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.

I think we can chalk most of last night’s game up to bad shooting. Look at the numbers: The Hoosiers shot far below their season average effective field goal, putting up 43.4 percent. Their season total is 10 points higher than that, at 53.6 percent. The turnovers were about even with their season average and the points per possession weren’t wildly different — IU just shot poorly. Fortunately, the Hoosiers rebounded well on the offensive end and held off a weirdly inconsistent Buckeyes team.

It’s hard to get a good feeling for where the Buckeyes stand. In their first 12 minutes on the floor, they looked disinterested, sloppy, outwitted, and boring. In their next 20 or so minutes, up until and after the half, Ohio State looked focused, efficient, and driven. The real OSU probably falls somewhere between that mix, which isn’t likely to be good enough to get them in the NCAA tournament.

– I’m pretty sure I saw a comment — lots of comments, actually — in the postgame thread last night complaining about Eric Gordon. That’s partially justifiable: Gordon had a bad game last night. A really bad one. 17 points in 40 minutes is not exactly stellar, especially given the awful shooting and the seven turnovers. Gross.

I think it’s safe to say now that this is what Eric Gordon is. He’s flawed. He’s a good shooter prone to off nights without much of a mid-range game. He’s fantastic at getting to the basket but isn’t always under control when he gets there. He plays fast and loose and hard, but his ball handling is the weakest part of his game. He turns the ball over. A lot.

He also gets to the free throw line more frequently than anyone else in the conference and makes 86 percent of his shots while there. That, as it did last night, is perhaps his most important and valuable trait, one that sustains his game when everything else is broken. This is the player we recruited. This is the player we have. Complaining about it now is almost pointless.

– I love Steve Lavin and Brent Musberger, but they have a funny habit of taking the wrong side of every issue. Just last week, in their broadcast of IU’s win over Purdue, Musberger was openly lobbying to keep Kelvin Sampson around. He never really provided justification for his opinion on the matter — either he didn’t think Sampson cheated, or didn’t deserve the punishment for his crimes. Either way, it didn’t make a lick of sense.

Last night was no different. It was Lavin, this time, providing horrible advice to IU’s administration: Consider hiring Dan Dakich. It’s a comical notion. Dakich is a palatable, keep-everybody-happy interim coach that will likely do a fine job keeping the team intact over the next few weeks. Maybe he’ll even make a tournament run! But regardless of his success, the chances of him keeping this job are absolutely zero.

What was even funnier than Lavin’s suggestion was the circular way he went about justifying it. At Bowling Green, Dakich posted a 156-140 over ten years. That’s pretty middling, and usually, “middling” at a mid-major doesn’t earn one a top job in the country. You have to be Sean Miller good, or Mark Few good. But according to Lavin, Dakich “honed his craft” — whatever that means — and would be a good fit thanks to his Bob Knight ties. Also, Lavin compared Dakich to Joe Torre, which is laughable not only because Torre is probably a better manager of people than Dakich will ever be, but because managing in baseball is so much different than college basketball it’s not even worth a comparison. Baseball managers take the talent they’re given and manage it to the best of their abilities, and most studies point to the idea that managers have a relatively negligible, or at least statistically undetectable, impact on the game. Take Joe Torre: Torre is known as a Hall of Fame manager because he won four titles with the New York Yankees, but anyone that watches baseball intelligently realizes that the Yankees were the highest-paid, most-talented organization in baseball for almost all of Torre’s tenure.

Unlike Torre, after this year, Dakich’s talent reserves would be dry. He’d be responsible for recruiting his own talent, not having it handed down by a front office, and the thought that Dan Dakich is somehow the right coach for IU for the long-term future is just laughable. Even Dan Dakich knows this. So Steve Lavin, please stop saying otherwise. We love you too much to see you be wrong so often.