But instead of a jump ball, the preseason tournament’s tip-off was more of the inside information variety.

The message was clear, whether you watched the games or the live blog. Despite the influx of talent, IU Basketball might not live up to the hopes some optimists placed on them before the season.

A double-digit win season now seems lofty. A .500 record would likely include a pair of glass slippers and a horse-drawn carriage made out of pumpkin.

Most Hoosier fans are currently mourning this weekend’s activities – and/or coming off a binge necessitated by the Old Oaken Bucket game – but I’m here to tell you that not all was lost in the gyms of San Juan.

My glass usually sits half-empty, but I can say without hesitation that the Hoosiers are a better team right now than they were at this point last season. As someone who had a courtside seat to Tom Crean and the greenest team in Cream and Crimson history all of last year, I can tell the Hoosiers have taken a step in the right direction.

Last season’s December losses to Northeastern and Lipscomb were gut wrenching; this year’s November defeats to Boston and George Mason are closer to stomach-able.

Although, certainly not enjoyable. After handing it to Howard and edging out USC Upstate to open the season, three consecutive losses reminds us just how far the men’s basketball program still has to go on its path to reclamation.

Around this time last year, I was in Hawaii covering the Hoosiers in the Maui Invitational (read: golfing). Before the tournament, IU registered wins over Northwestern State and IUPUI to open the season. No one was calling them world-beaters, but no one was quite anticipating the 38-point shellacking Notre Dame handed them to open the tournament either.

Expectations adjusted and reality hit harder than a Tijan Jobe screen. IU followed the loss with a 26-point defeat to Saint Josephs the next day before outlasting the Chaminade Silverswords in the seventh-place game.

This year, a tropical tournament seems to have weathered IU fans’ hopes once again. A banked 3-pointer and three straight losses will do that to you.

The difference this year is the Hoosiers have showed flashes of promise and talent that just weren’t there last season. Despite their struggles, IU has been competitive in every game this season. Even better, the IU men’s basketball team lost games it should have won this past weekend – when was the last time you could say that?

Crean might not be playing walk-ons and outfielders anymore, but he is still reliant on true freshmen adapting to the college level. In spurts, this year’s team has already displayed the type of offensive ability and defensive prowess that was missing from last year’s 6-25 team.

A difficult upcoming schedule could leave their record indicating otherwise, but the Hoosiers are getting better. They might not pull off the number of upsets some were hoping, but this year’s team will have its moments.

Hoosier fans should settle in for the long haul and be patient with this year’s bunch. There is a reason IU signed Crean to a 10-year contract. This year’s team would handily beat last year’s – it’s just hard to tell quite yet whom else they could beat.

What are your feelings post-Puerto Rico? Did you foresee these early struggles or were you caught off guard?

More to come next week.

Hoosier Hysteria is on the horizon and it’s time for Inside the Hall’s player-by-player breakdown of the 2009-2010 Indiana Hoosiers. Today: Tijan Jobe

I don’t feel confident about much in my life. I’m wrong about a lot, and even the stuff I get right leaves room for doubt. But if there is something I feel wholly confident stating, it is that — and I say this without the slightest hint of exaggeration — the Hoosiers’ most important player in 2009-10 will be Tijan Jobe.

Of course, this should come as no surprise to any faithful Indiana basketball fan. If you paid attention last year, you saw the seeds of what should turn out to be a legendary IU basketball career begin to sprout. Jobe is a dominant big man, a versatile force on the inside, a veritable monster from end to end. Some players, if they’re big and strong enough, earn the nickname “Baby Shaq.” Little known fact: When Shaq first started playing basketball, they called him “Baby Tijan.”

Perhaps the highlight of the 2008-09 season was watching Jobe enter games at crucial moments and simply take over. Few players have that quality, but Tijan is one of them. It was a shame Jobe didn’t play more minutes last year, but one can understand why: Tom Crean clearly made the strategic decision to keep Tijan on the bench in an attempt — futile though it may have been — to keep Jobe’s profile low. In 2009-10, the Big Ten better look out. No such mercy will be granted. Jobe will be freed. And it will be spectacular.

Bottom line: Just kidding. Tijan’s pretty bad. But he’s a good kid and a hard worker, and we love him. And sometimes that’s all that matters.

