Courtesy of our friends over at the Palestra:

Opponent: Northwestern State

Date: Saturday, November 15 | 7 p.m. EST

Arena: Assembly Hall (17, 357) – Bloomington, Indiana

Line: No Line

All-time series: First Meeting

TV: Big Ten Network (Craig Shemon and John Laskowski)

Radio: IU Radio Network (Don Fischer, Todd Leary and Joe Smith)

Probable Starters:

• Northwestern State (0-0): Michael McConathy, Damon Jones, Keith Hancock, William Mosley, Kalem Porterie
• Indiana (0-0): Verdell Jones, Devan Dumes, Nick Williams, Kyle Taber, Tom Pritchard

Game notes (Adobe Acrobat required to view):

• Northwestern State
• Indiana

Gameday reading:

• Crean era begins Saturday (Indiana Daily Student)
• Now it’s for real at IU basketball (Indianapolis Star)
• Crean takes on impossible task (Dan Patrick Show)
• Hoosiers set to start season like no other (Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette)
• Crean happy to have Taber back (Evansville Courier & Press)
• NSU basketball begins today (Natchitoches Times)

You know the drill. Predictions, thoughts and analysis are welcome in the comments. Go Hoosiers.

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The Tom Crean era begins Saturday night with a visit in Assembly Hall from the Northwestern State Demons.

Coach Mike McConathy returns five of his top eight scorers from a team that went 15-18 a season ago and reached the championship game of their conference tournament for the fourth straight season.

The outlook this year is much brighter for Northwestern State — they were picked to finish second in the East division of the Southland Conference behind Stephen L. Austin.

Keith Hancock, a 5-10 senior guard, is the leading returning scorer (8.7 ppg). Another guy to keep an eye on is 6-4 junior guard Damon Jones (6.4 ppg).

“We feel very good about our team,” McConathy told reporters at SLC Media Day. “Even though the numbers may not indicate it, we do have a strong core of experienced players back and we will be blending in some new faces. We have guys who all have played in crunch time.”

Make no mistake about it, the Hoosiers will have their hands full in this match up. As will be the case almost universally, Northwestern State is a more experienced club and they’ll be looking to play spoiler while making a statement for their program come Saturday night.

To learn more about Northwestern State, click here.

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