, as Penn State coach Ed DeChellis’ team kept fumbling away chances to control the game.But as they have all season, to much fan frustration, the Hoosiers could not and did not capitalize. Sometimes, it was an apparently flustered offense. Sometimes, it was a defensive lapse late in a long possession. Whatever the particular trap was, the Hoosiers just kept falling into it. “We have to buckle down and say, ‘All right, this is it,’” senior forward Kyle Taber said after the game. “If we get everyone on the court saying that to themselves and putting our minds to it to get the stop, I think we’ll overcome it.” Everything was just right for a Hoosier victory Saturday, which coincidentally would have been their first since Minnesota came to Bloomington on March 5, 2008. The crowd was just right, the opponent was just right and on several key second-half possessions, the timing appeared just right. DeChellis himself said it just right in his postgame interview, even if he didn’t mean to. “It’s all about making a play when you need to make it.”Indeed.See you Friday.
(01/16/09 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There is no play more exciting or deflating in the game of basketball than the 3-point shot.It is an offensive Holy Grail, the mere thought of which inspires fans to their feet, opposing coaches to their clipboards and the occasional Ahlfeld bow-and-arrow.Unfortunately, the IU men’s basketball team has learned this the hard way in the last week, losing in ugly fashion to Illinois and Ohio State, two teams that combined to shoot 26-of-49 from range – the mathematics of defeat, as the saying goes.The truth is as hot as some opponents have been; the Hoosiers’ sometimes atrocious perimeter defense was as much or more to blame.Poor rotations be damned, there were times in the last two games when players looked almost like they were chasing the ball from passer to passer. Hands came up, to be sure, but they usually didn’t arrive until well after the shots had gone up.Now enter Penn State, a team that doesn’t live by the 3, but comes awfully close. The Nittany Lions are third in the league in 3-point field goals made (they have played at least one more game than everyone else), and they are also fourth in the league in 3-point shooting, clocking in at a hair under 39 percent for the year. On the coin’s other side, it should come as no surprise IU is last in the league in 3-point defense.Not so bad, you say?Penn State also has five players shooting better than 35 percent from behind the arc, including 50 percent from Stanley Pringle and 41 percent from the inimitable Taylor Battle.Doesn’t look so good on paper, does it?Tom Crean has made his mark through the years with an up-tempo, guard-oriented offense – one that the Hoosiers seemed to have a handle on in the first two games of the conference schedule, though not as much since.But Crean’s team has also been solid – and at times spectacular – in its pressure defense, harrying opponents into mistakes at all ends of the floor. Marquette was second in 3-point defense in the Big East in 2008, and third in 2006. Obviously those teams possessed more talent, but the overarching theme here is that Crean can coach perimeter defense. This team has shown a hint of that ability in spurts, but for the most part, it still seems to be finding its way around its offensive and defensive sets.But closing passing lanes, pressure ball handlers and rotating with ball movement are all fundamentals of basketball that are taught at every competitive level.But of course, everything comes down to execution and focus, two things these Hoosiers lacked against Illinois and Ohio State. Illinois came out on fire, and IU never looked interested in fighting back once the lead hit 20. Ohio State was more competitive, but the story ended up the same: A flurry of 3s led to a deficit-widening run that seemed to take the wind out of IU’s collective sails. Now the Hoosiers come home to their first friendly crowd in more than a week, a weapon Crean’s team has recently harnessed for motivation and momentum.So again we circle back to execution and focus. IU has to keep the chains on Penn State from the outside. This team has a fragile psyche, and no amount of Assembly Hall magic can save it if its sees an early deficit start to gape by the hands of Penn State’s outside shooters. Hands up, be active in the passing lanes and victory might just be within reach. The alternative has already been explained.See you on the other side.Osterman’s prediction: I want to pick the Hoosiers in this game, and to be honest, I had them winning this one as late as last Friday. But given their recent woes in defending the 3 combined with Penn State’s playmakers, I can’t pick them here. Penn State 76 – IU 61
(01/14/09 6:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Back in my tender high school years, I played football, the proud
second-generation Riverwood Raider that I was. My sophomore year, we
went completely winless, 0-10, only pulling one victory when it was
discovered that an opponent plied the use of an ineligible substitute.It
was a rough year to be sure, but we hired a new coach the next March,
