BLOOMINGTON — I’m going to tell you a story.

That’s one of the wonderful options available in writing for a web site rather than, say, a traditional newspaper: I get to be a lot more informal and conversational. So here goes.

For those who do not know, I rode Little 5 for four years for my fraternity. For three of those years, I rode with two guys in particular, very close friends and the best training partners I could have asked for.

We gelled well from my freshman year (their sophomore years, both of them were a year ahead of me) on, and really formed a tight partnership.

In the fall semester of my junior year, burdened with a heavy class load and time-consuming IDS work, I cut back on my training at the same time that the two of them – by that time seniors – were ramping theirs up.

I thought I could make up the time lost, and I convinced myself I wasn’t falling behind, but the truth was that I knew I wasn’t going to be where they were or where I needed to be come spring, when the real work would be done, and I was right. They were immensely disappointed in me, and whether they knew it or not, I was far, far more disappointed in myself.

I broke myself trying to catch up. Trying not to let them down. That was why I trained, why we trained. It wasn’t glorious by any stretch – forcing yourself onto a bike in the middle of the winter is pretty miserable stuff in southern Indiana.

But we were so deathly afraid of letting one another down that we didn’t dare ease up one step, one mile, and we would abuse ourselves to make up for it if we did.

There was scattered criticism tonight of Tom Crean during his postgame press conference, for, as best I can tell, demanding greater accountability from his team while deflecting it from himself.

In some facets of the overall make-up of Indiana basketball, that kind of argument is plausible. The coach is heavily involved, obviously, in the team’s failure, just as much as its success.

But tonight, of all nights, such criticism really was unfounded. The kind of accountability Crean talked about had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with his players.

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