And yet there I was, getting all goosebumpy as John Laskowski nervously interviewed Rivers at halftime. Rivers talked about his son, Jeremiah, his (Doc’s) excitement on his son’s announcement that he was considering Indiana as a destination, and his desire to just be a parent during IU games. He even had the IU hat on. It was pretty cool. And it was probably the most noteworthy thing about IU’s relatively lackluster win over USC-Upstate Monday night.

This year’s Hoosiers present a weird paradox. They’re not last year’s team, as much as Devan Dumes might wish they were. They’re definitely better — you can see the heightened level of play almost immediately, from Rivers to Christian Watford (man, is it nice to have an athletic big man with touch in an IU uniform again) to Derek Elston to Maurice Creek, who might just become my favorite player on this year’s team.

But this year’s Hoosiers are not a good team. There is a long way to go from “better than 6-25″ to “good.” And so while last year a win like Monday night’s might have been cause for minor excitement — IU led by 20! IU scored 69 points! — this year, it feels harder to process. So, am I supposed to be excited that IU seems borderline competent again? Or should I be depressed by the fact that an 18-turnover game at home against USC-Upstate has me considering excitement? See what I mean?

It’s hard to know how to feel about these Hoosiers in the same way it’s hard to know whether or not any of them are good. It’s too early to know. Gauging college basketball teams early in the year is always a foolhardy proposition. Gauging a team that will play four freshmen and a transfer significant minutes is especially difficult. But here’s what I noticed so far:

• There’s a reason Christian Watford was such a big-time recruit. Imagine this guy in high school. He’s tall, athletic, he has touch around the rim, he can — gasp — dribble. I can just picture the rows of scouts drooling at his NBA workouts in (let’s hope) four years. But for all of Watford’s natural talent, bigger, stronger players are going to dominate him in the paint. He’s weak. He’ll get stronger; I hear IU has a pretty nice new weight room. In the meantime, though, tougher opponents are going to beat him up. You can already tell.

• I really like Maurice Creek. It helps that my roommate’s girlfriend goes by Mo, so we can call now start calling her Maurice Creek instead of Maurice Jones-Drew. It also helps that Creek has a pretty complete game, including a three-point stroke that’s just mechanical enough to reveal some serious coaching on the part of someone very dedicated along the line. Creek is like a way, way better version of Dumes: He doesn’t hesitate and he doesn’t rush. He knows what he’s supposed to do and he does it.

• Jeremiah Rivers is maybe a little shakier than you’d like. Rivers is a solid defender and a great passer, but other than that he’s a little more careless with the ball than a lock-down point guard is supposed to be. For a second there, I thought I was watching Daniel Moore.

• Hey, is that Daniel Moore? I didn’t recognize the long hair, man! Good to see you again!

• IU is still not in shape. This will come, but for now the Hoosiers are all about pushing the ball up the floor until the time comes to get back on defense. Transition defense is sloowwwww. It looked almost as bad as Kentucky, only IU doesn’t have an insane John Wall to bail them out of embarrassing home losses. (Or a third of the talent. But who’s counting.)

• Gus Johnson doesn’t yell for just anything. A few times I was hoping Johnson would let loose with some of his trademark hysteria, but not today. He was in full workmanlike Johnson mode. The man has range, people.

• Jordan Hulls could overtake Moore’s spot as IU’s most adorable, scrappy, lovable little white dude. It helps that he’s way better at basketball, too.

• Pritchard is still Pritchard, still sluggish around the rim on offense, still frustrating to watch in the pivot, still a surprisingly effective rebounder. He should be a good counterpoint to Watford’s streaky athleticism, but who knows, right?

• Tom Crean did not go to the dry cleaner this week. Come on, Tom. A gold and blue tie? Pulling from the back of the closet in the discarded Marquette collection already? For shame.

• But hey, at least he wore a tie. USC-Upstate’s coach rocked an open brown shirt with brown slacks and a brown coat. Tremendous look, really. He may have liked the way he looked; I did not.

• Oh, and one more thing: College hoops is back. Like, officially. Feels good, right?

By far the most satisfying part of the season has been watching Tom Crean, watching him both on and off the court. Watching him handle his business, watch him coach every game like IU has a Final Four shot, watch him prod players along without showing even the slightest hint of frustration, watch him work a Chicago crowd into a veritable frenzy. All the while, his former team, Marquette, has been running roughshod over the best conference in college basketball; they might get a No. 1 NCAA Tourney seed. Until last night, it was a question as to whether or not IU would win a single game the rest of the season.

