Hoosier dreams

ATLANTA -- Steve Blake is about the only person outside the IU locker room that picked the Hoosiers to do some NCAA Tournament damage. \nBlake, Maryland's junior point guard, penciled in IU to knock off top-ranked Duke in the Sweet 16. His teammates thought he was crazy. \nEven Hoosiers Dane Fife and Kyle Hornsby and IU coach Mike Davis admitted they are still trying to get a grip on reality -- deep down, they didn't think they'd be playing in April for the national championship.\nEveryone but Blake was wrong, and now Blake's Terrapins and those never-say-die Hoosiers meet for the national championship at 9:18 p.m. tonight in the Georgia Dome.\n"I was one of the few who picked them," Blake said Sunday. "They have Jared Jeffries down low and those hot three-point shooters. They can beat anybody."\nIU did just that Saturday by advancing to the sixth national title game in school history via a 73-64 win over No. 3 Oklahoma Saturday in the national semifinal. No. 4 Maryland, the East Regional champion and top seed, moved to the title tilt with a 97-88 win over No. 2 Kansas. \nTonight, as the Hoosiers search for their sixth NCAA crown in school history, Maryland hopes to land its first. IU is 5-0 all-time in national championship games.\n"It's been hard to stop smiling," IU junior guard Tom Coverdale said. "We're going to have to play one of our best games of the season to beat them."\nBoth teams are on a roll. Maryland (31-4) has won 18 of its last 19 games, and IU (25-11) is riding a season-best five-game win streak. \nBut the road to the final game each team has taken isn't so similar. The Hoosiers and Terrapins play contrasting styles and have far-from-symmetrical rosters. \nBlake leads a Maryland offense that scoots up and down the floor while scoring an average of 85.6 points per contest. Maryland has scored less than 70 points just three times all year and has four players scoring double figures. IU has scored 80 or more just six times this season.\nSenior All-American guard Juan Dixon leads the Maryland charge at better than 20 points per game and scored a career-high 33 in the Terrapin win over Kansas Saturday. \nFife, a senior guard, limited Oklahoma standout Hollis Price to six points on 1-of-11 shooting Saturday, and will draw Dixon tonight. \nHow do you stop a man who is Maryland's all-time leading scorer and has scored an average of 27.4 points per game in the five NCAA Tournament games this season? \n"Very good question," Fife said. "It's very hard to stop a guy like Juan Dixon."\nAnd Dixon has company -- from outside and inside. \nBlake, who said the Terrapins will be comfortable playing their usual up-tempo style or grinding it out like IU prefers, averages only eight points per game, but has dished out eight assists per game. Most of those passes land in the post, where Terrapin big-bodies Lonny Baxter and Chris Wilcox combine to score 27.5 points and grab 15.2 rebounds per game. Both shoot better than 50 percent from the floor. Baxter stands at 6-foot-8 and 260 pounds. Wilcox is 6-10, 220. \nOnly two IU players weigh more than 220. \n"Wilcox is a big-time basketball player," Davis said. "He's athletic, can run and jump. And Baxter is a handful."\nIU faced a similar strong, physical front line against Oklahoma and Sooner forward Aaron McGhee, who poured in a game-high 22 points before fouling out. \nThe Hoosiers pushed back against Oklahoma and plan to do the same tonight against Baxter, who scored just four points while in foul trouble against Kansas. \n"Baxter's strength will be a problem," Jeffries said before calling IU's frontcourt "frail," rather than thin. "But we have to put pressure on them and get them in foul trouble." \nAnd Jeffries has to avoid foul trouble, something he didn't do Saturday, collecting two fouls early and resting the final 12 minutes of the half. \nAs impressed with Maryland as IU is, the Terrapins are returning the compliments. Blake said he is "concerned" about IU's deadeye from the three-point line, where the Hoosiers have connected on 23 of their last 32 shots (71.9 percent). Coverdale, who is 8 for his last 17 from the arc, is expected to again start, despite his sprained left ankle.\nAnd then there's IU's defense and it's improbable tournament run, although Terrapin coach Gary Williams isn't buying the latter. \n"Any team that's gotten where Indiana has gotten, you don't look at their record, you look at how they're playing the game," Williams said. "Any team that plays defense like they do, they have a chance to beat anybody."\nAnd then there's Jeffries, who blasted Duke for 24 points before taking a back seat in IU's last two victories. Junior Jeff Newton, senior Jarrad Odle and junior George Leach -- the trio combined for 33 points, 11 rebounds and six blocked shots Saturday -- have filled the scoring void and helped raise the production of IU's front line, one Wilcox compared to that of Kansas. \nThe only other connection the Hoosiers have with the Jayhawks is that they could tie Kansas for the most losses by a national champion. The Jayhawks won the title in 1988 with a 26-11 record. IU is 25-11, with the idea of boosting the tradition-rich program. \n"To be playing in the national championship game with the chance to take that banner home, it really says a lot for this team," said Odle, a senior. "To be a national champion, I think there's no better way to spend the rest of my life."\nEven if you didn't think you'd get there in the first place.