Harris Rainbow (seriously), a young, energetic soul with real vision
for the program. Old coach Rainbow, all of 25, set about trying to
instill a sense of pride and toughness into our listless program. He
did a good job in the preseason.Then crunch time came around: The season started again, and so did the losses.But
coach Rainbow pressed on, assuring us over and over again that if we
worked hard, did our jobs, executed, etc., our day would soon come. He
even promised to run wind sprints the night we finally broke through.Problem
was that our early schedule was too tough, we weren’t nearly deep
enough and a glitch in the system had us playing up a classification
all season. We were getting killed every time we walked off the bus –
and in those first few games, we should have been.Coach Rainbow
kept on keeping on, giving us all the motivation he could think of to
go along with the day-to-day coaching. We heard it all: speeches,
highlight videos, inspirational stories, etc.The losses piled
up. We went down every way possible – big, small, thin, wide, red,
green and some others I’ve forgotten. Point is, we weren’t winning.After
a time, those early beatings, tied with our inexperience with winning
and the aforementioned lack of depth, with our fragile, 16-year-old
psyches took its toll, and wonder of wonders, we began tuning the good
coach out.We did this not purposely or maybe even consciously.
But when you keep trying your hardest, improving in small increments
and frankly working your butt off, and the losses just keep coming,
it’s hard to find comfort or inspiration in anything, especially when
defeat is all you’ve known. These Hoosiers are starting to remind me of that team.They
try hard, they improve in small increments and by all accounts, they
listen to what their coaches have to say. But the losses keep coming.Tuesday’s
loss makes it seven in a row with the same result, and they’ve come in
so many different ways: blowouts, close losses, blown leads, home
games, away games – you see the point.The comparisons continue. This team has flaws, 3-point defense lately prominent among them.What’s
important is that these Hoosiers don’t turn into those Raiders – beaten
before the game even starts, ready to slide face first down the slope
toward subconsciously throwing in the towel.The only good that
can realistically come from this season, at this point, is the steeling
and molding of many of these young Hoosiers into leaders before their
time.Nick Williams, Tom Pritchard and Verdell Jones need to be
ready to step up as hardened veterans when next year’s heralded
recruiting class hits campus. That doesn’t happen purely with
winning; it happens with being able to see the victories. I’m not
talking about moral victories – such things do not exist. I’m talking
about seeing through losses, that are now a reality, to see the
improvements, however small, earned through the hard work the Hoosiers
displayed.What happened to those Raiders is that we never learned how to see anything but the losing. That can’t happen here.Anyway, that’s just a story about my high school football team.See you Friday.
(01/14/09 4:45am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Back in my tender high school years, I played football, the proud second-generation Riverwood Raider that I was. My sophomore year, we went completely winless, 0-10, only pulling one victory when it was discovered that an opponent plied the use of an ineligible substitute.It was a rough year to be sure, but we hired a new coach the next March, Harris Rainbow (seriously), a young, energetic soul with real vision for the program. Old coach Rainbow, all of 25, set about trying to instill a sense of pride and toughness into our listless program. He did a good job in the preseason.Then crunch time came around: The season started again, and so did the losses.But coach Rainbow pressed on, assuring us over and over again that if we worked hard, did our jobs, executed, etc., our day would soon come. He even promised to run wind sprints the night we finally broke through.Problem was that our early schedule was too tough, we weren’t nearly deep enough and a glitch in the system had us playing up a classification all season. We were getting killed every time we walked off the bus – and in those first few games, we should have been.Coach Rainbow kept on keeping on, giving us all the motivation he could think of to go along with the day-to-day coaching. We heard it all: speeches, highlight videos, inspirational stories, etc.The losses piled up. We went down every way possible – big, small, thin, wide, red, green and some others I’ve forgotten. Point is, we weren’t winning.After a time, those early beatings, tied with our inexperience with winning and the aforementioned lack of depth, with our fragile, 16-year-old psyches took its toll, and wonder of wonders, we began tuning the good coach out.We did this not purposely or maybe even consciously. But when you keep trying your hardest, improving in small increments and frankly working your butt off, and the losses just keep coming, it’s hard to find comfort or inspiration in anything, especially when defeat is all you’ve known. These Hoosiers are starting to remind