Ah, but win they did. Ryan predicted it (he downplays his predictive abilities, but the man has a gift), as did Devan Dumes and Tijan Jobe (whose new nickname should be “prophet.”) It felt like it was time, didn’t it? An awful Iowa team playing Indiana at home. Indiana seeming to, in its last few games, pull things together a bit more. Last night was the night.

It’s not about us, really, but I’m curious: After the game, how did you feel? Excited? Relieved? Anything? I’ll be honest and say that I wasn’t overjoyed or thrilled or cathartically relieved like I assumed. I thought I would be jumping up and down, or something. Instead, I was just kind of pleased — glad to know the Hoosiers won’t go the entire season without a Big Ten win, that Crean’s and his players’ hard work was rewarded, at least for one night. Not overjoyed. Just happy. That’s good enough.

Of course, though the result was the same, there was plenty about the game that had 2008-09 Hoosiers written all over it. Let’s take a look:

SHON MORRIS

Just kidding. I’m not going to write about this dude anymore. The only thing worse than having to listen to him ruin a perfectly good IU win with non-sequitors and weirdness is stressing it too much the day after. Forget it.

TOM PRITCHARD, CORRELATION, AND CAUSATION

In all of IU’s Big Ten losses, Tom Pritchard played at least 24 minutes (and usually around 30), scored at least eight points, and, with the exception of IU’s loss to Northwestern, attempted at least eight field goals. Usually more. Last night, he played 14 minutes, attempted two shots, scored one, and that was that.

There’s no question Pritchard has been IU’s best player. This means nothing. It’s curious and funny to look at and it caught my eye this morning when I was looking at stats, but as they say, correlation does not equal causation. Pritchard playing few minutes last night was not why IU won. That would be funny, were it true. Alas, it is not.

(Note: Not that anyone actually thought this. Just pointing it out.)

DEVAN DUMES

Devan Dumes is Rex Grossman. Remember the “Good Rex, Bad Rex” thing he had going on in 2006, where he would be utterly brilliant for one game and then put up some of the worst, most incomprehensibly bad numbers the next? That’s like Dumes, except he does that every possession. Last night, he strung a really efficient, smart, incredibly well-shot game together, and he only turned the ball over twice. If he can re-create even a facsimile of that — maybe missing a few times, coming back down to Earth, whatever — and still protect the ball, he may have turned a corner. Maybe “Bad Devan” just needed a few games at the Big Ten level to get gone forever.

TEMPO-FREE IS THE WAY TO BE

(I don’t even know what that means.) Key to victory: Making shots and not turning the ball over. Seems simple enough. But usually IU is awful at both of those things, which is why they only score 91 points per 100 possessions (and that number is probably way lower during Big Ten play). Last night, they scored 1.7 points per possession, their best mark of the year and one so good that they didn’t need to really clamp down defensively. They allowed about as many points as they usually do. That mark will be difficult to keep up, but again, for one night, we’ll take it.

That’s my motto for Feb. 4, 2009: We’ll take it.

So yeah, the past few weeks — the Michigan game, then the Illinois debacle, and so on — have been pretty depressing. It’s enough to challenge one’s sanity. Why am I watching this team? What’s the point? Do I really not care about Indiana basketball?

Of course I do, and the Hoosiers’ game against Minnesota proved why: They’re getting there. It might not happen on the road, and it might not happen soon, but IU will win a Big Ten game, and it will be awesome.

Until then there’s not a lot to analyze, really. The Hoosiers are just as bad as they look. They’re inefficient offensively because they turn the ball over like crazy. They allow far too many open looks, they don’t have the size to match up, they’re inexperienced, and so forth. There are only so many ways to write that brilliant batch of analysis you just read without getting sick of writing it, let alone reading it. But at one point, I now feel confident in saying, the stars will align, the opposing team won’t knock down those shots, the game will come down to the last few plays, and the Hoosiers won’t turn the ball over, or miss a free throw, or do something utterly erratic that boggles the mind and makes one throw a pillow at the opposite couch. They’ll complete that pass; they’ll make that shot; they’ll avoid weirdness. And they’ll win.

