Zach Osterman was a writer for Inside the Hall during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons.

The art of giving up (on predicting the rest of this season)

  • Zachary Osterman 01/28/2011 6:37 am  
 

BLOOMINGTON — There’s this team I cover, and they do the damndest stuff. See, they lose to a team that is, statistically, one of the worst they’ll play this season. Lose, hell, they get walked on, tooled against the worst ...

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Tough injury for Hoosiers is tougher for Creek

  • Zachary Osterman 01/17/2011 9:49 pm  
 

(Photo credit: Jamie Owens) Maurice Creek is injured again. They are the words nobody remotely interested in Indiana basketball and its success wanted to hear ever, and certainly not this season. Indeed, it was a moment of slight irony that ...

Creek has stress facture, out indefinitely

  • Zachary Osterman 01/17/2011 7:45 pm  
 

Well, this isn’t going to read well. According to our good friend Dustin Dopirak over at the Herald-Times, Tom Crean announced tonight on his radio show that Maurice Creek has a stress fracture in his right knee cap, and is ...

Win proves again that it’s all about defense

  • Zachary Osterman 01/15/2011 11:40 pm  
 

BLOOMINGTON — Execution is the common theme that runs through all of basketball. Everything a team wants to do, every goal it wants to achieve, however small or large, specific or grandiose, will be determined by its ability to execute. ...

Communication key against Michigan’s transition offense

  • Zachary Osterman 01/14/2011 5:50 pm  
 

BLOOMINGTON — Transition defense was the hot topic Friday afternoon during media availability at Assembly Hall. Tom Crean called Michigan “the best transition basketball team in the Big Ten,” and Jeremiah Rivers said he and his teammates have spent a ...

Indiana talks Northwestern before Sunday’s game in Evanston

  • Zachary Osterman 01/08/2011 5:17 pm  
 

(Editor’s Note: Audio and video of Tom Crean meeting with the media today is available after the jump. Audio of Jordan Hulls, Jeremiah Rivers and Will Sheehey is also available.) BLOOMINGTON — After 11 years under Bill Carmody, the Northwestern ...

Jones’ struggles don’t outweigh his benefit

  • Zachary Osterman 01/06/2011 6:50 am  
 

It was, for the briefest of moments, hard to recognize Verdell Jones through the lens of my television Tuesday night. He’d shaved off what was left of his usually short hair, opting for an all-bald look that made him unique ...

Rebounding, defense key in trip to Minnesota

  • Zachary Osterman 01/03/2011 3:35 pm  
 

Minnesota and Indiana enter Tuesday night’s affair kindred spirits in an unwanted way, each holding a share of last place in the Big Ten standings after a pair of conference games. Whichever team pulls itself up off the mat and ...

Consistency in “spirit” key for Hoosiers moving forward

  • Zachary Osterman 12/31/2010 10:18 pm  
 

BLOOMINGTON –- Watching Indiana basketball develop over the last two-plus years has been something akin to watching a college freshman trying to take an 400-level test while also trying to study the material. Friday night certainly seemed like another such ...

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So what comes next?

  • Zachary Osterman 12/27/2010 11:20 pm  
 

BLOOMINGTON — Tom Crean appeared a man defiant in his postgame press conference Monday night. He oozed belief, while admitting that, at times, his team has lost it. He said “old scars” were still hurting Indiana, particularly in close games ...

The time for improvement is nigh, as Big Ten season looms

  • Zachary Osterman 12/24/2010 11:18 pm  
 

Until about 24 hours ago, the doubt was cautious, compartmentalized. It’s now more general, and it’s spreading. When we started talking about Indiana’s 2010 non-conference schedule, the conversation generally split games into two categories: the eggshell-soft home slate and the ...

A time for change

  • Zachary Osterman 12/17/2010 10:59 pm  
 

BLOOMINGTON – What was supposed to happen went down smoothly. The Hoosiers did with SIU-Edwardsville (hereafter referred to as SIUE) exactly what the Hoosiers were supposed to do with SIU-Edwardsville. (OK, my bad. Now hereafter referred to as SIUE. I ...

Live Blog: SIU-Edwardsville at Indiana

  • Zachary Osterman 12/17/2010 6:33 pm  
 

SIU-Edwardsville at Indiana

Crean talks SIU-Edwardsville, Verdell Jones’ injury, future scheduling

  • Zachary Osterman 12/16/2010 6:40 pm  
 

Leading off After long layoffs sandwiched around the Kentucky game in part because of finals, Indiana (7-2) now prepares for four games in the next seven days – including two in Las Vegas – and six games in the last ...

Indiana a leader, “if not ahead of everyone else,” for Pitchford

  • Zachary Osterman 12/15/2010 9:41 am  
 

Several schools have begun ramping up their interest in Walter Pitchford, a 6-foot-9 power forward in the class of 2011, perhaps none moreso than Indiana. “I would call Indiana a leader, along with the Memphises and Arizona States,” his head ...

On to the next step

  • Zachary Osterman 12/04/2010 10:30 pm  
 

BLOOMINGTON — It has been suggested, perhaps not unfairly, that Indiana’s early-season schedule will eventually weaken it, perhaps critically. A November filled with nameless opponents, it was feared, wouldn’t provide Indiana enough tests to get the Hoosiers ready for the ...