IU’s simple choice

"I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really: get busy living or get busy dying.” –Andy Dufresne, “The Shawshank Redemption.”\nI’m not a movie buff, but is there a more poignant line for this Hoosier squad today than the one uttered by Dufresne within the prison walls of Shawshank?\nThe line is delivered at a critical point in the film when it’s not clear whether Tim Robbins’ character is going to persevere through injustice or give in to despair. Get busy living or get busy dying. Well, IU, which is it gonna be?\nThe Hoosiers have suffered their fair share of injustice this season. They lost their coach in the middle of the season through no fault of their own. They lost two critical games on shots in the final seconds, including Blake Hoffarber’s Christian Laettner-esque heartbreaker last Friday. And they appear to have lost the aura that has sustained them for much of the season, losing three of their last four games.\nIt’s easy to point to the coaching change as the reason this team has faltered down the stretch. Pinning the collapse on one man would be nice and tidy, but such things are rarely so simple.\nThe Hoosiers simply have not competed with the consistent intensity they displayed in mid-February. The effort is there at times, such as when D.J. White shed three Golden Gophers and tipped in the game-tying bucket Friday night. But against a team such as Minnesota, Herculean efforts should be shelved for better opponents.\nIU has chosen a bad time to fall into a shooting funk. The Hoosiers have hit only 20 of their last 90 3-point attempts. Eric Gordon, a guy that arrived on campus making shots from the Assembly Hall parking lot, has connected on 16 percent of his 3-point attempts the last four games. Gordon has still managed to pick up his points, but the Hoosiers are at their best when EJ is connecting from beyond the arc.\nThe NCAA Tournament Selection Committee didn’t do IU – or its Big Ten brethren – any favors, either. The Hoosiers are slotted as a No. 8 seed and will take on No. 9 seed Arkansas this Friday in Raleigh, N.C. Wisconsin, the Big Ten regular season and tournament champion, received a No. 3 seed, while Michigan State and Purdue received No. 5 and 6 seeds, respectively. The Big Ten normally garners higher postseason positions, but the committee obviously regards this season as a down year for the conference, a perception that has been aided by IU’s late collapse.\n“I have a lot of feeling on it,” interim coach Dan Dakich said of the Hoosiers’ seeding. “I think probably there’s a lot more involved to it than winning and losing, but it doesn’t matter – feelings – you just got to play. If we are a team that’s supposed to be as good as we were projected, we’ll have a chance to prove it.”\nThat’s one of the great things about March Madness. It’s an opportunity for rebirth and redemption, an opportunity to forget about past failures and rewrite the season. The improbable stories have already begun with conference tourney champions Georgia and Coppin State sneaking into the Big Dance. Can the Hoosiers right the ship before season’s end? The odds are stacked against them.\n“We all understand what’s at stake right now,” White said. “Everyone is eager.”\nEager to get busy living or get busy dying?