Did anyone else get a minor chill seeing Doc Rivers in Assembly Hall? I can’t explain this at all. I don’t really like Rivers. I’m not sure he’s a great NBA coach so much as a decent NBA coach who happened to luck into Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen at the right time. And after the Bulls-Celtics series last spring, I’m kind of predisposed to hate everything to do with this current Celtics team.

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?

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Ah, the Hoosiers. Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in.

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.

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Whoa, right? After a couple of bad losses to teams we didn’t even look competitive against, IU was given a coming-home gift Wednesday night. That gift, the TCU Horned Frogs, was about as inept a basketball team you’ll see all year, including the kids in cream and crimson. They were awful. So was IU. At least for one half.

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.

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THE GOOD

After the Wake Forest drubbing Wednesday, I think we were all bracing for a slaughter this afternoon inside Lucas Oil Stadium. Gonzaga has size, experience, talent; they’re ranked No. 5 in the country and are serious contenders to make the Final Four.

IU was only down nine with 3:35 to go.

Now, this wasn’t so much IU playing their best game of the year, playing at a higher level than we’ve seen — it was Gonzaga only hitting 3-of-16 3-point attempts, the Bulldogs shooting 45.8 percent from the field and only 59.1 percent from the line. IU does deserve some credit for their defense, but in the first half Gonzaga seemed uncomfortable with the odd angles and sightlines at Lucas Oil. It was an off game for them on the offensive end.

But setting aside all that, IU was in this game until the last couple minutes. No matter how many times we turned the ball over, no matter how many times we got nothing going on offense and had to chuck something up in desperation as the shot clock ran down, we were in this game. Credit Tom Crean for getting these guys to scrap. Credit the team for not giving in and playing hard till the buzzer sounded. And credit the guys that went to the line today, as we hit a respectable 19-of-24. I’ll take it. Hitting 50 percent of our 3-pointers (6-of-12) in the second half helped out a ton, too.

(Aside: This is two games in a row now the general consensus was the other team — Wake, Gonzaga — played bad. Perhaps this is a trend. If IU can get teams like Penn State, Illinois, Northwestern, Minnesota or Iowa to play bad too, maybe we’ll sneak a couple wins out when Big Ten season rolls around.)

There were times in the second half when I wanted to believe. Just when Roth, or Dumes, or Taber drained a three and I thought “Well, maybe we can do it!” — Gonzaga came down and hit a quick three. Or Josh Heytvelt got position inside, dropped in a layup and got an and one. This is what good teams do. They finish. They respond. They overcome. They win.

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It’s going to be hard to write these little features of ours for a while. Why? Because we literally don’t know anything about this batch of Hoosiers. We know a few things, sure — that Daniel Moore handles the ball well, that Devan Dumes is lightning-quick — but we don’t really know the sum of their parts yet. Are they destined to be this bad all season? Are they going to start playing screens better? For the love of your diety of choice, will somebody please grab a rebound? I don’t know what to believe, and I’m afraid to blindly guess.

Compounding the problem are the teams IU is playing. Things will become much clearer next Monday in Maui against Notre Dame — I am not looking forward to seeing who is going to guard Luke Harangody — but for now, what are we to make of IUPUI? Are they occasionally tourney-bound IUPUI? Or are they just bad? Should we be even more worried than we already are? I have no answers. Merely questions.

This was the case after the first game, too. Instead let’s just recap what we saw.
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The Good:

IU struggled immensely with turnovers and rebounds in their first bout of the season against Northwestern State. Tonight against the Jaguars, there was great improvement. The Hoosiers committed 13 turnovers — five of those came from Nick Williams — and snatched 32 board to IUPUI’s 29.

Daniel Moore asserted himself as the floor leader again tonight. The kid has confidence, handles the ball well and looks incredibly comfortable out there. And IU as a whole has proven to be a great passing team so far. For the night, they tallied 17 assists in a low-scoring affair.

Matt Roth had a coming out of sorts this evening, and displayed some of that range we heard so much about. (Dude was popping threes from way beyond the arc.) He tallied 12 points on 4-of-8 shooting from 3-point land.

Tom Pritchard put up a pretty beastly performance. Sure, he missed a bunny or two early on, but Pritchard is fast proving he’s a threat for a double-double every night, as he scored 19 and grabbed 10 boards for the game.

Also, we won. So that was nice.

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The expectation coming into the season was that the 2008-2009 version of the IU Men’s basketball team would have its hands full with just about every opponent on the schedule. Tuesday night, that was indeed the case as IU fended off IUPUI 60-57 in Assembly Hall.

The Jaguars (1-2) had a chance to win just their second game in program history against a Big Ten opponent. However, an ill-advised 3-point attempt by Alex Young and two free throws by walk-on Daniel Moore sealed the win for the Hoosiers (2-0).

“We had to find a way to win the game, and the guys were listening and found a way to do that,” IU coach Tom Crean said. “Any win is just a monstrous achievement for us right now.”

Tom Pritchard followed up his stellar debut with 19 points and 10 rebounds. Fellow freshman Matt Roth hit four 3-pointers and finished with 12 points.

IU led 31-20 at halftime, but the Jaguars opened the second half on a 18-7 run to tie the game at 38-38. Kyle Taber’s three with 13:26 remaining gave IU a 43-40 lead and the Hoosiers never trailed the rest of the way.

Alex Young and John Ashworth scored 15 points each for IUPUI.

• Box score
• Postgame press conference video
• Tom Crean press conference audio
• Players press conference audio