me of that team.They try hard, they improve in small increments and by all accounts, they listen to what their coaches have to say. But the losses keep coming.Tuesday’s loss makes it seven in a row with the same result, and they’ve come in so many different ways: blowouts, close losses, blown leads, home games, away games – you see the point.The comparisons continue. This team has flaws, 3-point defense lately prominent among them.What’s important is that these Hoosiers don’t turn into those Raiders – beaten before the game even starts, ready to slide face first down the slope toward subconsciously throwing in the towel.The only good that can realistically come from this season, at this point, is the steeling and molding of many of these young Hoosiers into leaders before their time.Nick Williams, Tom Pritchard and Verdell Jones need to be ready to step up as hardened veterans when next year’s heralded recruiting class hits campus. That doesn’t happen purely with winning; it happens with being able to see the victories. I’m not talking about moral victories – such things do not exist. I’m talking about seeing through losses, that are now a reality, to see the improvements, however small, earned through the hard work the Hoosiers displayed.What happened to those Raiders is that we never learned how to see anything but the losing. That can’t happen here.Anyway, that’s just a story about my high school football team.See you Friday.
(01/13/09 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Eric Arnett and Tom Pritchard probably could not be more different. Pritchard is the new face of IU basketball, a loyal, late-blooming commit who weathered the storm that was Kelvin Sampson and is now a likely Big Ten Freshman of the Year candidate. He’s a blossoming post presence Tom Crean may rely on for years to come. Arnett won’t even be on the basketball team another week. Brought on in the fall as an extra body in practice, Arnett makes his real living as a pitcher on the IU baseball team, and a rather accomplished one at that. Arnett could dress but not play this year for the Hoosiers, who didn’t want to count another scholarship against their limit. He’ll return to the baseball team following tonight’s game at Ohio State. But Arnett and Pritchard do share one common bond: they are both native sons of Ohio, and while tonight will be more of a homecoming for Arnett, from Pataskala, a Columbus suburb, than Pritchard, from Westlake, near Cleveland, both will play as close to home as they are likely to all season when IU faces the Buckeyes. A weekend starter most of 2008 – college baseball teams save their best starters for weekend series – Arnett went 4-5 with a 4.45 ERA in 17 appearances, nine of them starts. He looks to be part of a rotation that will include coveted southpaw Matt Bashore and a bevy of left-handers who should challenge for the distinction of best rotation in the conference. But along with teammate Kipp Schutz, Arnett put baseball away for the last two months of last year and suited up in candy-striped pants. Schutz played, Arnett didn’t. But according to Crean, that hasn’t stopped the 6-foot-5 junior right-hander from contributing in exactly the ways the coach needed him to. Crean has talked all year about having to teach his team the necessity of breeding full-on competition in every minute of every practice, so what Crean said Monday after practice came as high praise for Arnett. “He was already a competitor when he got here,” Crean said, launching into a story about Arnett’s practice intensity. Pritchard, by contrast, was an afterthought on his own team for much of high school, often giving way to more heralded teammate and now-Michigan State freshman Delvon Roe. But the story has been told time and again on message boards: Roe went down to a knee injury before the duo’s senior year. That’s when Pritchard “made his mark in Ohio,” as Crean put it, leading Lakewood St. Edward all the way to a berth in the state title game. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer even named him its player of the year. Now, Pritchard is set up to be the four-year poster child for Crean’s version of IU basketball. Arnett will rejoin the baseball team when he gets back from Columbus. Again, so different in so many ways – all that links them, at least in the public eye, is the state they call home. It goes without saying that none of this will probably have any effect on the outcome of tonight’s game. But in a season destined for more sad days than sunny in Hoosier nation, it seems awfully therapeutic to embrace these kinds of stories, if only to realize this is still a basketball team. So many people have written these Hoosiers off as little more than a necessary punishment for prior sins – expectations, for those who even set any, pretty much stop at playing hard. It’s more than likely fans will block this season from their memories as soon as possible, ensuring they never have to view IU basketball as anything but occupying a mount equal to Zeus. But these players, coaches, trainers, managers – they all have stories, they all add character and their own expectations of how they want this season to turn out, and they work tirelessly. So let’s just take a minute to recognize that, shall we?See you tomorrow.Osterman's prediction: IU 76 - Ohio State 69
