Who are these guys?

In the two years I have covered IU football, I have never seen a Hoosier team like the one that played Saturday. I have never seen a Hoosier quarterback look so comfortable or an offensive line look so impenetrable. I have never seen a Hoosier defense dominate for four quarters. Perhaps due in part to IU coach Terry Hoeppner's declaration, in part to the homecoming weekend and in part to the Hoosiers' handling of Michigan State on Saturday, I have never seen a Memorial Stadium crowd so loud.\nAt the request of coach Hep, the crowds came out. Though they hardly numbered 50,000 -- the number Hoeppner called for after IU's victory over Iowa -- those who did show up were given a show. The offense overpowered, the defense shut down the Spartans and most of the 36,444 watching Saturday's game were asking themselves, "Who are these guys?" \nThey are your Indiana Hoosiers. They are fifth in the Big Ten standings. And they are one win away from clinching bowl berth. \n"I told the team we need to learn how to handle prosperity better," Hoeppner said during the post-game press conference. "Championship teams finish people off in the fourth quarter. I also told them get used to it. Get used to handling prosperity because we are going to have a bunch of it down the road." \nCould it be -- a collective calm in quarry land? There is prosperity instead of pandemonium. There is optimism for a football team that was once ostracized. In their first five games, the Hoosiers went 2-3. That record included a three-game home skid kicked off by an embarrassing 35-28 loss to Southern Illinois University. The Division I-AA Salukis are not even in the same league as IU -- literally. But after a 52-17 thrashing from Wisconsin at "the Rock," IU went on to win three of its next four games. These were not thankless victories, either. These were Big Ten conference games, which once marked the beginning of the end for the Hoosiers' schedule. This year, they simply mark the end of the Hoosiers' winless woes in October. \nThough their first bowl game appearance in 13 years is still uncertain, Saturday's Hoosier hammering of Michigan State was not. Of course, this rare sign of resilience begs several questions: Was this game a defining moment for this turned-around team? Has the Hoosiers' luck changed along with the seasons -- a metamorphosis from fall failures to winter winners? The colder the weather, the hotter this team seems to get. \nBut for the time being, Hoosier nation can embrace its team's 46-21 shellacking of the Spartans. It was an outcome as scary for Michigan State as the holiday weekend that the game fell on. Appropriately, the Hoosiers played possessed but also, more importantly, poised in these prosperous times. \nShortly after Saturday's game, the IU men's basketball team played an intersquad scrimmage, usually a time which signals the beginning of the basketball season and the bleak end of football. Instead, something else happened Saturday. Someone forgot to tell Hep and his Hoosiers basketball had begun. Go ahead, Hoosier football team: Live long and prosper.