This is the best possible thing that can happen to IU basketball.
Another game on national television, another disconcerting appearance. Immediately running out to a 9-0 lead, there was not a doubt in my mind and the Hoosier faithful that IU would allow Iowa to fight its way back into the contest.
An implosion of this sort to end the season — loss after loss, embarrassment after embarrassment — forces the Hoosier brass to look at the squad and really contemplate the future.
A better team would go for the jugular early in this type of must-win environment. A better team would call a timeout during a small Hawkeye run to kill the momentum. A better team would beat Iowa outright and not have to enter overtime against a definitively less-talented team.
Tom Crean and company are not a better team than almost anyone in the conference. The Big Ten is down overall this year. Yet, the Hoosiers can be found right near the cellar days away from March.
This team no longer cares. Sophomore center Thomas Bryant and junior forward James Blackmon Jr. may scream and pump their fists when things are going their way, but when the obstacles get a bit too challenging, the team gives up almost immediately.
Missed defensive rotations, an inability to even pretend to box out and then an immediate argument over which player screwed up doesn’t just happen every other game, it happens nearly every half.
Iowa’s no world-beater. They’re a subpar Big Ten team with nowhere near the amount of ability as its opposition on a near-nightly basis. Senior Peter Jok took the Hoosiers to the woodshed repeatedly with more than 30 points and Iowa — a team scoring less than 80 points a game — put up more than 90.
As the overtime period came to its fitful conclusion, ESPN color commentator Dan Dakich said it was the players’ fault for not showing up, seemingly defending Crean. This is absurd. With the campaign almost over, the team is clueless. Yelling step-by-step plays from the sideline and holding up signs explaining simple basketball maneuvers does not just deserve reprimanding of the players. It’s an organizational issue from top to bottom.
As painful as it is, the Hoosiers need this. They need to continue to fail reprehensively, or else we’ll see this again next year. And the year after that. And the foreseeable future.
Trailing by nine with 21.7 seconds left, Crean called a timeout even though it seemed the only play left to call was the team meal after the loss. In the same vein of this season, Crean had to extend the pain. The Big Red fanatics had to wait for the next 20 seconds in which their team would eventually fall short once again.
An institutional shift is on the horizon, or more timeouts preceding more pain is all we have to look forward to.
gigottfr@indiana.edu
@gott31