(01/12/09 10:52pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Ben Greenspan has been named the permanent hitting coach for the IU baseball team, a source confirmed Monday.A former catcher at IU and Connecticut, Greenspan replaces Tyler Best at the head of an offense that led the Big Ten last season. The former backstop had been helping with administrative and other responsibilities on an interim basis with the Hoosiers.The son of recently resigned Director of Athletics Rick Greenspan, Ben Greenspan worked with the athletics department helping supervise facilities management before rejoining head coach Tracy Smith, under whom he had played for two years.“Ben, even as a player, displayed leadership qualities that you just can’t teach,” IU coach Tracy Smith said in a press release announcing the hire. “I always had in the back of my mind that he would make an excellent coach someday. Opportunities sometimes knock at unusual times. The fact that we had an opening at the break and that Ben had already been involved in our program make it the perfect fit for both sides. Adding Ben to our staff will be a seamless transition as we head into the upcoming season.”A captain in his senior campaign, Ben Greenspan played 73 games as a Hoosier, starting 43 of them. His best year at IU was his first, when the then junior catcher hit .311 with a team-best .447 slugging percentage and 19 RBIs.Ben Greenspan owns two IU degrees, a bachelor’s in sport marketing and management and a master’s in sport administration, according to the release.The Hoosiers begin their 2009 season Feb. 20 in St. Petersburg, Fla., in the Big Ten/Big East Challenge against West Virginia.Their first home date comes four days later against IPFW.
(01/12/09 5:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – There will come a time this year when the IU men’s basketball team – overmatched and undersized – will take the floor in some Big Ten city and brave the odds to beat a better conference opponent.Champaign was not that city.Much as Kentucky had blitzed the Hoosiers (5-10, 0-3) in Lexington, Ky., about a month ago, Bruce Weber’s Illinois squad (14-2, 2-1) put the IU defense to the anvil and hammered away, relenting only in the game’s waning minutes and walking away with a 76-45 win.But the score, bad as it was, probably won’t irk IU hoops fans quite so much as the manner in which it came.The Hoosiers lacked focus early and often, and their 3-point defense in the first half existed in spirit only. The Illini made a blinding total of 13-of-25 from behind the arc – many of them uncontested, much like the game itself.“We never matched that toughness or that mentality that they had,” IU coach Tom Crean said after the game, speaking candidly. “It seemed like, for a while, everything that could be going possibly wrong (did).”Big Ten games Nos. 1 and 2 really weren’t all that bad, given initial expectations. There was even a quiet, building optimism that this year might not be as bad as once expected.But with two minutes left in the game and the scoreboard reading more like a video game than a rivalry game, so little had actually gone right for the Hoosiers that it was easy to list: The Hoosiers made it to Champaign; Verdell Jones got a nice homecoming, scoring 10 points and adding four rebounds and three assists in front of a small regiment of fans; IU made it back home.The list of that which went wrong is substantially longer.Aside from shooting with a better 3-point statistic (52 percent) than a two-point (51 percent), Illinois scored 31 points off 19 IU turnovers. The final score: 76-45 Illinois, a 31-point difference.IU grabbed 15 offensive rebounds, – a troubling number for any opponent – yet the Hoosiers only had eight second-chance points. IU tallied just nine assists to counter those 19 turnovers, while Illinois notched 17 assists to just nine giveaways.A team that has at times made its living on the run, IU scored no points on fast breaks. You see where I’m going here.After the game, IU players joined coach Tom Crean in their determination that this sort of loss should never be repeated.“We’re not going to change what we’re trying to do,” Crean said. “There’s time to look at improvement, and there’s time to tell it like it is. As I said in the locker room, we were never tough enough today to earn a shot at this win.”Nick Williams, IU’s leading scorer Saturday with 12 points, said the players would talk amongst themselves Saturday night and Sunday in an effort to reform some of these wrongs. Williams spoke like a man determined never to absorb a beating like this again, an important attitude for this young team.Still, Williams recognized that in most ways, the Hoosiers orchestrated their own demise.“They jumped on us early, and obviously we didn’t handle the pressure,” he said after the game outside the locker room. “Most of it was us; some of it was their pressure.”And then, without pause, Williams moved in the only real direction open to him or this team right now – forward.“We’ve just got to get better tomorrow.”See you then.
