– First, a quick observation about Eric Gordon: What sets Gordon apart from the average highly touted freshman is his sheer athleticism. He doesn’t need to rely on his athletic ability; without it, he’d still likely be a very effective player, and certainly a great shooter. But with it, Gordon is a sheer terror. With one dribble, he can get to the basket from any angle. In the open court, he shifts and turns but mostly just barrels straight at overwhelmed defenders. In the half court, he can turn a screen at the top of the key into an easy layup. When he gets in the lane, he effortlessly clears defenders away with his shoulders. In every way, his athletic ability — that vicious, calculating strength and speed — elevate him from “great player” to “possibly transcendent.” And this is after three games.

– For now, I remain cautiously optimistic about IU’s habit of slow starts. In each of the past three games, the Hoosiers have struggled to build a lead — and have, as they did against Wilmington, even fallen behind — before taking the game over and winning handily. I’ll call IU’s slow starts the product of a largely new team getting used to each other and getting used to playing different teams each night … but slow starts like that are the pathway to upsets against more capable teams later in the year. Hopefully IU can start to figure things out earlier in their next few games.

– Dare I say it, but last night showcased Lance Stemler at his finest. I’ve long said that Stemler is of no use to the Hoosiers if he can’t hit shots. Last night, though, Stemler didn’t even try to assert himself offensively; instead, he hedged high screens well, kept loose balls alive, and did all of the grit-tacular things I usually make fun of people for dwelling too much on. It’s a limited role for Stemler, but on a team of very talented players (most of whom can shoot threes), all Lance needs to do is be solid. No turnovers, no dumb shots, et al. He did that last night. As long as he keeps doing it, he’ll deserve his well-won minutes.

(Hit the jump for stuff on DeAndre Thomas, Armon Bassett, and the Big Ten Network. Go on, jump. You might as well!)

– DeAndre Thomas is already a predictable player — he shoves his way to baskets, and he does a lot of sharp ball fakes, and that’s about it — but Thomas’ predictability is of a thoroughly effective kind. You can know Thomas is going to throw his weight into you and still be unable to stop it; Wilmington’s bigs certainly couldn’t. Thomas isn’t anything like a star, but he is a big, solid body with surprisingly good hands. Nothing to complain about in that package.

– Don’t look now, but Armon Bassett is a scorer, man. His shot looks better than ever, and even if it fails him temporarily this season his twisting, countering drives seem more than enough to keep his scoresheet contributions high. One problem with this picture, unfortunately, is that not only is Bassett terribly suspect on defense — the difference between when he and Gordon guard the other team’s point guard is almost cringeworthy — Bassett is also revealing himself to be less a point guard than an undersized off-guard. Right now, that gives the Hoosiers approximately zero “pure” point guards. It’s not something to worry about unless turnovers become a problem for this team; in that case, I nominate Eric Gordon to bring the ball up every time. Just a thought.

– Whether by design or because so many shots are now going to Gordon and Bassett, D.J. White saw few (if any; the memory fails) designed post plays run in his direction. A diverse guard-centric offense is preferable to a consistently obvious post attack, but it stands to reason White will see an increased share of the team’s post touches in the next few games.

– After a few days of the Big Ten Network, well, let’s just politely say that BTN’s on-air talent leaves a lot to be desired. Dave Revsine, their all-purpose former ESPN-er, is the one enjoyable studio personality. The rest are either dry or just not very good on TV. It’s only a conference network, and it’s new, and all of that stuff … but the mute button should never, ever be preferable to play-by-play. Right now, on the Big Ten Network, it is.

As always, your additions in the comments.

– Early in the game, it was evident that Kelvin Sampson not only gave Eric Gordon the green light — Sampson went ahead and told everyone on the team not to be bashful, which made for an entertaining opening five minutes. Gordon got his fair diet of shots, and was never hesitant. Neither was Armon Bassett. Those shots came early in the shot clock, from a variety of distances, thanks not only to Longwood’s inept defense but to a seemingly conscious choice by IU. This might foretell a change in strategy from Sampson — the coach is notorious for his plodding, defensive Oklahoma teams — but for now we can still safely consider it an aberration.

— As a whole, IU’s offense felt more cohesive. DeAndre Thomas (who started in place of Lance Stemler; more on this below) opened the game with a strong move in the post and made it clear the Hoosiers intended to drive the ball low throughout the game. They did so, incorporating D.J. White well (until Sampson took him off the floor for most of the second half), and when post possessions failed, White and Thomas rotated the ball well. Altogether, the offense felt more together; shooters relocated efficiently; passes were more decisively and accurately delivered; and on the whole the half-court game looked and felt like it had been through a thoroughly productive week of practice. At the same time …

– … The procilivity for early-possession shots led to a lot of fast break baskets for Longwood. Longwood’s shooters looked drastically undermatched, but anytime the team was able to grab up a long rebound, it usually led to a quality shot in transition. Against a more proficient offensive team (i.e. one that doesn’t chuck radically misfired three-pointers every third touch), IU would have yielded many more baskets. I’m all for a free-flowing, Phoenix Suns-esque system, but only if it is defensively capable as well. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to do, so it’s all but certain that Sampson will slow this team down in the future. Still, those fast breaks and quick possessions make this team even more enjoyable to watch. (For more on one of IU’s lingering defensive deficiencies — backcuts and slipped screens — check out Big A’s latest film session.)

– Lance Stemler played … OK? He was the topic of much discussion round these parts this week — most of it centered on quasi-off-court issues — but on the court it’s clear that Stemler just doesn’t have all that much confidence. I won’t get carried away over his second half performance; again, it’s Longwood, and I don’t even think Adam Ahlfeld was watching much of the second half. (Actually, Ahlfeld was actually playing, which says everything you need to know right there.) Stemler should definitely be starting the game on the bench; Sampson alluded to this strategy as a matter of helping Lance fight pressure, but it boils down more to pure economics. When on, Lance is a shooter, but IU has shooters in abundance. What the Hoosiers need is solid play and physicality from the off-post position. DeAndre Thomas may or may not be the answer, but right now Stemler is pure, ineffective surplus, a surplus that reaches its point of diminishing returns nearly every time Stemler touches the ball.

– It doesn’t really bear repeating because it’s so obvious, but yeah: Eric Gordon = really good at basketball.

– One final thought: Yesterday, Terry Hutchens kind-of-sort-of questioned and then affirmed the merit of playing a team like Longwood, a team so clearly inept that, as I have been reciting, almost nothing of permanent value can be garnered from watching. As unhelpful as the games are to watch, though, I agree with Sampson’s rebuff of Hutch: These games are helpful from a player’s standpoint. I think it’s vitally important for a team to see what things look like when success is coming easy; that happens so rarely against good teams, even in wins, that cupcakes like Longwood are the only early-season chances coaches have to demonstrate to their players at live speed the way things should look. Obviously, like any good diet, balance is important, and too many cupcakes will make you slow and fat and sluggish when it comes time for greater challenges, like making this metaphor coherent. But for now, easy success is a-OK.

That’s it for this week. As always, your thoughts, additions and rebuffs of your own in the comments.

Thanks to the crowded bar, though, I wasn’t able to take my usual semi-diligent in-game notes. Instead, the following is randomly culled from notes written to myself on my phone, text messages to friends, and memory:

*First, a brief note on RCN: They’re coming to my apartment at 5 today to install service. That’s a really fast turnaround from my mid-afternoon call yesterday, and a very friendly customer service woman gave us an unbeatable deal on cable, HBO, and an HD-DVR component. For what it’s worth, consider this my tenuous approval of RCN, to be revised as necessary. And now back to your regularly scheduled basketball talk.

– Eric Gordon is an incredible offensive player. (No kidding, right?) This is probably the easiest, least surprising thing about last night’s game; what was surprising was just how quickly Gordon seemed to integrate himself into the flow of the game. Rarely was a shot forced, and when shots were forced, natural talent took over. Everything he does is tinged with talent: No one has talked about his passing ability, but the downcourt pass he flicked, ever so easily, into Jordan Crawford’s hands in the first half was the most sublime measure yet of how much better he is than everyone else on the floor. And there was that dunk; that wasn’t so bad either, was it?

That said … Gordon still has a long way to go defensively. His ball defense is stellar thanks to his athletic ability; he can recover and stretch offensive players simply thanks to his superior physical structure. The problem is when the ball is in another player’s hands. Right now, Gordon looks lost in his rotations. I’m sure that area of his game will develop with strong tutelage and time, but for now, it’s a glaring issue with his game. But yeah: He’s freaking good.

– I hate to say it, but Lance Stemler is a superfluous piece. Talking with a friend last night, he questioned why Stemler should ever see the floor, and he has a major point: Stemler really doesn’t do anything helpful at all. Last year, with a deficit of athletic players, I could understand Stemler’s playing time. Sampson clearly wanted a solid guy to stretch defenses at the four and free D.J. to work on the block. That worked fine until Stemler stopped hitting shots, at which point he became dead weight. Now, in his second season, Stemler’s shooting doesn’t seem to have recovered, and his mistakes and general lack of athleticism make him dead weight yet again. If Sampson wants a small lineup, he can play Jordan Crawford and Jamarcus Ellis with Bassett, Gordon, and White. If he wants a big lineup, he can play DeAndre Thomas. Stemler will have to get a lot better in a lot of ways if he plans to make the starting lineup as the season progresses.

– D.J.’s head injury looked like it could have been much worse than it was … but in retrospect, I’m glad D.J. landed on his head. Obviously, I hope D.J. doesn’t take any hard falls, but if he is going to fall hard (D.J., stay on your feet!), then a crack on the head is preferable to a rolled ankle or a jumbled, swollen knee. It looks like White will be fine regardless, which is a relief given how small the rest of this team is.

– One camera angle last night — a behind-the-basket view of a Gordon-Ellis-Crawford fast break — gave me chills. I’m not afraid to admit that.

– As much as that pure offensive potential excites me to my very core, every time the Hoosiers put together an impressive offensive play, they surrendered an equally sloppy bucket on the other end. Credit Chattanooga, who looked like a slightly better-than-average mid-major, but also credit a sloppy IU defense. IU was a mediocre defensive team last year even with Earl Calloway’s constant point-pressure and Rod Wilmont’s strength; I worry that a younger, less experienced, more lithe lineup is going to be a downright bad defensive team. Especially on the perimeter, where the lineup is likely to include at least three first-year players. Sampson has to get those guys playing lock-down defense if he wants to sniff a national title in what is certain to be Eric Gordon’s only year in cream and crimson.

That about does it for my phone notes, or what I can remember of them. Expect more diligence, and fewer Bud Selects, next time out. And please leave your notes in the comments.