Quotable: The 7-foot, 255-pound Jobe, by the way, has become more of a threat to teammates than opponents. Guard Jeremiah Rivers is hobbled from a bruised thigh courtesy of a collision with Jobe. Guard Daniel Moore was knocked out by a Jobe elbow in preparation for last year’s game against Minnesota.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with him,” Crean says. “We have to put him in some of the drills. He has the ability to hurt his teammates. I know he doesn’t mean to, but goodness gracious.”

Indiana University men’s basketball coach Tom Crean has announced his program will hold a Fan Appreciation Tailgate on Saturday April 18, at 11:30 a.m. in the Mellencamp Pavilion. The event, which is free, will be held prior to the start of the annual spring football game which begins at 2 p.m. next door at Memorial Stadium.

“I thought this would be a great way for our players and coaches to interact with our great fans in a very informal and fun setting,” said Crean. “Our fans are the best in the country and we wanted the opportunity to thank them personally and to tie it in with the spring football game is another added bonus.”

The first 90 minutes of the tailgate will include interaction with the players and coaches and games for the kids. At 1 p.m., Coach Crean and his staff will publicly announce their 2008-09 team awards recognizing several of the players at that time.

If you notice, the above link contains a photo of Tijan Jobe scoring a basket. So what they say is true. Legends do exist.

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.

DEFENSE. REBOUNDING. OY VEY.

Again, I can’t emphasize this enough, especially to myself, because sometimes I get a little shortsighted: It’s early. Very much so. I remember last year when the team we all thought was going to the Final Four looked like they couldn’t play a lick of defense, and I was sort of freaked out. Then they got it together, and they were fine. (And then, well, you know what happened next.)

But if there are two things that have been utterly consistent — and utterly frightening — from tonight’s game and Saturday’s, it’s that this time does not rebound, and does not really defend. At all.

Part of it they can’t help. Tom Pritchard does his share, and Kyle Taber is never really out of position, but there’s just no size there. Even at the guard position, IU is incredibly small, and so there aren’t really any athletic guards that can crash the boards and help compensate for the overwhelmed front court. IU is going to be overmatched all over the place this year, and those mismatches will likely manifest themselves most blatantly when the ball clangs high off the rim.

That said, there is still room for improvement here. Box-outs can get better. Guards can use long rebounds to get out on the break. With a little tweak here and a little tweak there, things won’t be so cringe-inducing, especially on the defensive end.

Defensively, it’s much the same story. There are times when IU flashes some defensive chops, but most of the time I feel hostage to the other team’s whims. For example: In the first half, IUPUI seemed content to settle on outside shots, and they made almost none of them, including a stretch toward the end of the half when they missed something like 11 straight jumpers. They shot 25.8 percent in the first half, and IU took a lead into the break.

Then, in the second, half, IUPUI realized they could get layups at will, and so they took them. And took them. And took them. And they shot 60 percent in the second half, and they rushed back into the game, and IU had to fight them off at the last second. All because of the Hoosiers’ limitations — their defensive porousness on the perimeter, their inability to challenge shots at the rim. I don’t know whether these things are systemic, or whether they’re correctable. I just know that Luke Harangody and Kyle McAlarney might combine for 80 points on Monday. I fear for this outcome.

THE “CHIN-UP, SPORT!” PORTION OF THE PROCEEDINGS

I don’t want to be too negative, though. So let’s talk about things that weren’t actually all that bad:

Matt Roth can shoot. It’s nice to have a really, really good shooter on your team. No matter what else happens, at least there’s always the faint glimmer of hope that he could get hot and keep you in a game from time to time.

Daniel Moore is like Errek Suhr, but way better. Daniel Moore, what with being diminutive and white and scrappy and so on, is already drawing comparisons to everyone’s favorite scrappy, diminutive white guy of recent vintage, Errek Suhr. Problem is, those comparisons don’t do Moore justice. Suhr was essentially a short guy with a good long range shot and a tough nose on defense. Moore is a legitimate ball handler. He sees the entire court well, can make needle-point passes from the key or on the break, and just generally has more confidence on the ball than Suhr ever did. Suhr was always jittery. He reminded me of a Chihuaha. He would take three high dribbles and then get rid of the ball, quickly, before anyone could get to him. Moore actually seems interested in handling it, and doing some semi-stylish things in the process. I like Daniel Moore. He’s not exactly going to carry IU to a Big Ten title, but for a walk-on, IU could do a whole lot worse.

Plus, his face gear is pretty awesome.