(01/09/09 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. It’s been far too long since we caught up. How is the new year? Get any good holiday loot? I think I speak for all of us when I say I’m just so excited for classes to fire back up that I can hardly tie my shoes. OK, that’s done, thankfully. The IU men’s basketball team, it would appear, turned over a bit of a new leaf in 2009 as well. They’ve found a bit of confidence – in their ability, in teammates’ abilities, in the offensive and defensive sets they have finally begun to grasp. Two consecutive close misses to start the Big Ten season have Hoosier Nation in a positive tizzy ahead of one of the most perennially anticipated dates on the conference calendar: the trip to the other Assembly Hall. Being from Georgia, I can’t tell you exactly when the IU-Illinois game started to become a rivalry. I’m told by those in the know it probably began with the general and publicly recognized disdain held for one another by Bob Knight and Lou Henson. Whenever it began, any hardwood matchup between the Hoosiers and the Illini gets fans on both sides of the border running hotter than the Fourth of July – steamier, too. And with those two near-wins at Iowa – a place long unforgiving to the Hoosiers – and at home Wednesday night to Michigan, there is newfound faith that this bunch just might have what it takes to go into Champaign and shock the hated orange and blue. Bad news alert: They don’t. This team is better, certainly, than it was two months ago. And it’s fair to say that, if we’re judging based purely on quality of play, they’re better than I expected them to be at this point in the season. But they’re not good enough to walk into Illinois and beat a team that for no apparent reason seems to view IU like the bullish big brother that’s held it down for years. This goes back farther than Eric Gordon. To risk a Simmonsian comparison, IU is the Dottie Hinson to Illinois’ Kit Keller, the latter just burning with unspent jealousy because of the former’s accomplishments. Well, those who love women’s baseball will tell you Kit Keller wins in the end, whether Dottie let her or not, and Illinois is going to do the same. The Hoosiers don’t match up well, although that’s nothing new. Illinois has the best field goal percentage in the conference, and they defend the 3-point shot better than anyone else in the conference as well, not to mention the six players 6-foot-8 or taller, including feature big men Mike Tisdale and Mike Davis (not that one). If the brief Big Ten schedule to date has really taught us anything, though, it’s for all the polish these Hoosiers have put on their statistics, there are still intangibles they lack, and this one is gigantic: The Hoosiers have yet to feel hated. Teams like IU always get the dark side of love, especially in years like this when it’s easy to do so, but this year’s team hasn’t honestly felt completely despised yet, and I just don’t think they’re going to handle it well. Big Ten win No. 1 will come soon – very soon, in fact. Perhaps as early as mid-January against Penn State. It won’t come Saturday, though.Illinois is coming to the plate, and there’s just no way the Hoosiers will hang onto this ball. Osterman’s prediction: Illinois 85 – IU 68
(12/23/08 8:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In their first five minutes, these new members of the IU men’s basketball team looked like their bygone brethren, putting the hatchet to a lesser opponent with Christmas 72 hours away. Any resemblance thereafter was purely coincidental. Felled by turnovers forced and unforced and a Northeastern team unwilling to yield ground – or points – the Hoosiers went down 55-42 on a night when almost nothing went right. It had been nine days since IU coach Tom Crean’s team had hit the floor, but it hardly showed in the first 4:46, as the Hoosiers raced to a 12-3 lead. After that, things simply fell apart. IU would score only five more points in the half while surrendering 25, sending Northeastern into the locker room with a 10-point lead, which would more or less stand the whole second period. Turnovers, poor shooting, a lack of free throws and an occasional lack of urgency were bugaboos in those last 35 minutes, sending the Hoosiers (5-6) below .500 for the first time all season. A game like this was coming. In fact, it was probably overdue. Any college basketball team that turns the ball over and relies on streaky shooting is susceptible to the occasional upset, and after squeaking past IUPUI, the Hoosiers seemed destined to lose at least one they should win. But the devil lay in the details on this night, and the record was on repeat. The usually