Coach Tom Crean and junior guard Jordan Hulls met with the media on Wednesday afternoon to preview Thursday’s game at Assembly Hall with Illinois. Watch both press conferences in high-definition quality video in the embedded media players below:
Quotes are available after the jump.
Around the Hall is recommended reading from the Inside the Hall crew. So go ahead, get your read on.
· 2014 Ft. Wayne Luers guard and Indiana commitment James Blackmon Jr. is out for the season after suffering a torn ACL in his right knee over the weekend in a loss to Indianapolis Tech. Blackmon Jr. was averaging 25.1 points per game.
· Indiana is a No. 4 seed in the East bracket in the latest edition of Bracketology on ESPN.com. The Hoosiers are a No. 5 seed in the Bracket Matrix, which compiles every projection available.
· UMHoops looks at Big Ten efficiency margins in their weekly roundup from around the conference.
· John Stovall of ESPN.com delivers high praise (premium link) for Trey Lyles after Saturday’s recruit classic at Lawrence Central.
· Scout.com updated their 2012 class rankings and the Hoosiers come in at No. 3 nationally.
· The Big Ten Network has audio from Tom Crean’s weekly appearance on the conference’s coaches teleconference.
· Don Fischer joined Dan Dakich for his weekly appearance and talked about the Hoosiers’ big win in West Lafayette.
Coach Tom Crean met with the media following Indiana’s 78-61 win over Purdue at Mackey Arena on Saturday night. Watch the press conference in high-definition quality video in the embedded media player below:
This is what Indiana-Purdue is supposed to be: Two teams right in the thick of the Big Ten race, both desperately needing a win to put themselves in the best position for the postseason.
It’s been awhile since we’ve had this. Sure, there have been competitive games in football and basketball over the last few years, but Indiana has rarely had more than pride on the line. The Hoosiers competed, stayed in the game, and then lost.
It was hardly even still a rivalry.
But the Hoosiers are back, and Purdue still has plenty left to play for. The Boilermakers are the only Big Ten team without a win over a ranked opponent.
For Indiana, Saturday night’s game at Mackey Arena could be viewed as a “must-win.” With the Hoosiers’ struggles on the road in the Big Ten, a fifth consecutive loss away from Assembly Hall would all but kill this team’s confidence the rest of the way. They’ve still got winnable road games against Iowa and Minnesota left, but lose this one, and those two look a whole lot tougher.
Indiana’s incredibly slow start at Michigan on Wednesday gave it little chance to come back. The Hoosiers had a similarly slow start at Ohio State before playing a better second half.
If they want to beat Purdue and alter their recent fortunes away from Assembly Hall, they can’t afford to fall behind by double-digits before they find their rhythm.
“I feel like we just got rushed in the beginning,” junior Derek Elston said Friday. “A lot of the guys weren’t playing their game. We let the defense kind of dictate what was going on. After a TV timeout, coach just kept harping that we have to keep playing our game no matter what, don’t let them speed us up, keep playing IU basketball.
“I think in the beginning we were trying to make that home run play when we just needed to make the single.”
So what’s the key to starting faster?
ANN ARBOR, Mi. — Tom Crean didn’t have kind words for his starting lineup, calling it “a joke.”
It was Michigan’s 13-0 start in the first four-plus minutes that got the Hoosiers behind the eight ball before they knew what hit them in Wednesday’s 68-56 loss to Michigan at the Crisler Center. The deficit swelled to 20 at one point in the first half.
“The start of the game, we allowed a very good team to play like a great team, because our players came out like they’d seen a ghost,” Crean said. “You cannot come out and not have a physical presence right off the bat. You can’t come out and give that kind of space to a team that’s as good as Michigan. … We knew we were going to be in position to come back if we just settled in.”
The Hoosiers were able to cut it down to two points in the second half, but could never get over that hump. The start put them in a hole they were never able to climb out of.
Instead of calling a timeout to try to gather his team during the early run, Crean wanted his guys to play through it. He felt it was pretty simple what needed to be done.
“It wasn’t anything that a timeout was going to correct, in that sense, in the first couple minutes of the game,” Crean said. “It’s going out and doing what we practiced. You want to give guys a chance to get into the flow of the game, but (the
Wolverines) weren’t doing anything different. … I wasn’t concerned about they were doing, I was more concerned about what we were doing.”
Coach Tom Crean met with the media following Indiana’s 68-56 loss at Michigan on Wednesday night. Watch the press conference in high-definition quality video in the embedded media player below:
