The season starts Saturday

The tables turned more than a bit Tuesday night at Assembly Hall.

Four days after an encouraging blowout win over an Anderson squad that barely deserved to play at Assembly Hall, the IU men’s basketball team struggled with, and more than a few times looked pedestrian against, a school few have ever heard of.

Though they rarely led, the Beavers at one point closed the second-half gap to just one, scaring more than a few of the assembled 13,052 fans inside Assembly Hall.

It mattered not, as the Hoosiers slowly grew themselves from oh-so-slim 37-36 all the way to 72-54 when the clock hit zeroes. Still, the positive momentum gained from IU’s pasting of Anderson one weekend ago was tempered in places and lost in others Tuesday.

And I’ll say again what I said before: It doesn’t matter.

Games like this are good for few things, and none of them should have any effect on educated fan opinion.

Michigan State lost its only exhibition last season to Grand Valley State. The end result: They went to the Sweet 16, a destination we can all agree these Hoosiers won’t sniff in 2009.
So tell me again that exhibitions matter.

Yes, they give teams valuable in-game experience and tape to watch – all the more valuable for this particular team, which had neither of those a week ago. But the benefits to those of us who don’t run when Tom Crean blows his whistle are minimal.

For his part, Crean admitted his team didn’t play well against Bemidji State, perhaps a factor of experience, just like everything else this season. Crean said the Hoosiers had a “terrible” practice Sunday, a signal that IU isn’t going to adjust to the pace of a college basketball season any faster than anticipated.

“Everything’s brand new,” Crean said. “They get up 21-2 the other night, who thought that was going to happen? It doesn’t matter who you’re playing, it’s never that easy. Tonight, we knew in the first TV time-out it was going to be a grinder.”

Now I could keep you here with busy opining on all sorts of nuance and breakdown. I could talk to you about the Hoosiers’ improvement in rebounding Tuesday or their digression in shot selection and the ability to drive.

But at the end of the day, this night means nothing. Exhibitions are a mythical beginning to the season, when you see players excited to be on the floor for the first time but not nearly as intense or focused as they will be when wins and losses start counting.

Even more than that, Crean is right when he says these players don’t know how to handle an actual college basketball season, when games come two and three times and week and focus is a requirement at all times. These Hoosiers are still learning that, along with everything else, and judging who they are based on one night – a good one like Friday or a mediocre one like Tuesday – is just foolish.

If it happens Saturday, feel free to trouble yourself – then there will truly be something to worry about.

But not this night. It’s an exhibition game, that’s all you need to know. The season starts Saturday.

See you Friday.