Column: Why the IU-Butler game mattered

The Hoosiers won their first game of the season Sunday night.

It wasn’t a blowout, and it wasn’t pretty, but IU proved it can beat a team that matters.

Obviously, IU has come away with victories against five other opponents already, but those wins always left lingering questions.

In those games, the Hoosiers’ defense was dominant. But look who was playing offense.

IU’s offense looked prolific, but what was the quality of the defense?

Cody Zeller is putting up big numbers on both sides of the ball, but has he really gone against a true big man?

IU Coach Tom Crean’s squad looked like a Final Four team against five schools whose conference I had to look up.

That all changed Sunday, as the Hoosiers convincingly defeated a decent, though not great, Bulldogs team 75-59 to begin a new chapter in this year’s campaign.

It is a stretch that includes games against North Carolina State away, soon-to-be-top-ranked Kentucky in Assembly Hall and Notre Dame in a neutral Conseco Fieldhouse.

Now the Hoosiers are proving they are a top-25 team for the first time in Crean’s tenure and an increasingly likely candidate to be on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble when March rolls around.

And it wasn’t the fact that IU won the game that has me nervously second-guessing my preseason NIT-berth prediction. It was how the Hoosiers defeated the Bulldogs and the darling of college basketball, Coach Brad Stevens.

Grit. Toughness. Hustle.

“We knew coming in it was going to be a street fight,” Zeller said.

The Hoosiers were thrown into the ring with a physical, defensive-minded Butler team and were able to keep fighting until the last bell.

Players were hit; contact was made; fouls, at least beginning in the second half, weren’t always called and electrifying plays that normally led to big drives were quickly quelled.

In a game that included 40 personal fouls, 37 turnovers and 27 steals, Crean’s Hoosiers never let the Bulldogs punch them in the mouth without returning the favor.

“When you play elite teams, which I believe they are, you better bring that level of toughness, and I believe we did,” Crean said.

Zeller faced Butler center Andrew Smith, who is listed as the same height and entered the game as the Bulldogs’ leading scorer.

Zeller finished with 16 points and eight rebounds, while Smith went 1-for-7 from the field for three points.

Amidst a battlefield of sweat, noise and passion, the emotion of the game was painted on both teams’ faces.

Because this wasn’t just a game to give IU’s its sixth-straight win and Butler its third loss.

This was a game that carried state-wide implications, as a rising Butler squad, which has outshone all other Indiana schools in basketball in the last two years, went against the faded glory of IU.

Furthermore, it was a chance for Crean to hamper the unfair comparisons drawn between his program and Stevens’.

When the noise reached its loudest after a Zeller reverse one-handed slam, there was a reminder that Butler’s growing popularity had still not surpassed the Hoosier state’s mainstay program in Bloomington — something I questioned when Bulldogs apparel began sprouting up around campus last March.

There is now no question that this IU team is on the rise. It’s just a matter of seeing how high the ceiling is.