John Gasaway is a writer for Basketball Prospectus and is a co-author of the upcoming book, The Basketball Prospectus 2010 Major-Conference Preview. He previously wrote for the Big Ten Wonk. We recently exchanged e-mails with John to help us preview the Big Ten and Indiana because, well, he’s smarter than us. The interview is lengthy, so we’ve split it into two parts. Today: Indiana and The Basketball Prospectus 2010 Major-Conference Preview.

Inside the Hall: Indiana is coming off a tough season and is still in the midst of rebuilding. They were nearly last in the country in turnovers a season ago, which I assume you believe will improve this season because it really can’t get worse. What measurable statistics are most important for Indiana to become a competitive team in a seemingly brutal conference?

JG: Measurable statistic? Points! For and against! No, just kidding. You’re asking about the stats that precede that one, and rightfully so.

Fair enough, try this on for size: If Indiana had been playing in some kind of weird parallel hoops universe last year where turnovers were forbidden and each team’s offense was judged simply according to how well they shoot, hit the offensive glass, and make free throws, your scrappy Hoosiers, even as young as they were, would have ranked a somewhat respectable seventh in the conference in offensive efficiency in Big Ten play (instead of 11th, which is where they really came out). So, yeah, the turnovers were huge.

Moving to defense we find that IU ranked 11th there as well, allowing Big Ten opponents to score 1.12 points per trip. That’s bad, sure, but it’s not catastrophic. In recent years teams like Northwestern and Penn State have on occasion done way worse than that. So there’s hope. In fact the Hoosiers were actually normal when it came to rebounding opponents’ misses–it’s just that, uh, there were no misses. Opponents lit it up from everywhere. This year’s deeper and taller roster should help make that a thing of the past.

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John Gasaway is a writer for Basketball Prospectus and is a co-author of the upcoming book, The Basketball Prospectus 2010 Major-Conference Preview. He previously wrote for the Big Ten Wonk. We recently exchanged e-mails with John to help us preview the Big Ten and Indiana because, well, he’s smarter than us. The interview is lengthy, so we’ve split it into two parts. Today: the Big Ten and a little national perspective.

Inside the Hall: The Big Ten is once again being mentioned among the top conferences in the country. From top to bottom, where does the Big Ten stand amongst the major conferences?

John Gasaway: It stands rather confidently in a clean well-lighted place at the center of the room where the league is respected but, alas, not terribly feared. The confidence comes from the exceedingly rare spectacle of a league returning its entire all-conference team (Kalin Lucas, Evan Turner, Manny Harris, Talor Battle, and JaJuan Johnson), not to mention last year’s preseason POY (Robbie Hummel).

On the other hand the Big Ten doesn’t terrify the other major conferences unduly because, even with all those returnees, our beloved glacially-paced league isn’t exactly brimming with lottery picks or even first-rounders. Turner, obviously, is going to be putting on a ball cap and shaking David Stern’s hand very soon here, and assuming Johnson and Mike Davis start consuming protein shakes in bulk I’ve seen them listed on some mocks as late first-rounders for 2011. But Turner notwithstanding there are no Walls or Warrens or Aldriches in the league right now. None of which precludes a Final Four run by a Big Ten team or two this year, of course.

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In a season as desolate as this, you’re bound to have some sever statistical, and Saturday Basketball Prospectus’ John Gasaway gave us a doozie. Of course, you would think the stat would be a negative outlier — proof of the Hoosiers’ historic failures this season. Not so much:

No major-conference team in the nation has dominated its opponents on the defensive glass during conference play the way Indiana has. Yes, Indiana, the same team that is 0-5 in the Big Ten, losing each game by an average of 15 points. While you’ve been looking away in Edvard Munch-level horror, the Hoosiers have in fact secured an unheard of 79 percent of their opponents’ misses in league games. Not even Michigan State in 2000 was able to match that figure.

Gasaway jokes that rebounding makes you lose, but the real upshot is this: The Hoosiers are so bad, they allow very few offensive rebounds and still lose by an average of fifteen points a game. Why? Because teams are so effective at making the first shot against them, the defensive rebound isn’t really an advantage. That’s why. Like I said: mind-blowing.

The upshot is that it also portends future success. If the Hoosiers (and by the Hoosiers, I mean Tom Pritchard) are rebounding at such a high rate when they’re this bad, it’s likely they’ll keep it up when they figure out how to challenge perimeter shots and play better defense. In other words, it’s a building block. I’ll take it.

Despite a respectful tussle with John Gasaway (aka Big Ten Wonk) in the offseason, all three of us love his work, both in his old format at the Wonk and at his new location, Basketball Prospectus. He and Ken Pomeroy and the rest of the crew over there are on the leading edge of basketball analysis, and are the perfect complement to any fan’s understanding of the game. If you’re not reading, you should be. Pronto.

Today’s no different. Gasaway sums up the feelings of IU fans (including myself) incisively in a banger of a post on the Hoosiers. To wit:

What a shame that this is what we’re talking about in mid-February 2008 under the heading of “Indiana basketball.” What a shame that we’re not talking about the current Indiana team, which features the best two players to wear the crimson and cream in more than a decade. Both D.J. White and Eric Gordon are having outstanding seasons. Both are great stories. White arrived in Bloomington as a skinny work in progress and has transcended both injuries and three careers’ worth of coaching turmoil to become far and away the best player in the Big Ten, an insatiable beast on the defensive glass and a lethal scoring threat in the low post. Gordon is the answer to an Indiana fan’s wildest and most improbable dream: an Indianapolis kid who carries himself like a true Hoosier (steady, unassuming, fine with his name not being on the jersey), yet is blessed with a level of talent not seen in Bloomington since the days of Isiah Thomas. Today they’re both afterthoughts. What a shame.

If that doesn’t describe just how you’ve felt the past 24 hours — especially as you tuned in last night and realized the game felt suddenly empty — then you’re not an IU fan. Sigh. This blows.