It will be short-lived and it might only be one game. But like I said: It will be awesome.

BRIEF, UNIMPORTANT MISCELLANY:

Without this turning into one of those gawd-awful notes columns some writers still do (Unfortunately Mike Downey retired from the Chicago Tribune; I so miss his wacky observations about American Idol and kids these days!), some random periphery stuff:

– The Indy Star’s always-interesting, always-verbose (really, though, who am I to talk?) Terry Hutchens is asking today why Devan Dumes wasn’t in the game down the stretch, even with his foul issues, which was hard not to notice during the game. It was made more obvious by Dumes taking that last three, which appeared to be a play set up for Matt Roth on a double screen. Roth was too slow getting around, Minnesota defended it well, and it was left to Dumes to take one of his wild-but-somehow-still-occasionally-goes-in 3-pointers. So, where was Dumes? And to a larger point, as a commenter noted under Alex’s wrap yesterday, are Tom Crean’s substitution patterns a teensy bit unreliable?

I don’t really have an answer, not only because it’s not something I’ve really noticed but I’m sort of hesitant to question how Crean could better maximize this team’s limited human capital. There’s not a lot of wiggle room there; they’re just bad, and he knows it. Tinkering too much with the Hoosiers’ lineup is a little like a fly adjusting its above-highway flight by a few inches. Recalibrate all you want, but that truck’s windshield is still coming.

– People actually showed up! To the game! And wore the right color shirt! And got to keep that shirt! And the shirt had a Winston Churchill quote on it! This is a win-win for everyone; as long as tickets remain $5 and t-shirts remain plentiful, maybe the Hoosiers can keep that attendance ticking in this, our year of recession (both athletic and economic).

Lowering cost, matching price to demand — sounds like a smart business strategy to me. But then my only business course was in sixth grade, when I played Lemonade Stand on my Apple IIE at study hall.

In the interest of staving off those existential demons, let’s get positive for a few paragraphs here, shall we? Cool. As there is no Shon Morris to take any rage out on this week, it’ll hopefully be a little easier.

(First, let’s do a musical interlude, something to help the mood:

WHOA OH OH. WHOA OH OH. Man, I’m ready now. Let’s do this.)

Ryan touched on much of “The Good” last night, but at least one of his points deserves to be hammered home: Verdell Jones is an improving basketball player. The freshman was set behind by an early season injury, but he seems fully recovered. What’s more, he seems to be learning. His direction of the offense (which at times against Ohio State’s matchup zone stretched the good-faith use of the term “offense”; standing overloading one side of the court doesn’t work if the overloading duo are standing right next to each other) was, as Ryan wrote, competent. His ability to get to the rim is a welcome sight. Jones isn’t a conventionally quick player. He glides, swoops to the lane, takes long jump stops before settling in to his mid-range jumper. He’s far from a perfect player — his defense is a long way away, among other things — but having someone who can both distribute the ball and command the team and also, you know, shoot the ball from time to time (cough Daniel Moore cough) is big.

What else? Well, fortunately for IU, last night’s loss could have been a lot narrower. I suppose that isn’t fortunate, since IU ended up losing anyway, but it should be noted that Ohio State shot the ball exceptionally well. Like, almost-off-the-charts well. Their effective field goal percentage (which accords an extra half percentage point for three point shots made) was 65.1 percent. Their season average is 51.1. And, though IU has had its woes in guarding the perimeter this season, they’re holding opponents to 52.7 percent eFG% on the season. What does all this mean? It means that while IU was probably worse than usual in defending the three, they played a team that was also very hot from the field, especially in that first half.

Anyway, for a little more statnerdness, below is a chart with Dean Oliver’s Four Factors; you’ll notice the eFG discrepancy immediately.

Ohio State misses a few of the shots and well, who knows? Actually, I know: IU still would have lost. But the loss wouldn’t have seemed so bad, and we would be talking about how the Hoosiers bounced back well from the Illinois loss, etc. See what I mean?

Let’s see, what else was good last night? Oh, yeah: Steve Lavin and Brent Musberger.

