Column: It's difficult to explain recent wins

If I knew why the IU basketball team is suddenly playing better, I’d tell you.

Really, I would.

And if it was such a simple answer, then the Hoosiers never really would’ve played bad, right? A simple problem would’ve been solved a long time ago.

But college basketball teams are never defined by easy answers, and that’s certainly true of IU.

The college basketball world is made up of 18- to 22-year-old students who are learning about themselves as they continue to learn the game.

If it was so easy to define a team, things would go according to plan. Tom Izzo’s preseason No. 2 Michigan State team wouldn’t currently be searching for answers after a 20-point whooping at Iowa, the team’s ninth loss of the year.

It’s a fickle sport with head-scratching results.

Which brings us back to IU. This team was headed for not much as the spring semester began. Trounced 93-81 at Northwestern on Jan. 9, IU had lost six games in a row and had yet to win a game of any significance.

Ever since then (minus one terrible trip to Iowa City), this Hoosier team has been playing much better — inspired basketball, if you want to call it that.

But why? You’d think this team should, if anything, be getting worse.

Sophomore guard Maurice Creek never got healthy and then suffered a stress fracture that ended his season.

Junior guard Verdell Jones missed two games and still isn’t fully healthy. Leading scorer Christian Watford will miss a couple weeks with a broken bone in his hand.

Take that and the Hoosiers have reeled off two wins in six days against ranked teams.
IU doesn’t have much of an interior presence this season, but in both of those wins, it was the big guys who played well. Against Illinois, they limited Illini center Mike Tisdale to eight points (19 fewer than he scored against IU last season).

Minnesota’s intimidating frontcourt was thrashed by much-maligned IU forward Tom Pritchard, who had a career night.

There are definitely some reasons why this team is playing better, but it’s near impossible to put a “that’s it” to any solution.

First, the injuries have forced players to play instead of relying on others to get the job done. Sophomore guard Jordan Hulls in particular has stepped up while Jones and Creek have been sidelined.

You could say the same for Pritchard with Watford out.

Second, you have to credit IU coach Tom Crean, who has mixed up the offense and defense to accommodate the team’s needs. His recruiting is never questioned, but his in-game coaching has been this season. The past two weeks show what Crean is capable of doing — and doing well — on the court.

Third, this team is just playing harder. There’s a belief amongst the players that they can, indeed, win Big Ten basketball games.

Those three reasons (and others, I’m sure) maybe help scratch the surface, but it really doesn’t make much sense why this team is playing better.

It’s as easy to explain why this team is playing well as it was to pinpoint why the team was playing so poorly in December and early January.

The truth is the Hoosiers are playing better.

It’s just hard to really know why.

E-mail: nmhart@indiana.edu