Guards getting better in Big Ten

The general wisdom surrounding Tom Crean at Marquette suggested he was a coach guards would love.

His up-tempo, drive-and-kick system created lots of open looks for shooters and assists for passers, creating legends such as Dwyane Wade, Travis Diener and the impressive backcourt trio he left in Milwaukee to take the reins at IU.

But implementing that same offense has not come without frustration this season. Just one guard in regular rotation – Devan Dumes – had significant minutes at the D-I level before 2008.

Tom Pritchard stepped up early as a viable offensive option, and it’s worked well enough. Pritchard’s 12 points per game are the best among Big Ten freshmen, and he’s just inside the conference top 20 in scoring at No. 19.

But the Hoosiers still lacked consistent guard play.

Different players stepped up – Malik Story against Gonzaga, Dumes against TCU, Nick Williams and Dumes again against Iowa, Williams against Illinois – early.

But the progression into the heart of the conference season has been accompanied by another progression: that of more consistent scoring from the Hoosiers’ headline guards. Talk of development and growth is being replaced with words like “synergy” and “unity,” heady stuff for a team that got together for the first time in May.

“We’re getting more confident in one another and then ourselves as well,” Dumes said in a statement. “I feel like that’s why we’re stepping out and making better plays and smarter decisions at the end of games.”

Statistics tell the story well: Of the five guards considered the greatest threats to score on the IU roster – Story, Williams, Dumes, Verdell Jones and Matt Roth – only Story and Roth have lower scoring averages in conference play than overall, and those numbers have shrunk just 0.3 and 0.1 points per game, respectively.

Dumes has held steady at a team-high 13.6 points per game, while Jones’ conference average rose 1.2 points to 10 per game and Williams’ went up 0.7 points to 9.1 points per game. It should also be noted that Story’s best game as a Hoosier came last Sunday, when the freshman came off the bench to score 14 points in the loss to Minnesota.

All this math might add up to nothing, pure coincidence, or the wonderful human capacity to read any statistic to say what you want.

But the Hoosiers have also displayed a generally increased confidence through the Big Ten season that was only fleetingly there in November and December. Take away the blowout losses to Ohio State and Illinois, and the Hoosiers have lost their other five conference games by an average of 5.4 points. You obviously can’t just take away the two road meltdowns, but that number and Crean’s team’s newfound poise in those other five games seem to indicate something is working.

The drive-and-kick game was also noticeably improved Wednesday, with the Hoosiers tallying 19 assists, their highest total in any conference game.

“I feel like I’ve got to get better at it,” Dumes said of Crean’s drive-and-kick offense, “but I feel like I’m pretty comfortable with it. Verdell’s pretty good at it, and Malik’s getting better at it. I think we’re all getting pretty good at it.”

Jones added in the same statement the biggest key, in his mind, was simply the fact that the Hoosiers have finally logged enough minutes together to feel comfortable as one unit.

Whatever the reason or reasons for the apparent increase in confidence, IU’s backcourt is the hinge upon which most success this season will swing. Progress there, continuous and incremental all year long, is starting to shine through.