Because IU isn’t very good this year, it will likely be the rare Tuesday that I get to watch the Hoosiers play while the dulcet sounds of Brent Musberger ring in my head, but Brent, if you’re out there, just know that I love you. Your verbal flubs and occasional senior moments are totally fine with me. For whatever reason, your gravitas is like Tom Brokaw’s — you could fail miserably at your job and I’d still think you were awesome, just because your voice is so great. You and Brokaw were the televised soundtrack to my childhood. Keep trucking, Brenty.

And as for Steve …

Some people may get tired of Lavin’s schtick. Some people might get irritated when he says “pepper-pot,” or get confused at any of his one-off coined phrases that he invents and then discards like so much detritus. They’d have a perfectly reasonable preference. I could understand such a belief. But I do not share it. Rather, Lavin was the highlight of my night last night, the only guy that makes things interesting. And it’s not just the schtick, either — he’s a genuinely reasoned, well-thought-out dude, and he makes smart points both about the nuts and bolts of the game and about the larger situation, in this case, the ongoing rebuilding saga surrounding Our Indiana. I thought he and Brent killed it, and that was, as I’ve noted, a very good thing.

Lastly: We have to invent some sort of weekly award for Tom Crean. Maybe we can put it in the end of TMA, maybe not. But for a guy coaching dudes who are not only outmatched physically but who are routinely outsmarted and outplayed, he never — ever! I’ve been trying to catch him! — shows overt frustration. He only goes so far as the same level of frustration other coaches have with their players regardless of talent. He could be coaching the Harlem Globetrotters; his face gives nothing away. I can’t maintain the same, and I’m sitting at home on the couch with my laptop out. This man deserves the Nobel Prize. Or at least something we can cook up.

Anyway, that’s The Day In Indiana Positivity. Fun, right? Let’s see how long this one lasts.

As R, Alex, and my friends yesterday could attest, I racked my brain for a while thinking of things to say about this game, and I really don’t have much. Some blowouts you can analyze; some are deceptive. There was nothing deceptive happening Saturday. Illinois was just so much better in every facet of basketball it was simultaneously boring and engaging. That doesn’t happen often.

In any case, this is your Monday open thread. Discuss whatever you’d like, whether it’s Saturday’s game, or when you predict IU will win its first Big Ten contest, or whatever. It’s all you.

I have one thought to hopefully get the discussion going. Not only was IU bad on Saturday — just skillwise, in matchups, that sort of thing — but it was the first time this year that it seemed like they weren’t even trying. Transition defense was unusually slow; Illinois was able to get into their secondary break, make one pass, and have a wide open jumper waiting for them before IU even matched up man-to-man or picked up the nearest player. I understand being drained after the Michigan game. That’s fine. But the one positive constant about the Hoosiers this year has been their energy and commitment to their coach, and Saturday was the first time I didn’t see it.

Also, one more: Did Illinois fans even enjoy that? Wasn’t that sort of like working out all summer, getting big, hoping to fight the bully that terrorized you last year only to see the bully come back to school in a wheelchair? I mean, you can punch the kid in the face if you want … but it’s not going to be nearly as satisfying.

Haha, just kidding! That wasn’t fun at all! That was precisely as much fun as a rusty ballpeen hammer to the eye socket, only less violent, so long as you don’t count “throwing an empty can of whatever stupid health drink I’m swilling these days across the f–king room” as violence. The only thing that could have made last night’s second half less fun was if Tom Hamilton and Shon Morris were screaming and rattling off stupid one-liners, respectively, throughout the entire godforsaken telecast. Oh, wait. They were.

F–K.

I mean, really, where to start? With IU’s brilliant, peerless, unbelievable and unlikely first half? With Michigan’s inversely horrible one? With the Hoosiers’ slow descent in the second half? With the way Michigan gradually edged their way back in the game — not at all once, but with the methodical surety of a team absolutely confident of their superiority?

Instead I’ll start (this is sort of a start I guess; the actual start, as you likely noticed, was the angry diatribe at the top of the post) with halftime. Right in the middle, before the flood. IU was winning by a margin I’d honestly rather not recount. A few seconds after the buzzer sounded for halftime, I found myself doing something peculiar: clapping. To myself. This isn’t exactly rare; it happens every time I get even marginally excited about beating some snotty Brit in FIFA 09. But I did catch myself, and stop for a second, and pay attention to my computer again, and think, and that’s when it hit me:

The Dread.

