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.

ITH: I think a lot of IU fans are excited to see how Tom Crean’s approach will differ this season compared to last. Obviously, the infusion of freshman talent and transfer Jeremiah Rivers will allow more flexibility to try some new things. Schematically speaking, what will be the biggest difference from a season ago?

JG: If Crean’s past is any guide to Indiana’s stylistic future, the really exciting thing to me is that someday soon IU will be the conference’s first moderately up-tempo team, one that goes for steals and, yes, commits an occasional foul. All of the above, along with “guard-heavy,” accurately describes Marquette in 2007-08. I say: Bring on the Hurryin’ Hoosiers! The conference badly needs some diversity where tempo is concerned. When it arrives everyone will wonder what the heck took so long. Playing against a variety of styles over the course of your conference season benefits every team.

ITH: One of the most talked about pieces on this team is Rivers. In fact, I took some heat from our readers a while back for saying I wasn’t completely sold on Rivers being a huge difference maker. His calling card at Georgetown was defense, but offensively he wasn’t very productive as a sophomore (2.5 points, 2.4 rebounds and 1 assist in 18.6 minutes). Was his offensive output more a result of the system he was playing in?

JG: No, not at all. His output on offense would have been meager in any system Georgetown happened to play that year because he was tasked with being a role player on a team with Roy Hibbert and DaJuan Summers. If he’d started confusing himself with Eric Gordon, John Thompson III would have yanked him off the floor in a heartbeat.

Mind you, with my own two eyes I saw Drew Neitzel go from being a meek and deferential role player in support of Mo Ager and Paul Davis to becoming the shot-gobbling–and highly efficient–focal point of Tom Izzo’s offense, so I never say never. Who knows, Rivers might be a scorer waiting only for his chance.

But even if Rivers is “only” a lock-down defender is that really so bad? How many of those are there in the Big Ten heading into this season? Kramer, certainly. And Lighty, assuming he returns whole from his stint on the injured list. But the likes of Travis Walton are gone. So I think Rivers could be a valuable addition even if he’s “merely” what we saw at Georgetown. Not to be repetitive, but Indiana’s defense ranked dead last in the league last year.

ITH: It’s always tough to predict how freshmen will perform, but the six-man class Crean has assembled will be expected to contribute major minutes. What kind of impact do you expect guys like Christian Watford, Maurice Creek, Derek Elston and Jordan Hulls to have?

JG: I know this is heresy in Bloomington, but frankly what an IU fan should hope for is that this group of freshmen jells the way the Hummel-Johnson-Moore group did at Purdue in 2007-08. The impressive thing to me about that particular set of baby Boilers was that they played D and made their threes, neither of which freshmen are supposed to do. And given that both Painter and Crean are proteges of highly defense-aware Big Ten coaches who made their names screaming and getting red and preaching “toughness” as the silver-bullet answer to all of life’s challenges up to and including marriage proposals and home decor, it’s not too much of a stretch to envision a similar dynamic playing out in Bloomington someday.

Not that I expect IU to go 15-3 in the Big Ten this year the way Purdue did in ‘08. (Sorry.) I just think if I were a coach I’d point to that particular group of freshmen and say: “Look at those guys. They weren’t especially talented. No one’s in the NBA yet. But look at what they did. See if you can do that.”

ITH: Tell us about your book, The Basketball Prospectus 2010 Major-Conference Preview. How will it differ from last year’s and where will it be available?

JG: Wherever fine books are sold — online. The book will be available at the site in a few days and you’ll be able to choose between downloading it immediately as a pdf or ordering it as an actual book. (Much like the fine NBA book done by my colleagues Bradford Doolittle and Kevin Pelton, currently zooming up the charts at Amazon.)

I previewed the Big Ten, ACC, Big 12, and SEC. An obscure but promising young writer that I’ve graciously agreed to mentor, one Ken Pomeroy, did the Pac-10. I’m telling you this kid’s going places–remember the name, folks! And Dan Hanner of Yet Another Basketball Blog fame had the thankless task of previewing the Brobdingnagian Big East. Last year the instant I finished writing my Big East preview l shot out the door and found myself a hilltop from which to make a Scarlett O’Hara vow: As Jim Boeheim is my witness, never again. Damn thing’s too big.

But of course we’re too nosy to just preview teams. There are all kinds of goodies at the front of the book. For instance Will Carroll has a great and very timely piece on what happens to young legs when top prospects play hoops year-round, as they pretty much all do now. Pelton has become essential reading for anyone interested in draft projections, and he gave us the benefit of that wisdom for the current crop of college prospects. I could go on: Pomeroy, Doolittle, and John Perrotto all chipped in with essays. I did some scribbling in that direction too.

Lastly our Foreword was written by A Very Special Guest. I’m sworn to secrecy but I suspect these dots pretty well connect themselves. Bob Knight? UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon? Numa Numa Guy? Speculate away!

So, yeah, buy my book. I know some members of the self-appointed inside-the-Beltway gotcha media elite have questioned whether I could really write 60K words and edit an additional 60K this fast. Just tell them I say: You betcha! (Your readers can’t see this but I’m winking.)

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.