indefatigable Tom Crean sat in his postgame press conference with the look of a man suddenly tired by the enormous burden on his shoulders this season. Crean refused to make excuses, pointing to poor practices over the last week as a cause for Monday night’s across-the-board struggles. “We have to mature,” Crean said. “We don’t have anyone, on this particular day, at this particular time, that can help this team understand how valuable every day is.”Dec. 22 hasn’t been good to the Hoosiers in recent years. Fans will remember Brendan Plavich’s halfcourt heave to propel Charlotte over the Mike Davis-coached Hoosiers in 2004, perhaps the most unexpected conference loss on Branch McCracken Court in more than a decade – until Monday night. With Lipscomb looming, Crean admitted Monday night was a regression several steps back from what they had gained so far this season.“We’re back to square one on mistakes,” Crean said. “We’re back to square one on lack of communication.”After that, Big Ten play, and once-forgivable mistakes will become deathblows. No one expects miracles from Tom Crean or his team this year, but there must be improvement, if only for the coach’s sanity. This was always to be a cold winter for the Hoosiers and their faithful, but the biting chill outside was matched Monday night with a starkly similar environment inside Assembly Hall. There will be better days. How many will be determined by the men in cream and crimson, and in their determination to correct that which plagued them Monday night and has done so all season. After the game, Crean talked about what his team needs to improve, citing toughness, competition – the pillars he’s leaned to all season long. But when he moved to how those improvements would come, Crean became candid. “Slowly but surely,” he said of that improvement. He then paused and amended the statement. “Well, I shouldn’t say surely.” Even Crean knows nothing can be certain in a season like this, except that Big Ten play starts in two games. Happy holidays.
(12/15/08 3:51am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Forget this one. Seriously, just move on. Games like this happen. They are unavoidable, and I’m not even sure last year’s Hoosiers would have won that game.Kentucky, a team mired in mediocrity at present, came out on fire like teams do maybe once a year. Hitting your first 12-of-14 isn’t so much indicative of greater talent as it is a sign Kentucky was just better on this day. A team that comes out of the gate like that just can’t be stopped, and there’s no use dwindling on the negative in this case. There were some obvious negatives, no doubt about it. First-half turnovers fueled the Wildcats’ fire in front of a raucous home crowd and never let the Hoosiers find their offensive rhythm. “We contributed to it with turnovers and some quick shots,” IU coach Tom Crean said after the game. “We got away from doing what we wanted to do in keeping the game at a strong pace, and that is a tribute to Kentucky and the way they played early on. We just couldn’t deal with their length and athleticism.”There were also positives, like rallying from a 36-13 halftime deficit to outscore Kentucky 41-36 in the second half, making Billy Gillespie’s squad look rather pedestrian along the way. “We came out in the second half with a lot of energy,” said freshman forward Tom Pritchard. “We knew there was not a lot more wrong that we could do. We switched our defense up a little bit, and they got a little flustered with it, and we stuck with it and did what we could do.”Obviously, second halves count for nothing except on a box score, and moral victories have already been sworn off as unacceptable for this club. There were mistakes, obviously, and ones that need to be corrected. And it should be unacceptable that the Hoosiers came out with an obviously lower level of energy and focus than their southward counterparts. But why bear down too much on an unwinnable game? Kentucky came out firing Saturday, and the Oklahoma City Thunder couldn’t have stopped them in those crucial opening minutes. So take down your notes, figure out what needs correcting and sock away the memory of a rivalry loss – surely it will sting for the next 360-some-odd days. But this loss was never so much about IU as it was Kentucky, and there will be time for penance. The truth right now is these Hoosiers have a real opportunity to enter Big Ten play 7-5 if they keep their heads about them, and I think we can all agree that would have looked a fine sight back in August. Dwell too much on a loss like this, and that win total just keeps shrinking. Anyway, good luck on finals everybody, and have a great winter break. See you next year.