I knew — could feel — that at the very least, Michigan would come back. It wouldn’t last, this success. Michigan would start hitting shots and IU would start missing them and the weird little turnovers Michigan was making would stop, and John Beilein would ramp up the 1-3-1, and whether it happened slowly or quickly or sooner or later the 2008-09 Hoosiers would play like the 2008-09 Hoosiers and bad things would happen. And they did.

Such is life as an IU fan this year. No lead is safe. No success is unblemished by the potential of future failure. And when the Hoosiers do win a Big Ten game, it won’t change this season’s general trajectory. (It will be bloody fun, though.)

———–

I had a whole bunch of little stats and observations I was ready to share, as if to lend some insight, but really, what insight is there to lend? It’s not a marginal thing you can dissect. IU played really, really well in the first half. They made shots. They made so many shots they still turned the ball over a bunch and it didn’t really matter as much. They shot and passed and worked the ball and Michigan didn’t do any of those things, and that was awesome. And then in the second half, they didn’t entirely stop doing those things, but gradually so, and man, you watched the game, right? You saw it.

(I’ll just add, as a general observation, that I’m starting to love Tom Pritchard, and that Devan Dumes is by far the most frustrating player I’ve ever watched, let alone rooted for. You can see the talent there. You know it exists. And every time he does something good, whatever demon sits on Dumes’ shoulder that tells him, “hey, Devan, you know what would be cool is if you ran at the hoop with reckless abandon right now, or shot that stupid 25-foot three, yeah, do it Devan go GO GO DO IT WILL BE FUN,” and Dumes listens. Devan: Stop. Think. Take like one-eighth of a deep breath. Give the demon time to talk himself to death; trust me, he doesn’t need long. After that, do what you must. That’s all I ask.)
———–

No, instead, I’d like to say a few words about Big Ten Network broadcast partners Tom Hamilton and Shon Morris. First, Hamilton:

Tom, hi. Eamonn here. Can I ask you a favor? Just between you and me, and the people that read this blog? Cool. Stop shouting. Stop thinking everything is awesome. When Gus Johnson does it, it’s great; when you do it, it is quite possibly the most annoying thing in the world. Even in the first half, when my favorite college basketball team was playing better than they have played (or might play) all year, you were ruining my experience. A little turnaround jumper is not AN AMAZING SHOT. Michigan’s comeback was not INCREDIBLE. It was to be expected, at least in some regard, and if you didn’t expect it you were broadcasting a game featuring two teams you knew nothing about. Which is worse?

Shon. Hey, Shon. I’m not even going to make fun of your name, dude. I’d prefer to focus on the merits here, and I’ve got to be honest: You occasionally said some insightful things last night. Occasionally. Unfortunately, you liked to punctuate them with what seemed to be prerehearsed lines — and if they seem prerehearsed, they probably are — like “100 percent? I can’t even get 100 percent on a blood test!” Oh, man, the jokes to be made here, Shon. But look, I’m refraining! I assure you, it isn’t easy.

I’m holding back, because I want to be your friend, Shon, and that’s why I tell you this: Stop it with the shtick, and don’t say silly things. There are guys that pull of the college basketball shtick, and there are guys that don’t. Look at Jay Bilas. Dude has no real charisma to speak of, but he’s solid enough and so people don’t mind when he’s covering their games. You don’t need shtick (“Onions!” “Baybee!” etc.) to be a good color guy. Just talk hoops, and be good at it. (Hint: It doesn’t help to tell IU fans that IU will be a Top-3 home court team in the Big Ten this year. I like to remain optimistic, but c’mon, dude.)

Cool? Cool. With my advice, I have no doubt you guys’ll … still not be very good at broadcasting. But this is the Big Ten Network. “Not very good” would be a huge step in the right direction.

———–

Funny, but that last sentence goes for IU, too. Not very good. I’d take that. For a half, we were very good, and it gives me hope. But 20 minutes of “very good” does not a program make. As we found out last night, if you couple it with 20 minutes of “horrible,” it doesn’t even win you a Big Ten game.

It’s not as though I had given up on the season in any sort of meaningful way. Actually, I’d given up on the season, in the way most people use the phrase (i.e. forgetting about any sort of end-term success prematurely) well before the season started. Whatever illusions I had about surprising a few people are long gone. Whatever hopes I had for a mid-Big Ten finish vanished somewhere in the Lipscomb box score.

