It’s been 702 days since the Hoosiers lost in Assembly Hall.

Now the season can really begin.\nThe No. 7 IU men’s basketball team (17-1, 6-0) is off to its best start since the legendary undefeated 1975-1976 National Championship team, but has faced just two teams – Illinois State and Xavier – inside the RPI top-50.\nThings are about to change.\nThe Hoosier’s game Saturday afternoon against Connecticut (13-5) starts a stretch of eight difficult games where IU will face five teams ranked inside the RPI top-50. Two of the three games against teams outside the RPI top-50 are rivalry games where rankings and records can be thrown out the window – at Illinois and at home against Purdue.\nFreshman guard Eric Gordon acknowledged that the upcoming stretch of games will be challenging, but said the Hoosiers have faced good competition throughout the season.\n“A lot of people say we haven’t played many good teams yet, but I think we are up to the challenge to play against these high-ranked opponents,” Gordon said.\nConnecticut comes into Assembly Hall riding the momentum of back-to-back wins against then-No. 13 Marquette and Cincinnati. IU coach Kelvin Sampson praised Connecticut’s development from last year, citing center Hasheem Thabeet and guard A.J. Price as two examples of the improved play from the Huskies.\n“They’re just a much more mature team than when we played them last year,” Sampson said of the Huskies.\nStanding over seven feet tall, Thabeet anchors a defense that leads the nation with 9.06 blocked shots per game. Thabeet averages 3.9 blocks per game, making him the top blocker in the Big East Conference.\nThabeet’s presence will not change the Hoosiers’ style of play as both White and Gordon said they are not going to back down from the shot-blocking machine.\n“Obviously, they are a great shot-blocking team but we aren’t going to try to do anything differently to try to avoid that,” White said.\nThis is the fourth and final year left on a contract between the two schools. Connecticut won the first two match-ups, but IU will look to even the four-game series after winning 77-73 last season in Hartford, Conn.\nSampson said on his weekly radio show that he did not know who the Hoosiers would add next year to replace Connecticut on the schedule, but assumed it would be another made-for-TV contest against another national power.\nA non-conference game during the Big Ten season is nothing new to the Hoosiers, who have faced non-conference foes during conference play three of the last five seasons. Sampson said the team’s mindset is the same regardless if the game counts toward the conference standings.\nThe contest against Connecticut and the Hoosiers’ upcoming stretch of games will go a long way in showing how good IU can become and what seed the team should expect to receive in the NCAA Tournament. \n“I still think this team is going to continue to improve,” Sampson said after Wednesday’s game