IU close to last year's longest conference losing streak

With all the players added this season and progress made earlier in the year, IU has the same problems it had in 2008-09.

In fact, it is coming dangerously close to the longest losing streak of last season within conference.

The group who began the Crean era grabbed its one win in a convenient place — for historical purposes, at least.

Who wants to combat being the team to lose the most conference games with the longest losing streak in the Big Ten?

That Iowa win, thrown right in the middle of IU’s conference schedule, separated stints of eight and nine losses. It also saved IU from losing 18-straight games.

This season, though, IU has now come across that streak. A loss against Wisconsin would be this team’s ninth consecutive Big Ten defeat, and they have room for more.
Only three wins from last year’s total, this team could conceivably finish the season on a 12-game losing streak.

We’ve already asked the question of whether this team should be capable of winning another game. But if it doesn’t, what does a 12-game losing streak to close the year do to all the progress shown early in the season?

Those tough losses in late Janurary against Iowa on Jan. 24 and Illinois on Jan. 30 set off this streak and sent a soaring team –by recent IU standards — plummeting into the whole it currently sits in.

The Wisconsin game could bring IU, in some respect, on par with last year’s season with opportunity for deviation in the form of more losses.

With all the ups and downs of this season — certainly more ups than a year ago until January — what does this streak that has the ability to surpass last season’s do to the idea of growth?

The way in which they lose obviously presents a different look, but the schedule of win-losses is beginning to look similar to a season ago.