ITH: Most of the preseason publications view Michigan State and Purdue as the top two teams in the Big Ten with Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin in the next tier. Which team, Michigan State or Purdue, do you consider to be the favorite to win the league and why?

JG: Purdue. Effectively they didn’t lose anybody. (OK, Nemanja Calasan. I stand by my earlier statement.) Hummel is said to be healthy and that’s unusually important because he’s actually vital to his team on both offense (threes) and defense (boards). It’s just that people can’t process that intellectually because he happens to be a skinny guy who looks like the kid who bags your groceries. If he looked like a taller Chris Kramer everyone would understand exactly what Hummel does for the Boilers.

Michigan State’s going to be tough too, of course. As always they’re the deepest and most talented team in the Big Ten. I just think Matt Painter’s group will be slightly better.

ITH: And from the second tier of teams, which team has the best shot at unseating the Spartans or Boilermakers?

JG: Ohio State. They’re like an elite commando unit in some ’60s movie with Lee Marvin where each person has a specialty. There’s Turner (cigar-chomping commander), William Buford (spot-up shooter), David Lighty (perimeter defender), Jon Diebler (threes), and, when he gets healthy, Dallas Lauderdale (shot-eraser). If Lighty can pick up where he left off on D in 2008 and if the Buckeyes can just hang on to the rock, people will run around screaming with their hands above their heads about how good this team suddenly is, what a huge surprise they are, etc.

ITH: Are Penn State and Northwestern being sold short by not being included in that second tier of teams? Will either of these teams be in the discussion for a NCAA Tournament bid?

JG: My brother’s a long-suffering Northwestern fan (redundant), so maybe I’m a little biased. But I do think the ‘Cats could be in the discussion if John Shurna or someone else steps into the role Craig Moore had last year, which was giving opposing defenses something to think about besides just Kevin Coble. The leap forward that NU experienced last season was, according to the stuff I track, as large as any improvement recorded by a major-conference team in at least four years. It’s just that, ironically, Missouri, Oregon State, and LSU were also registering the same level of (incredible) improvement last year. So there were turnarounds all around in 2009.

As for Penn State, much as I love what Talor Battle did for the Nittany Lions last year he’s going to need some help to get this team into bubble territory. And by that I specifically mean a teammate is going to have to surprise the heck out of us, like Turner did last year at Ohio State.

ITH: Let’s shift to a national perspective. Who are your top five teams? And who are two teams that could surprise some people with a run to Indianapolis?

JG: There’s Kansas and then there’s everyone else. I’m sure Kentucky’s John Wall and Georgia Tech’s Derrick Favors are everything everyone says they are but, until I see them actually play, Cole Aldrich is the best example of a college player that literally could start for an NBA team today, at this instant, just as he is right now. If North Carolina’s Ed Davis can come anywhere close to the season Aldrich had last year, Davis will get five times the pub. Unlike Aldrich he won’t have Blake Griffin hogging the spotlight.

I know everyone’s picking KU to win it all this year, of course, but I still feel like people don’t realize just how good this team was last year. To be sure, losing very late in the year by 19 to Texas Tech, of all teams, didn’t help matters. (The Jayhawks haven’t won in Lubbock since 2003.) But the truth is last year Kansas, with five new starters, came surprisingly close to the level of performance set by the 2008 national championship team. And now they’re all back, with McDonald’s All-American Xavier Henry thrown in for good measure.

Part two of our interview with John — an Indiana preview and a look at his book, The Basketball Prospectus 2010 Major-Conference Preview — will be published soon on Inside the Hall.

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.

While I agree with a lot of what Gasaway offered up, some of his comments regarding Eric Gordon and what he’ll bring to Assembly Hall were hard to agree with.

Case in point:

Gordon is widely assumed to be on track for a one-and-done career in Bloomington. If this is indeed the case, he’ll be doing well during his brief stint in an IU uniform to perform at the level set by Wilmont last season. No one paid much attention, but Wilmont took a lot of shots and had an outstanding year in 2007. In fact, the even more impressive year that Drew Neitzel had on offense for Michigan State last season could be summarized as simply “Wilmont plus assists.” This year Wilmont’s shots will fall to Gordon; Hoosier fans should be thrilled if Gordon hits about 40 percent of his threes and takes obsessively good care of the ball, as did Wilmont. Same performance, way more hype–it could happen.

No offense to Wilmont, but I disagree that EJ will be doing well to “perform at the level set by Wilmont last season.” While Rod had a stellar season at 12.6 ppg, he was mainly a perimeter threat. The fact that he only got to the foul line 53 times tells you that he really never attacked the basket consistently. For a point of reference, Joey Shaw shot 62 free throws.

Gasaway is failing to recognize perhaps the most important piece of Gordon’s game: His ability to get into the lane and score the basketball. This really makes me wonder: How closely has Gasaway followed Gordon’s game? Has he ever seen him play? My guess would be probably not. Expect IU’s free throw attempts to go way up this season. These attempts will not just come from Gordon, but from other players who will get opportunities from defenders collapsing due to his penetration. Not to mention all of the open jump shots created on the perimeter when Gordon kicks it out.

So, am I off base here? Should we really not expect much more than a Wilmontesque performance from our boy this season? What do you say, ITH faithful…