Men's basketball team welcomes Frogs tonight

Fresh off games against two nationally ranked opponents and on the cusp of a nationally televised game against rival Kentucky, the Hoosiers’ seemingly easier contest tonight against TCU could be considered a dangerous game for the typical IU basketball team. But as IU men’s basketball coach Tom Crean has reiterated throughout the season, this year’s team is anything but typical.

IU (4-4) will look to stay perfect at Assembly Hall while trying to stop TCU’s (7-3) six-game winning streak. The Horned Frogs will come to Bloomington led by first-year coach Jim Christian, who arrived at TCU after six seasons as coach at Kent State.

Crean and Christian worked together at Western Kentucky, and Christian was a member of Crean’s wedding party. But that friendship can be expected to take a backseat, as Christian’s Horned Frogs will look to expose the younger Hoosiers, who so far have had trouble adjusting to the speed of the college game.

“The speed of the game is still the No. 1 Achilles’ heel we have right now,” Crean said. “Because it’s just a process of going through it and understanding the intensity and the mindset that teams have that have been together for a while.”

Despite dropping both games last week, Crean said he saw improvement from his team against then-No. 5 Gonzaga. Communication on the court, something Crean has consistently preached, appeared to increase against Gonzaga, and Crean said he hopes the team is able to continue to improve on that area of its game.

“They played to win,” Crean said. “They played with a very strong mindset. Our communication got better on the court, and now we have to build on it.”

But while the communication has improved, there are still a number of areas the team must address. Along with being prone to turnovers, the Hoosiers struggled at times to stop more talented opposing teams from going on extended scoring runs.

Freshman guard Matt Roth said offensive streaks are a natural part of the game, but the Hoosiers need to get better at recovering when the opposition goes on a tear.

“We just got to keep working on bouncing back from those,” Roth said. “Everybody makes runs. It’s a game of runs; we’ve just got to keep working on that.”

Another challenge facing the Hoosiers is a lack at depth of point guard. With freshman Verdell Jones’ status still up in the air, walk-on Daniel Moore will likely continue to see an increase in minutes.

Against Wake Forest and Gonzaga, Moore logged the most minutes on the team, only getting three minutes of rest Saturday against the Zags.

Crean has sung the praises of his freshman walk-on, only wishing that he be more assertive during the team’s practices.

“He’s a ballplayer; he really is,” Crean said of Moore. “You can put him in a lot of different positions. We just need him to be a little more talkative in practice so it carries over in games.”