Tijan Jobe. You think I’m being sarcastic, but stay with me for a — haha. Just kidding again. There’s nothing optimistic about Tijan Jobe, except that for three minutes a game, he looks more baffled on a basketball court than anyone I’ve ever seen, and this entertains me.

Tom Pritchard deserves more time. I was a little too harsh on Tom Pritchard in the first TMA. I guess I was just disappointed — I was hoping for some more athleticism, some more strength, that sort of thing. But those aren’t the only qualities that make a good big man, and a guy like Pritchard can get by on being in good position under the block, finishing consistently around the hoop, and being crafty in mismatches. Again, like Moore, he’s a limited sort of guy … but he’s all we’ve got, and it could be a lot worse, I think.

In fact, that’s the motto for the first two games: I have no idea what’s going on, but it could be a lot worse. Don’t believe me? Wait until Monday.

I’ll admit it: After about five minutes last night, I had to admit something to myself. I didn’t know who was who. It’s sad, I know, but I doubt that I’m alone here, and I hope it’s not too bold of me to admit it. It took me a second to figure out that Verdell Jones was No. 12, that that wasn’t Devan Dumes, that Dumes was the off-guard wearing No. 33, and who is that little dude with the Rip Hamilton facemask on? That’s not Finkelmeier, is it? And oh my God is that Tijan Jobe?! It took me a second to figure it all out, and it required me whipping out the laptop and keeping the roster handy. I’m not afraid to admit it.

Because of that, a lot of stuff blurred together, but plenty stuck out, too. Off we go, then:

THINGS TO BE SLIGHTLY, CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT:

Effort: This is going to be a theme all season, so let’s just get it out of the way early. This team is going to be very likable. They are going to play hard. They are going to have good attitudes. All of that. Even when they’re not playing with a good attitude it will seem that way, because you can’t have worse attitudes than last year’s team, and as long as Matt Roth doesn’t smoke a crack pipe at midcourt and punch a cheerleader in the face, pretty much anything will seem like an improvement. So after every game, the chorus will be the same: These guys sure play hard! Man, they sure seem to care! Bless their little hearts, huh? This is going to get incredibly annoying. But last night? It was true. They did play hard. And they did seem to actually care. Credit where it’s due, both to the team and to Tom Crean for getting them to buy in. The best basketball coaches are salesmen, and Tom Crean could sell me a ticket to Kelvin Sampson: The Broadway Musical. He’s done the same sales job on his team. Effort will not be a problem this year, at least not anytime soon.

Devan Dumes: When I hear Northwestern State, I immediately think “last-second shot over Iowa in the NCAA Tournament,” and then I get a big smile on my face. But after I think of that, I (perhaps wrongly) think of the stereotype of a mid-Major — scrappy, unathletic, hard-nosed, heavily reliant on three pointers. Northwestern State wasn’t really like that at all. They were just sort of bad, especially on defense, where they were genuinely awful in the full court press. So I don’t want to get too excited about Devan Dumes’ night. But it is encouraging, at the very least, to know that the team contains some semblance of offensive talent that can score when allowed to do so. Dumes’ night was like that — impressive, but not overly so. Just solid. But I’ll take solid if it puts the occasional point on the board.

Verdell Jones: I might actually be more excited about Jones than I am about Dumes. For whatever reason, I really like Jones’ game — he’s lanky, deliberate, he sort of glides around. His arms are long enough to make him play bigger than his listed size. Having that kind of athletic ability at the point is a real luxury … even if Verdell has a lot of things to figure out about the position. On a team with minimal size, um, everywhere, Jones is a boost. (He also had kind of a crazy line last night: 18 points, five assists, three blocks, three steals, three turnovers, 10-13 from the free-throw line. That’s like a mini-Josh Smith-on-the-Hawks line. I love it.)

Daniel Moore: It took about five minutes last night before the the friends I watched the game with were already calling him the second coming of Errek Suhr. Fortunately — and no disrespect to Suhr — but I think it’s clear Moore is a much, much better player. I’m sure I missed something, but I don’t know if I saw Moore make a truly bad decision all night. Despite his size deficit, he gets around people in the open floor. He can make open shots, and he’s a great passer. So maybe he’s not a point guard in the Big Ten, but you can do much, much worse coming off the bench than Moore. That’s a great walk-on right there.

Tijan Jobe: Haha. Just kidding. Nothing to be optimistic about here.

THINGS THAT ARE BASICALLY AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER:

The Frontcourt: Speaking of Tijan Jobe, oh boy. The frontcourt. Where to start?