Still …

Saturday’s game showed something. It showed that despite all of IU’s truly serious flaws, despite their disadvantages in talent, and despite their inexperience and sometimes strange behavior … they can compete. They can be competitive. Even if it’s against Iowa — a team that might feed on the bottom of the Big Ten this year too — it shows that if IU defends well, rebounds, and does all the very fundamental things that coaches try to instill before anything else, they can put in a respectable performance.

Let’s not forget what happened here. Just days after losing to Lipscomb — Lipscomb! — IU went on the road as 14-point conference underdogs and had a chance to steal the game on the last play. I’ll take that. This year, please believe I’ll take that.

A STUDY IN BALANCE

For most of the season, IU has relied on … well, now that I write that, they haven’t really relied on anything, because they haven’t really won anything. But for the sake of comparison, the Hoosiers have been reliant on Tom Pritchard rebounding a bunch on the offensive end, and on Devan Dumes hitting threes and various other ill-advised shots and scrapping together some transition buckets, and so on. Maybe that’s not the best description of what they do, but it’s a rough approximation. It’s in the ballpark.

The point is that IU has not ever really been a balanced team. They rely on a select few players to do the bulk of the scoring and rebounding. And yesterday, in what I’d argue was their best performance of the season, this was decidedly not the case:

That is a balanced performance. Even Devan Dumes — who was erratic and wild and goofy all day — made a contribution by getting to the line. If he wasn’t so inefficient with the ball, he’d be even better.

Anyway, the point is that, whether wittingly or not, the Hoosiers were offensively and defensively balanced yesterday. For a team with nothing like a star on the team, that’s a welcome development.

BUT, ALAS, SOME MORE OF THE SAME

That positivity aside, the Hoosiers still did the same bad things they always do. They turned the ball over, though only 11 times, which is serious progress. They committed a fatal number of fouls — 25, to be exact. And they did all the weird little things they always do — running at the hoop, losing the ball in transition, throwing up wild shots, missing layups, and so on. Dumes was the most noticeable problem in these regards, but not the only one, and at the end of the game Daniel Moore sealed the deal with a really poor play. Under no circumstance should Moore find himself dribbling to the corner on that last play, and under no circumstance should he pass the ball with anything less than 100 percent certainty it would be received by a fellow Hoosier. And that, as they say, was that.

Anyway, that happens, right? This is the team they are. I’m willing to accept the positives from Saturday’s game, and ignore the negatives. It’s progress, at the very least. Like I said: I’ll take it.

IU is not a very good basketball team.

IU is not going to be a very good basketball team.

IU is not even a decent basketball team.

IU is probably — probably — not going to be a decent basketball team.

Tom Crean is a God.

That’s about all I have at this point. Last night, watching the game with Ryan, I was trying to think of how I could write The Morning After about a game so poor, a team so painful to watch, that didn’t repeat itself so much. There are only so many ways R and Alex and I can come up with to say “IU is not very good. Tom Pritchard is solid. The Hoosiers turn the ball over too much.”

This is what happens every single game. Tom Pritchard rebounds well and finishes around the hoop and proves that he would be a pretty good four on a team with an athletic five and some skill at the guard position, which IU doesn’t have. Pritchard is not a star or a shoulderer of heavy loads the way D.J. White was; Pritchard is a complementary player that could be awfully good if he didn’t have to anchor a team with zero size and athletic ability.

As for the team itself, turnovers. My God, the turnovers. Some of them come at such strange times, don’t they? Like, Daniel Moore will be catching an outlet pass and it will go too far ahead of him, and he’ll wildly throw it back even though there are no defenders around him; or Kyle Taber will back into the post, think better of it, and try to hit an open shooter for three but will just inexplicably miss wildly. These aren’t fast-break turnovers. It’s elementary stuff, and they’re things IU has to — has to — clean up if they want to be even nominally competitive the rest of the way.

I’ll be honest. This is sort of depressing. Losing that badly to Kentucky, then turning around and losing to Northeastern at home. These are the times that try Indiana basketball fans’ souls. Which is why Tom Crean is so impressive to me. He hasn’t said word one in complaint about the talent he has this year, hasn’t once even hinted — not even in body language or tone or any of the other mechanisms Tim Roth uses to detect liars in that new show on Fox — that he’s exasperated with this team, even though he has to be. I am. And I’m not around all the time. I’m not responsible for trying to make a ragtag group of freshman and transfers and castoffs into something that doesn’t utterly depress everyone.

