Column: Disappointing game, wonderful season at Assembly Hall

Nobody said the road back to the top of the Big Ten was going to be easy.

Tuesday night, nothing came easy for the Hoosiers on a night that could not have been scripted better by a Hollywood director.
The night was tabbed as a last hurrah, one final bow for the seniors and the last chance to make Bloomington the center of the basketball universe.

Not many people wanted to talk about the actual matchup on the floor, but it was the result of the game, a 67-58 Ohio State win, that would put a damper on the night.
Bloomington was bedlam, but the Buckeyes were IU’s kryptonite.

“I know we might not have had the night we wanted, but we still have a share of the big ten championship now,” IU Coach Tom Crean said. “We are all disappointed in the results tonight, but we are not disappointed about how we got to this point.”

It was a night to honor the seniors on the court, but in a way it was also a night to honor those in the stands too.

Those seniors in the stands that bought season tickets as freshmen when Jordan Hulls, Derek Elston and Christian Watford were growing up before our eyes and the rest of the fans that always believed that IU could return to the top of the Big Ten.

Not many basketball environments feature an alumni section – a lot of who might be senior citizens – that is just as loud as the student section.

Trust me, when the students were away for winter break the same buzz still filled the air of Assembly Hall.

After the numbers are calculated from Tuesday, IU will officially earn the mark of largest average home attendance in the Big Ten for the season. They led the conference entering senior night averaging 17,409 in 18 home games.

Fans make college basketball great, but Hoosier fans made this college basketball season special.

If you want to talk about a home court advantage in college basketball, you have to start with Assembly Hall, where the Hoosiers have now posted a 35-and-3 record in the last two seasons.

All season, IU has fed off of the crowd to fuel their defensive intensity. It was when Hulls hit his first three at 12:34, Assembly Hall went to another level. Every one stood up cheering louder than any point earlier.

In typical IU fashion, the Hoosiers fed off the crowd’s energy on the next defensive possession, forcing OSU into a shot clock violation.

It’s that type of home court advantage that Tom Crean was talking about when he said before the game in his prerecorded “pep talk” to the IU faithful that “there is absolutely no way that we make it here without you, everyone of you.”

Before we let Tuesday night’s disappointment cloud our memory of what happened at Assembly Hall, let’s remember some of the great moments that are now embedded into the walls of the Hall with all of the other historic Hoosier moments.

Who could forget when Sage Steele hosted Hysteria, the rout against North Carolina or the College GameDay Saturday that saw IU take down No. 1 Michigan.

Hoosier fans left nothing in the tank Tuesday night, filling Assembly Hall with more explosive energy than a bomb wrapped in dynamite.

For that IU fans, should be proud of themselves.

They, like the players on the court, gave it their all.

As this season at Assembly Hall closes and Branch McCracken Court bids farewell to the likes of Elston, Watford and Hulls, let the record show that IU’s rise back to the top is not done yet.

The result was not how the seniors wanted to go out, but for a group that has been through more than perhaps any other class in IU history, their drive to improve will only be fueled more.