THE GOOD: FIRST FIVE MINUTES.

This is what this Hoosiers team can be. Running the break efficiently, not letting teams get set up on D, pushing the pace, getting controlled buckets in transition with Jeremiah Rivers and Verdell Jones leading the charge. It actually looked slow to me at points, because IU wasn’t trying to do too much — just simply taking what they were offered.

Rivers had a nice play during this stretch, as he grabbed an air ball and went coast to coast. But then Ole Miss turned up the pressure, started dominating inside, starting hitting shots, blocking IU’s shots, and IU began turning the ball over at an alarming rate. What was once a 20-11 lead quickly became a double-digit deficit.

Ole Miss just had too much to throw at the Hoosiers. They blocked a ridiculous 12 shots on both lines (starters DeAundre Cranston and Eniel Polynice had two each; Terrico White had one, while the bench picked up the remaining seven), and scored at will in stretches. They overpowered IU. The Hoosiers were able to make mini-runs here and there — something last year’s team would not have done — and had it to 69-61 with a bit over 5:00 to go. But after yet another turnover on a fast break (an errant Devan Dumes pass), that was basically it for their chances at a comeback.

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Indiana head coach Tom Crean, Tom Pritchard, Christian Watford and Maurice Creek met with the media following Indiana’s season-opening 83-60 win at Assembly Hall over Howard. Listen to their comments in the embedded media players below:

Tom Crean

Tom Pritchard

Christian Watford

Maurice Creek

Postgame video, courtesy of IU Athletics on YouTube

Around the Hall is recommended reading from the Inside the Hall crew. You can send us a link at tips@insidethehall.com.

+ Andy Katz talks to Mike Krzyzewski and the Duke coach says that Indiana should “celebrate” Bob Knight before he returns to Bloomington. {ESPN.com}

+ Dana O’Neil profiles the freshman class and gets a must-read quote from Bobby Capobianco. {ESPN.com}

+ Herald-Times sports editor Chris Korman and beat reporter Dustin Dopirak discuss Tom Crean’s focus on “Scoop Talk.” {The Hoosier Scoop}

+ Korman writes that Indiana players have decided they’ll need to become “nasty, scrappy dogs” to compete in the Big Ten. {The Hoosier Scoop}

+ LaMond Pope looks at the progression of Tom Pritchard, who Crean says has become more efficient offensively. {Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette}

+ Verdell Jones tells DaAntae Prince that IU practices are “like a war field.” {Indiana Daily Student}

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: Tom Pritchard.

Heading into last year’s campaign, there were a lot of question marks. How would this team of virtual unknowns look? Would IU lose every game? Does Tom Crean really drink that much Diet Coke? But early on, there was a question mark that was quickly answered: if nothing else, we had a guy down low that might not have the prettiest game, but he was going to try and grind and bruise his way to a double-double every night. This guy’s name was Tom Pritchard.

Now, Pritchard did disappear some games last season, particularly in Big Ten games where more experienced and skilled opponents knew to key on him because we didn’t have much else. But for a freshman on a team such as last year’s, the numbers are pretty good: five double-doubles, an average of nearly 10 points a game, and his 6.4 rebounds was good for eighth in the Big Ten.

As many of you are predicting, Tom Pritchard will likely get the starting nod to begin the season, though if he isn’t improving and battling, he might be unseated by Derek Elston or Bobby Capobianco when it’s all said and done.

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If you’re following us on Twitter, you know by now that Bawa Muniru is in Bloomington and Maurice Creek should be there shortly. And if you’ve browsed the various IU message boards, you may have read some reports of Bawa and the rest of the IU team playing pickup at the HPER.

What you haven’t read is the following report from Inside the Hall reader Bryan, who told us via tips@insidethehall.com about his encounter with Bawa and also details the physical transformation of Tom Pritchard, Devan Dumes and Verdell Jones.

I know there was a story run in the IDS about Bawa being at the HPER playing with all of the guys. Just to add to that story, I saw him today and offered him a ride. He was incredibly nice, smiled, and politely shook his head. I then told him to get used to ridiculous things like people stopping in traffic on the bypass. Yeah, that’s another thing, he was walking on the bypass. At the Dunn intersection. Weird. His face even has defined muscles, it’s quite ridiculous.

I thought it might be a good idea to run a small piece on the progress of players over the course of the summer. I’ve seen a lot of players everyday over the course of the summer and some of them have undergone incredible body transformations. Tom Pritchard is a big-fat-for-instance. At the beginning of June I saw him and he looked like a wad of cookie dough. I saw him today and he looks like he’s lost at least 20 pounds. He looked really lean. Devan Dumes looks bulked up, and the stories about VJ3 hitting the weight room hard have to be true because seeing him last year and then this year yields a glaring difference. I’m a monstrous 6′2, 165lbs and I used to look about the same frame-wise as he did, but now he has some muscle to go with those 7ft. arms.

So there you have it. Bawa’s face has ridiculous muscles and Pritchard, Dumes and Verdell are making strides in the weight room. We’re a Maurice Creek sighting away from a full roster in Bloomington. And that should happen next week. Only 63 more days until Hoosier Hysteria.

… And we’ll be back Monday to begin breaking down the season that was in Bloomington as well as the NCAA Tournament.

The Indiana Hoosiers have not been an easy team to root for this season. In their 11-game losing streak and Big Ten winlessness, they’ve struggled to inspire much of anything in the way of interest, or intrigue, or emotion, really. (With the exception of the Michigan game, that is. That sucked.)

By far the most satisfying part of the season has been watching Tom Crean, watching him both on and off the court. Watching him handle his business, watch him coach every game like IU has a Final Four shot, watch him prod players along without showing even the slightest hint of frustration, watch him work a Chicago crowd into a veritable frenzy. All the while, his former team, Marquette, has been running roughshod over the best conference in college basketball; they might get a No. 1 NCAA Tourney seed. Until last night, it was a question as to whether or not IU would win a single game the rest of the season.

Ah, but win they did. Ryan predicted it (he downplays his predictive abilities, but the man has a gift), as did Devan Dumes and Tijan Jobe (whose new nickname should be “prophet.”) It felt like it was time, didn’t it? An awful Iowa team playing Indiana at home. Indiana seeming to, in its last few games, pull things together a bit more. Last night was the night.

It’s not about us, really, but I’m curious: After the game, how did you feel? Excited? Relieved? Anything? I’ll be honest and say that I wasn’t overjoyed or thrilled or cathartically relieved like I assumed. I thought I would be jumping up and down, or something. Instead, I was just kind of pleased — glad to know the Hoosiers won’t go the entire season without a Big Ten win, that Crean’s and his players’ hard work was rewarded, at least for one night. Not overjoyed. Just happy. That’s good enough.

Of course, though the result was the same, there was plenty about the game that had 2008-09 Hoosiers written all over it. Let’s take a look:

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