Column: This season ended before Saturday’s listless loss

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The schedule says that IU’s season will end this week in the Big Ten Tournament.

But it was over long before that.

It was over before the ball was tipped for a Saturday morning matinee performance at Illinois.

It was over when questions about this team this month turned more and more to questions about effort, energy, combativeness, will, attitude, mental toughness or whatever you want to label it.

It might have been over before the finishing stretch of the schedule pitted the Hoosiers against three of the best teams in the country.

When exactly did the season end? I’m not sure. It’s impossible to point to any one date and say, “Aha. That’s it. That’s when this thing ended!”

But during the course of a month, it died a slow, tedious death.

The eight-game losing streak — and find me shocked if it doesn’t extend to a nine-game losing streak in the first game of the Big Ten Tournament — is the outward evidence.

But there’s something else about this late-season stretch that just makes it near impossible to endure, and that’s not coming from a fan’s perspective.

This IU team just isn’t all there, and with the clock reaching midnight, it won’t ever get it together this season.

In this week’s games against Wisconsin and Illinois, there are clear signs of on-court chemistry issues. Whether it’s senior Jeremiah Rivers visibly frustrated with sophomore guard Jordan Hulls on a possession Thursday night or the choppiest one-against-the-world offense run on repeat Saturday, this team is not clicking.

It was painful to listen to Hulls and junior guard Verdell Jones answer questions after Saturday’s 72-48 loss. Their faces were filled with frustration, disappointment and dismay. They tried their hardest to remain positive, to turn the focus to the conference tournament and to keep their heads up.

And that’s the tough part to figure.

It’s not that this team, or the individual parts that make the team, decided to mail in this season. They keep playing. But when the whistle blows, the performance doesn’t translate.

I don’t tend to read people well, but translating body language Saturday was simple — there was no confidence from the players. There was no trust on defense, there was no heart on offense.

It was a going-through-the-motions game against an Illinois team that has suddenly kicked things into gear as it fights for an NCAA Tournament berth.

Maybe it’s too late to be writing that this season is already over, especially if it was true eight games ago. But you want to believe the best in people, and occasional glimpses kept stringing me along, making me believe that this season still had a heartbeat.

But more and more it became clear that those glimpses might have been almost solely due to the fans at Assembly Hall remaining as loud and passionate as ever.
Some home games stayed close maybe only because of that.

In the metanarrative — the big picture — of the IU basketball program, this season was one which should’ve easily been forgotten. It was merely a stepping stone and not a stumbling block to greater things. But now, these issues of chemistry, of energy, of effort will linger into next season. These players and coaches are coming back, minus Rivers and plus Cody Zeller and Austin Etherington.

And unless Zeller exceeds even the highest of expectations, this current roster and this coaching staff now have some head-scratching to do this summer. Because of this season’s results, that multiyear cushion IU coach Tom Crean had — and yet still deserves to have — got a little less comfortable. Not in a hot seat kind of way (not even close), but in a way that makes improvement next season much more a necessity for this team to be anywhere close to being on track to where it can be.

In some sense, this team might be beginning to move on. In a curious move, assistant coach Bennie Seltzer was reported to be out recruiting instead of sitting on the sidelines against Illinois.

The eyes are focusing toward next year, and you can’t really blame anyone for doing such.

There aren’t any signs of life left this year to see.


E-mail: nmhart@indiana.edu