Column: This year, there’s light at the end of the tunnel

IU basketball has had a season on the brink, and more recently, a couple of seasons in hell.

Consider this year a season in limbo.

Welcome to 2010-11 IU basketball. It should be a year marked not with
excruciatingly long losing streaks. Barring unforeseen calamity, it should be a year where the team reaches the .500 mark.

But it will be gosh-darn difficult this season not to look to the future. With only one senior on this year’s team — and Jeremiah Rivers’ role could be limited — there’s a roster of players not leaving IU anytime soon.

Then there’s recruiting. Cody Zeller might not be IU’s savior, but everyone knows that he signifies a dramatic step toward the Hoosiers’ recovery process — and more practically, he will fit in right away.

And Zeller will be here soon. Next year soon.

Add Hanner Perea, Ron Patterson, Peter Jurkin and possibly other recruits such as Yogi Ferrell or Gary Harris in 2012, and voila! You’ve got yourself a good basketball team.

And for anyone who has been speculating about when the team will be “back,” you can almost start to see it. It’s not quite in sight, but it’s agonizingly close.
Which brings us back to this season.

The team opens regular season play Friday against Florida Gulf Coast. In the course of the next five months, IU won’t be the same team it has been the past two seasons. It will be better.

But in reality, it’s hard to blame anyone for looking to a brighter future in a season when people discuss a potential postseason NIT berth as a positive.
Most preseason projections put the Hoosiers at No. 8 or No. 9 in the Big Ten — good enough for a few potential upsets, but not quite ready to compete with the conference’s elite.

That’s not a knock on this year’s team. I’m not blowing off this season. But the foundation of Tom Crean’s rebuilding project is still visible, and the final product isn’t due for completion just yet.

So, a preview story about this season in some ways also incorporates the next few seasons. The likes of Verdell Jones, Christian Watford, Maurice Creek, etc. will be back next season — and better than they’ll be this season.

A 2012-13 frontcourt of senior Watford, with Zeller and Perea alongside, supported by future seniors Derek Elston and Bobby Capobianco — that’s basketball heaven.
A 2011 backcourt of veterans Creek, Hulls and Jones — that’s starting to get enviable.
Recruiting classes in 2012 and even as far out as 2014 that could be ranked in the top five in the nation — that will make other Big Ten teams jealous.

I won’t fault you this season if you’re watching the team and thinking about what it will be in a year or two years or five. You won’t be alone. For now, it finally appears that the light is at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

The team will get plenty of fan support this season — it’s IU basketball, after all — and just because people want to think about the future doesn’t mean they won’t support the present. They will.

And maybe there’s some sort of cardinal sin in thinking too far ahead of myself.
Zeller will underperform next year (as is the knock against his older brothers), the team will play too many games like it did against Ferris State this year and the recruiting classes won’t reach their potential.

But even typing that sentence made it hard to believe. There are too many positives on IU’s horizon.

This season is just the forerunner.