(12/12/08 4:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This one means a little bit more. Games like these always do. Players and coaches yarn on about how truthfully, every game is the same, none is taken more seriously than another, etc. But IU-Kentucky isn’t just a rivalry – it’s a tradition. Need proof? Turn CBS on at 4 p.m. Saturday and see if you don’t hear everything you need to hear from what Tom Crean called “one of the great atmospheres in the country.”Games like this are circled in red. Games like this are the reason Tom Crean left a successful, well-built program at Marquette for a team in tatters. Games like this define seasons – and often careers. One of Mike Davis’ greatest criticisms was that he couldn’t beat Kentucky. Kelvin Sampson was absolved by many last year for blowing out the Wildcats at Assembly Hall – at first anyway. And while this season might be a free pass for Tom Crean and his staff, IU-Kentucky gives gifts to no man.This team has faced plenty of firsts and has learned to deal with all manner of new experiences. But up to this point, it’s been old hat for the man they call “coach.”Well on Saturday, my friends, that will change. When Tom Crean takes the floor with his team, he’ll be facing a game that could shape his season. Consider it: If Crean and Co. lose, it will be a regrettable but expected defeat that Crean will absolutely be expected to make up for next year with a strong recruiting class. Such expectation would heap pressure onto a Hoosier team that will probably be one of the program’s most anticipated in decades. That leaves the 2009 Hoosiers little room for error, lest they suddenly fall to 0-2 in Crean’s IU tenure against the hated Wildcats. Conversely, should the Hoosiers pull out a shock victory in the house of Rupp, Hoosier fans everywhere will likely stamp this season a success.“Well, yeah, we were bad, but we still beat Kentucky,” they’ll say with swelled-out chests. So this is also a game that transcends seasons. Cliche writers quip that you’re only as good as your next game. Well, when it’s IU-Kentucky, you’re only as good as your next game, and your last one, and the one before that, and so on. Kyle Taber knows that well, having been on the winning end of a 70-51 triumph last year and a 79-53 victory in 2005. But Taber has also seen the backside of the series, losing twice under two different coaches. Taber said Thursday that he hasn’t really talked to his young teammates about what IU-Kentucky means and how it feels – though he figured he would soon. But the reality is that they won’t know – no one can ever know – until they taste it, hear it, feel it. So maybe youth won’t be a bad thing here. Maybe youth will bring just the right amount of controlled arrogance mixed with lack of the knowledge that Kentucky is supposed to win tomorrow. The Wildcats are a beatable team, even at Rupp Arena, and this Hoosier team is playing better than it has all season. For the first time this year, it looks like its gaining a level of court confidence necessary to play with the bigger boys. But young teams like this are prone to mood swings from one game to the next, and this IU team looks prime for one of its own. I think the Hoosiers can upset Kentucky on their best day, but youth and malfeasance prevent me from having even the slightest indication of when to expect that. The truth is that I think we will see something in-between Saturday, some mix of good and bad. Good enough to keep it close, bad enough to lose in the end. Osterman’s prediction: Kentucky 67 – IU 59
(12/11/08 5:13am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It had been months, but it really seemed more like years. This hall – as it’s purported – wasn’t close to capacity, but when those flags hit the parque surface, the floor rumbled like it hadn’t since that dead winter of nine months ago. And for perhaps the first time since that fateful February night against Purdue, the result on the floor was close to the norm as well. For one night – and perhaps one night only – Indiana was Indiana again. It wasn’t just the score, and it wasn’t just the stat sheet. There was a feeling Wednesday night inside Assembly Hall that has been missing since ... I’m not even sure how long. There is an energy that surrounds everything a storied sports program does, one that is indescribable but also undeniable. Ohio State has it. Notre Dame has it. IU wants it back. When Nick Williams slammed