He seems to be taking it much better than I am.

But, of course, the reminder, which I’ll probably have to start chanting to myself: This is basketball. Like pizza and sex, even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. Good thing … because this basketball is really, really bad.

The second half? As ugly as it was, and as much as I winced, and as openly as the ESPN studio clown mocked it — after the game, he said something like “They won’t be submitting that footage to the NCAA!” — IU undeniably played better than at any time this year. It was still ugly, sure. But there were signs of something underneath, too, a baseline level of competence, athleticism, and defensive ability that the Hoosiers had yet to showcase in their young, fitful season. It was nice to watch.

The point is that no matter how bad TCU is, or was supposed to be, IU has played its fair share of bad teams this year already (Chaminade, for one) and barely come out with a victory. Next to Cornell, and the first 20 minutes of Wake Forest, this was still IU’s most impressive performance to date.

I’m typing this from my apartment this morning as I rush out the door to an end-of-year corporate meeting that I didn’t know I had, so I won’t go too long with it, but a couple of things I noticed:

TP, OG: Tom Pritchard is a skilled big man. It took me a while to realize this — at first, I basically just wrote him off as a slightly-better version of Kyle Taber. He didn’t impress me. But he did last night. In a game against a team with no post presence whatsoever, Pritchard did what he was supposed to do: he had 15 points and 11 rebounds, and he controlled the interior for large stretches. Many of his buckets were the result of a) good positioning on the offensive glass or b) catching the ball in good spots and finishing easy baskets.

Pritchard may never be a star, and he might get eaten up by bigger, more athletic Big Ten forwards, but for now I’ll take him. He is a smart big man. He gets things done. That’s really all we can ask.

Verdell Jones, please come back: As much as I like Little Daniel Moore — “Little Daniel Moore” sounds like the protagonist in an Irish folk song — he has some key flaws. For one, his size; no amount of skill can overcome being smaller, and also less athletic, than D-1 college players. So Moore forces his dribble into places it shouldn’t go, and then loses it. He did this a couple different times last night. He is also a huge liability defensively, and he almost refuses to shoot, which reduces IU’s options on the offensive end. He’s a nice player, sure. But he’s not what he could be.

Which is why we need to get Verdell Jones back in the lineup ASAP. The two will complement each other nicely, I think, but asking Moore to carry the point guard load on his own is way too much to ask.

Finally, turnovers. Turnovers. Sigh. Turnovers. Even in the best IU games, turnovers are still an issue. IU had 19 turnovers last night. TCU, for what it’s worth, had 21. IU turned the ball over on 29.5 percent of its possessions. TCU turned it over on 32.8 percent. IU had, by all accounts, an incredibly sloppy night. To be honest, a better team — or maybe even a less turnover-prone TCU one — might have beaten IU. Maybe not. But with this game comfortably in our rearview, let’s take the one abiding lesson we know from our first foray in Indiana basketball:

If these turnovers continue, this season will not improve.

It’s just true. A team like IU gives up so much already — size, experience, speed, wile, athleticism, skill. All of the things that make up raw basketball talent, IU doesn’t have. So no one is expecting IU to win much in the Big Ten, and that’s fair. But to compete in the Big Ten, to compete on Saturday, IU has to stop turning the ball over. Has to. At the very least, that TO rate has to come down out of the stratosphere. The Hoosiers are too far behind in too many categories to just give the ball up to superior teams. We’re already playing with the short deck; we don’t need to forfeit any more cards.

Fortunately, Big Blue Nation likes to cough it up, too. So we’ll see how it goes.

1. Me talking about basketball in a barely informed fashion, including but not limited to offensive sets, efficiency, tempo-free/possession-related statistics, and how irritating it is when people take too many bad shots, or

2. Why the Big Ten Network sucks.

3. Why Player X is incredibly interesting to me, even if that player isn’t particularly effective. Last year: Eli Holman.

You get the idea. Even better if you’re a regular reader, you know the idea. Unfortunately, today’s TMA will not look much like the idea.

Why? Let me tell you about my Wednesday night.

