40 minutes of effort

If the IU basketball team wants more wins this season, it will have to play with the same 40 minutes of effort we saw Saturday.

IU’s 80-61 win against Michigan was, at this team’s current level, a masterpiece.
The team played with energy and confidence. Defense produced offense. IU executed all night and especially in the clutch.

Players stepped up to the task, namely sophomore guard Jordan Hulls and junior guard Verdell Jones.

But let’s face it: At this point last season, IU had more Big Ten wins. And then the team tanked. It was an excruciatingly painful 11-game losing streak for fans.

The Hoosiers have shown enough this season that a bad losing streak isn’t a long-lost memory.

And it showed Saturday that there’s enough working parts on this team that such losing streaks, like the ones of recent seasons or the more recent six-game one that just ended, don’t have to be the norm.

For IU, the Michigan win can’t be a blip on the schedule or a bump on a roadway of disaster.

So what must IU take from Saturday to have continued successes in a conference that is quite unfriendly to teams not playing to the highest potential?

Not to sound cliché, but IU played a 40-minute basketball game against Michigan.
Earlier in the season, the Hoosiers often amounted to good starts (vs. Minnesota and Kentucky) or furious comeback attempts (vs. Boston College, both games in Las Vegas), but never did IU play 40 minutes like it did Saturday.

It took 9:54 into the game for Michigan to record its first rebound. Already IU had a 16-9 lead, and the game never got any closer.

When the Wolverines showed any signs of life in the second half, it was Hulls knocking down three 3-pointers and senior guard Jeremiah Rivers sealing the deal with an emphatic dunk.

IU coach Tom Crean discussed his players stepping up in key moments.

“That’s what you want your team to do, and the team has got to do so many different things inside of it,” Crean said. “It never goes according to script, and it never goes according to how you practice. There always has to be adjustments, and that’s what you want basketball players to make, but those things all come out of spacing, fearlessness and the ball moving.”

Granted, Michigan was not the strongest of opponents and IU matched up well with the Wolverines, who lacked an inside presence.

The game was also at Assembly Hall, where IU is 10-2 on the year and 0-6 away from it.

But anytime IU plays like it did Saturday — a full 40-minute effort — it can be competitive. It can be that team that many predicted would be .500 at season’s end.

If it doesn’t do that, if it settles into the bad habits of its six-game losing streak, more losing streaks await. That much is clear.

For IU, it can’t settle with this win. That’s the danger with this team, and we’ll learn soon enough if this was that one-hit or if it was a building block for things to come.
 

E-mail: nmhart@indiana.edu