home victory in the last five minutes, and Malik Story further salted the game with an up-and-under layup seconds later, Hoosier fans rose to their feet and screamed, and for a few brief moments, it came back. “This is as good as we have seen. This was awesome,” Crean said, chuckling like a man who thought he’d seen it all until just a few minutes ago. “It was tremendous, it really was. It was hot, it was the way you envision it to be.”Oh, it went away again when Tom Crean’s bunch lost focus late and let a 20-point lead halve itself before the game ended, predicting that this trip down memory lane will be more rare than regular. But the fact remains, the Hoosiers were clearly better in every way Wednesday night, turning a four-point halftime advantage against a respectable, well-coached team into a 10-point win that was never that close after the break. “I give all the credit to Indiana. They out-played us,” TCU coach Jim Christian said after the game, reeling off the ways his Horned Frogs were beaten.For the first time all year, the Hoosiers outran, out-jumped, out-shot and, yes, even out-defended an opponent. There will be more moments like these, rare though they may be, before this season ends. The Hoosiers showed in flashes tonight what they can become – and perhaps will become – next year, and the year after that.Losing will almost assuredly outlast winning more often than not in Tom Crean’s first year in Bloomington, according to the majority. But for one night, months of sweated worry paid off. Hoosier fans got to exhale, deeply. Everything looked OK. Now inhale again, because it’s time to go to Kentucky. See you Friday.
(12/10/08 5:08am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Hoosier fans’ emotions have run the gamut with this young team, haven’t they? So far, we’ve seen blowouts both ways, good performances, bad performances, close wins that should have been larger and lots and lots of turnovers.Tonight, there’s a definite chance we’ll be adding “home loss” to that list. On its face, I see no reason Texas Christian should beat the Hoosiers. The Horned Frogs don’t have much more height; they don’t shoot the ball incredibly well; they don’t force an inordinate amount of turnovers – nothing. But Kentucky waits on Saturday, and I’m betting this young team doesn’t yet know how to play one game before looking ahead to another.Furthermore, TCU coach Jim Christian is a man who knows how to win. In six years at Kent State, he never once won less than 20 games, and he left the Mid-American Conference with a better winning percentage than any other coach in conference history.He’s a man who knows how to win.Texas Christian is what we “gotchya media” types like to call a trap game, and my guess is the Hoosiers are about to spring the trap.But fear not, sports fans, I’m here to tell you how the Hoosiers can avoid said trappery. Follow along, will you?1) Focus – This must manifest itself in defensive communication, limiting turnovers and pushing the ball inside to keep defenses from collapsing the lane. The Hoosiers have struggled with the first two at times, and against a team without much size on them, the third will be important to keeping the floor open. 2) Star power – Get the ball to Tom Pritchard. End of story. Pritchard is a far more complete player than people realize – he just needs to assert himself better. His post moves are solid, he works well around the rim without traveling much and he creates well. He just needs to go up tough every time. Give him the chance tonight. 3) Find the hot hand – Matt Roth, Nick Williams, Devan Dumes and Malik Story have all shown the ability to light it up this year. IU needs to make sure it figures out who’s got his shot tonight and feed him as best they can. That also means those without their stroke shouldn’t force the issue, perhaps instead looking to push the ball inside, which leads us to ...4) Get to the free-throw line. The best way to kill an upset-minded team is to deny them momentum, and stopping play to score free points does that in spades.Tom Crean’s bunch did a solid job of hitting its free throws Saturday in the loss to Gonzaga, knocking down 19-of-24 free ones. Hit that number from the line again tonight, and victory will be all but inevitable. There you have it: Zachary Osterman’s foolproof, four-point forecast for avoiding the trap. Now if I could just get Tom Crean on the phone ...Osterman’s prediction: IU 76, TCU 71