Column: IU has yet to find “it”

If I trust you to do something, and you trust someone else to do that same thing, and that someone else trusts me to do it, odds are it won’t get done.

Got that?

We’ll all know it needs to be done. We think about doing it, sure. And we may even do part of it. But none of us will get it done.

That wonderful little word “it,” at least in the IU basketball dictionary, could be lots of different things. Ultimately, it means winning basketball games.

If we label “it” as winning, then the “its” which mean a lot have been hard to come by this season. Outside of a week-long stretch that is suddenly looking more like the exception and not the rule, the 2010-11 IU basketball season is barreling toward a bleak, blank forgetful abyss.

That’s the harsh reality. The team is 3-11 in Big Ten play, with two of those wins coming in that one week in late January, which gave people some faith in this team.
IU is 0-4 against Iowa and Northwestern, the two teams that join IU in the bottom three in the Big Ten standings.

Which brings us full circle to Saturday. The Hoosiers fell 70-64 to Northwestern in a game that was definitive of the season, a season in which the team is looking for answers and ultimately, not finding any.

It was the fourth straight loss for IU, and the “I-lost-count” time this season there’s been questions about IU’s will to win and effort to play 40 minutes.

After the game, a reporter asked sophomore forward Derek Elston why some of the many issues, especially on the defensive end, are still unanswered.

Elston paused before he said, “I wish I knew.”

Don’t we all? This is not to single out Elston, as if he were the only one that doesn’t have the answers. This team doesn’t have the answers.

Maybe that’s because there are so many questions. Why, when this team had a week off to prepare, did it struggle to defend in many fundamental aspects of the game? Northwestern has 3-point shooters, and the Hoosiers allowed the Wildcats to convert 11 of their 24 field goals from long range.

In a basketball sense, a lot of on-court defensive elements could use work, but in the larger picture it comes down to wanting to step up to the plate and doing what it takes to win.

I think, at least to an extent, players see the rest of the team as the ones that will get it done — see, that “it” came back.

When injured players were on the bench (namely, the two leading scorers, Christian Watford and Verdell Jones), it forced other players to grow into roles and play as if their play determined the outcomes of the game.

Enter wins against Illinois and Minnesota.

Now, Jones and Watford are back and this team is getting comfortable with itself again. Someone else, not me, will need to step up to win the game.

Crean said the team needed more “accountability.”

“A coach can sub and try to do that. And we can practice all week and have great practices and those things,” Crean said. “But defensive-minded players do not accept when teammates on the court are not defending the way they need to defend.”

If this team wants to bring this season from the dead in any way, it needs players — this team needs everyone — to play as if winning was up to them.

It’ll be tough to get “it” done with the remaining schedule — Purdue, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Illinois.

This season is heading in the wrong direction again, and frankly, there’s little time left to save it.

E-mail: nmhart@indiana.edu