I got off work, which was sort of busy but not too busy (which could describe just about anybody’s work day four times out of five), and I got on the train and went to the store and then to Starbucks and then I walked home. I sat down, got on my computer, approved a bunch of live blog comments, and watched IU play Wake Forest in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. I saw a scrappy, well-disciplined, seemingly focused IU team hang on for about 10 minutes or so before getting blown out. I approved some more blog comments. I whined about ESPN a bunch. I ate some pad thai. I approved some more comments, and watched some more basketball, and winced as IU got torn to shreds by a team that was barely even trying, barely even sweating. I approved some more blog comments. And then the game ended.

Somewhere in all that, I got a little bit sad. Not too sad. It’s just basketball, after all. I didn’t get overwhelmingly, crushingly, end-of-Where-The-Red-Fern-Grows sad. Like I said, it was just a little bit. But it was sadness all the same.

What happened? I’m not too sure, but this is what I think. I think I realized, for the first time, just how bad this team could be. I realized that no matter how well-coached this team is, how hard they try, or how much they care, they are going to be inferior in nearly every way to nearly every team they play against, and with few exceptions, they will lose.

It took me a little bit to get there. I knew they would be bad, sure, but how bad? How to gauge it? The first few games, against supposed cupcakes, don’t tell us anything; they’re as useless as preseason football. I didn’t get to see much of Maui, because I was on vacation. I saw scores, but I didn’t see the games, you know? I couldn’t actually witness it with my own two eyes. Last night, I could. I did. And it was way, way worse than I thought.

I know I’m being overdramatic here. It’s bad, but it’s not that bad. There is some talent and potential scattered throughout IU’s lineup. It’s not desolate. But it is bad.

Which is why I’d like to make a humble proposal, both to myself, and to everyone else who made it this far down the page, because I’d imagine you care about this stuff more than you probably should, like me:

Don’t be cynical. Allow yourself a soft spot. Enjoy the means, and not the end.

What do I mean by that? Let’s see if I don’t butcher this analogy.

ESPN is an annoying network. It’s filled with people that irritate me viscerally, with people that attempt to appeal both to the lowest common denominator and to the casual fan, because they know the hardcore people will stay no matter what. This is a place that continues to allow Chris Berman to crack the same jokes, over and over, time and again. It’s a place that took a great thing, SportsCenter, and stuffed it full of nonsense and screamers and people whose idea of football analysis is to laugh uproariously at things that aren’t funny. In almost every way — but of course not every way — ESPN annoys me.

This includes ESPN’s “I Wish” segments. You know the ones. They take the little kid and put Vaseline on the lens and do these sappy, supposedly heartwarming stories about children that are sick, and who get their one big wish thanks to the benevolence of ESPN. I don’t know. These shouldn’t bother me. They’re innocent enough. But they always feel creepy, like a small, insidious form of exploitation. If I was a little kid, the last thing I’d want to do is have the best day of my life filmed by ESPN. But that’s just me. I’m cynical like that.

So it goes for the saying “they play hard.” It shouldn’t bother me. It’s innocent enough. But I hate that saying. It’s so condescending and wrongheaded. Everyone plays hard, OK? With few exceptions, you can’t be a legitimate college basketball player or team or whoever without playing hard. I hate when people throw that around. I hate it like I hate ESPN’s soft-focus segments.

But I allow myself one exception to the ESPN soft-focus rule. His name is Jimmy V. Every year, I watch that speech, and I allow myself to be inspired. To be idealistic. To understand that yeah, you know what? That’s damn right: Every day is a gift, and we forget it too often. Cherish it. Work for it. Always do your best. Keep trying. Don’t give up. Never give up. The whole deal. It rips me to shreds every time.

So I’m going to try to apply that exception to this year’s Hoosiers. Will I get sick of hearing, constantly, as we did last night, that IU is disciplined and focused and gutty and gritty and hard-working, but gosh, if only they weren’t barely a mid-major in the talent department, they’d be good? Shucks, this team is just bad! Yes, I will grow tired. Very. But instead of getting angry about every time, instead of getting annoyed, I’m just going to suck it up. I’m going to avoid cynicism. And I’m going to remember that the whole point of watching is never just about wins and losses, that the means are often as much fun as the end, that every day — even a day as mundane as going to work and coming home and watching college basketball — is a gift.

At the end of the day, it’s still college basketball. It’s a gift. We might as well enjoy it while we can.