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.
A near sellout crowd all donning the same t-shirts, a Verdell Jones
half-court basket and an early eight-point lead weren’t enough to stop
IU’s losing streak.
The Hoosiers (5-13, 0-6) dropped their ninth game in a row, this one
against Minnesota 67-63. The competitive game throughout came down to
the Golden Gophers’ ability to execute down the stretch; and IU’s
inability to.
After a respectable 20-14 inaugural season at Minnesota last academic
year, former Kentucky coach Tubby Smith’s Golden Gophers are off to an
impressive 16-3 start and look to be on their way to the NCAA
tournament.
Smith, along with second-year Michigan coach John Beilein and Iowa
second-year man Todd Lickliter, follows a trend of vast improvement
among Big Ten coaches in their second seasons.
It’s cold, it’s Big Ten season and the IU men’s basketball team is facing a ranked opponent – it must be time for a white-out
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.
In one of their most winnable games in conference season, the Hoosiers
fell once again, losing. Losing to Penn State inside Assembly Hall for
the first time in school history.
The game marked IU's eighth straight loss, the program's longest losing streak since 1964.
There is no play more exciting or deflating in the game of basketball than the 3-point shot.
After the results of the two road trips in between – in which IU was knocked out early to Illinois and Ohio State by a combined score of 153-98 – being back in Bloomington can’t come soon enough for the Hoosiers.
In three seasons, Eric Gordon has gone from a man among boys to a boy among men.
“Look how fresh he is!” screamed one of Gordon’s NBA teammates. “He got his draft suit on!”
The former Hoosier wasn’t wearing the cream blazer he donned on draft
night when he was selected seventh overall by the Los Angeles Clippers,
but he was unusually dressed up.
A herd of local reporters waited to interview Gordon as he changed
meticulously following his hometown pro debut. If “E.J.” had his
choice, he’d likely prefer to keep to himself by his locker. Instead,
he was moments away from answering questions about the game-winning
shot he made in double-overtime to lift the Clippers over the Indiana
Pacers.
LAS VEGAS – Former IU coach Bob Knight, the winningest coach in Division I history, and former CBS sportscaster Billy Packer plan to analyze the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in a series of one-hour television programs taped at a race and sports book on the Las Vegas Strip.
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.
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.
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.
Absolutely demolished, the IU men's basketball team was felled by the sharpshooting Fighting Illini.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Last year’s infamous chest bump pales in comparison
to the in-game beat down the Fighting Illini laid on the Hoosiers
Saturday.
After holding their own but losing in their first two
conference games, IU coach Tom Crean and his team got the kind of Big
Ten welcome many had been bracing for all season.
A 31-point thrashing marked the biggest loss by the Hoosiers in the rivalry’s 161-game series.
IU’s
orange rivals to the west opened the game on a 21-2 run and never
relaxed their grip of the lead. The Illini led by 25 at the half and
continued to humiliate the traditionally proud basketball school in the
second half, brushing off the Hoosiers 76-45 and handing their longest
losing streak – at six – since 2004.
Last time IU traveled to Champaign to take on Illinois, the game was one of the most highly anticipated matches of the year.
Led by then-coach Kelvin Sampson and freshman star Eric Gordon, the Hoosiers played in front of a volatile Illini crowd.
When IU won, it boosted its record to 19-3 while Illinois dropped to 2-9 in conference play.
Just 11 months later, things have dramatically changed, but the bitterness across the border remains.
Although Sampson has been exiled from college basketball and Gordon
has moved on to the NBA, Illinois coach Bruce Weber continues to add
fuel to the rivalry between IU and U of I.
Wednesday’s overtime loss to Michigan left a bitter taste in the mouths of even the mildest of Hoosier fans.
Imagine how Tom Crean felt.
Before Sunday’s game, most Hoosier fans likely couldn’t tell you where Lipscomb even was.
But the team’s 74-69 upset victory against IU might have put them on the map.
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.
Pulling away to a speedy 12-3 lead against the visiting Northeastern
Huskies, the IU men’s basketball team looked like they used their
nine-day layoff to full advantage.
But then the Hoosiers became colder than the weather outside Assembly Hall.
Solutions by The State News