I don’t want to be too harsh, because Kyle Taber seems like a pretty cool dude. Relaxed guy. The kind of kid you’re hoping is your roommate when you move to school — plays video games, probably, not too rowdy, doesn’t do hard drugs in plain sight. (Everyone knows that kid freshman year. He is to be avoided; he won’t last the first semester.) So I think I like Kyle Taber as a person. But as a basketball player, as the captain of this team? Eesh.

Last year, Taber made a living off of one thing: playing opposite D.J. White. White would shoot it, and defenders would crash to him while Taber snuck in, grabbed a rebound, and either tipped it back in or passed to a guard and restarted the offense. He was perfect for that. But when Taber is the supposed to be your “best” big man, well, you’re going to get killed on the interior all season. Just murdered. And it already started last night.

For example: Northwestern State had 27 — 27! — offensive rebounds. Eight Northwestern players had at least two offensive rebounds each. Northwestern State had eight blocks, which doesn’t seem like that many, actually. I would have thought, oh, 30 or so? That’s how it felt, anyway.

As for the non-Taber members of the frontcourt: Tom Pritchard is like Kyle Taber, except left-handed. He might actually be a bit more talented, thank God, but he’s certainly not more athletic, or bigger; he just seems to know how to get the most of his limitations. And Tijan Jobe. Oh, Tijan. Tijan Tijan Tijan. God bless him. He looks incredibly interested in playing hard basketball, in rebounding, that sort of thing. That’s probably the nicest thing that can be said about his basketball ability right now.

THINGS WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT:

Pretty much everything else. But there’s IUPUI Tuesday night, and so goes the season. Another game, another batch of info to learn. And then? The Road to the Final Four. We’re going all the way! 1-0! WOOOO!

This could be a long season.

Bloomington – Indiana University men’s basketball coach Tom Crean has announced that Tijan Jobe (Tee-zhan Joab), a 7-0, 255-lb. center from Olney (Ill.)?Central College has signed a national letter of intent to attend IU and play basketball for the Hoosiers beginning next fall.

“We are excited to be able to sign a player with the defensive ability and rebounding presence that Tijan has,” said Crean.  “We feel he has a lot of room for growth in the sense of improving on both the defensive and offensive end and we love the fact that he plays extremely hard.  His height and wingspan (7-5 1/2) is something that our team was in great need of.”

Originally from Banjul, Gambia, Jobe averaged 4.0 points, 4.0 rebounds and a block for Coach Mike Burris at Olney.  He attended Butler County (Kan.) Community College as a freshman and attended Laurinburg (N.C.) Prep School.

He came to the United States four years ago through the African Hoop Opportunities Providing an Education Foundation (A-HOPE), a Bloomington based organization. The foundation is designed to provide talented basketball players from a host of African countries the opportunity to come to the United States to use their skills as a means to get a U.S. education.

He chose Indiana over UAB, Auburn and Nebraska.

He is the sixth player to accept a scholarship to play for the Hoosiers joining forward Tom Pritchard (Lakewood, Ohio/St. Edwards), guard Verdell Jones III?(Champaign, Ill./Central) guard Matt Roth (Washington, Illinois), guard Devan Dumes (Vincennes/Indianapolis/Decatur Central) and guard Nick Williams (Mobile, Alabama/LeFlore).

Physically, Jobe will provide a much needed presence in the paint. Developmentally, he sounds raw, but obviously Crean and staff saw some tools they could work with. A-Hope, which is led by founder and president Mark Adams of Bloomington, also assisted in bringing Alfred Aboya (UCLA), Beas Hamga (UNLV) and Emmanuel Negedu (considering IU) to the states.

• IU signs 7-footer, gets commitment from Hulls (Indianapolis Star)
• IU picks up Bloomington South guard (Indianapolis Star)
• Q & A with Jordan Hulls (Hoosiers Insider)
• Hulls picks IU (The Hoosier Scoop)
• Assist to Jordan Hulls’ neighbors (The Hoosier Scoop)
• The newest Hoosier: Tijan Jobe (The Hoosier Scoop)
• Hoosiers score JUCO big (Scout.com)
• Could Negedu follow Pastner to Memphis? (Tucson Citizen Wildcat Blog)
• They had to release him (CBS Sportsline)
• Bye bye Negedu? (Arizona Daily Star)
• IU offers scholarship to Central frosh (The Star Press)
• Villanova awaits word on late recruit (Philadelphia Daily News)