IU 85 Purdue 58

Let me start by apologizing for any typing errors as I am typing this without a pinky finger on my left hand. Yep, that's what I had to give up in order to watch this game on TV -- a pinky finger plus $11 for the Sports Pack on DirectTV. I think it is an absolute travesty that a majority of people in the state of Indiana did not get to watch this game because it was on ESPNU. We are talking about people that have watched every IU/Purdue game for the last 30 years in the comfort of their own living room. This ESPNU and NFL Network stuff is a bunch of crap. Anyway, on to bigger and better things such as IU's blowout win over arch rival Purdue tonight! But before we get to that, I want to give a shout-out to Troy Fields and that shout-out goes something like this: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha HAAAAA!!!!! Purdue Loser!!!! Sorry, sometimes my immaturity becomes an overwhelming force. As always, much love to the brother-in-law even though he is a PU grad. Now, on to the game.... This was just a good old-fashioned butt-whippin'. I am all sorts of fired up about how the Hoosiers have played in their last 2 games -- back-to-back 20-plus point wins in conference play. Outstanding. Now, they need to take the show on the road. IU is 0-3 on the road, so they need to get on the winning track when they head to Penn State this weekend. Of course, the 3 road losses are @ Duke, @ Kentucky, and @ OSU so it hasn't exactly been an easy road scheduled. In fact, the Hoosiers road schedule for the entire year is incredibly difficult -- at Duke, Kentucky, Ohio State, Penn St, UConn, Illinois, Iowa, Purdue, Michigan, & Michigan State. In reality, the upcoming Penn State game is the only game on that list where you would say that the Hoosiers should definitely win that one. Even so, Penn State is playing improved basketball this year so IU better be ready to take care of business. On to the report card..... Overall Team Performance: A Started sloppy in the first 10 minutes, but when you overcome that by playing solid in the final 30 minutes and demolishing your rival by 30 points, that earns you an A. What I really like about the last 2 games is that they built a lead and just kept adding to it. In today's game of college basketball, an 11 point lead with 1 minute to play is not safe (see last night's near comeback by OSU), but the Hoosiers have managed to build leads and never look back. Two areas that have shown major improvements from the start of the year -- turnovers and FT shooting. Tonight, 14 turnovers is more than we would like to see, but lately IU has been around 10-12 per game which compares very favorably to the 18-22 per game we were seeing earlier in the year. Also, FT shooting was really bad early on, but the Hoosiers have been lights out from the stripe thus far in Big Ten play. Kelvin Sampson: A As we all wishfully predicted, it does seem that this team is starting to come together. Sampson has stuck with his philosophy and it looks like it is starting to pay-off. Sampson has denied all my interview requests so I am just guessing at his philosophy, but it appears that you either play defense and play hard or you don't play. I'm still not a huge fan of the Sampson offense, but the offense definitely gets fueled when he gets what he wants out of his defense. Thus, by sticking with his philosophy, the defense continues to get better and it looks like the offense is benefiting from that. I think we have a really good coach and IU basketball is back. D.J. White: B+ Defense was terrific in the first half with 5 blocked shots. Heading into this game, I thought if D.J. could neutralize Landry, then the rest of our players were better than the rest of their players. Landry got a few more points by getting to the FT line, but all in all, I thought D.J. and Landry were pretty much a wash and the rest of our guys were about 30 points better than the rest of their guys. Lance Stemler: B For a couple minutes there, I thought that maybe he had suffered another concussion because he had back-to-back plays where he looked like he was having a seizure. If you didn't see the game, he tried a jump-hook from about 14 feet that didn't draw iron. Then, on the next defensive play, some PU schlep gave him a minor move and his knees buckled. Other than those 2 plays, he was pretty solid. Armon Bassett: A- Maybe a surprising grade if you look at his stat line, but I have my reasons. 2 of Armon's 3 turnovers were early in the game where it looked like he was anxious to school some Purdue scum. The good doctor and I watched the game together and both really like Bassett. Here's why: I am a HUGE believer in the importance of penetration on the offensive end. If you can penetrate and get into (or even near) the lane, that puts pressure on the defense. Once you get into the lane, usually another defender has a choice to make -- leave his man to help or stay with his man and give an open shot. In addition, a vast majority of fouls are drawn when driving to the basket -- something that IU needs to do more of! Tonight, even when Bassett or Calloway missed a floater after penetrating, it still led to a positive result for the Hoosiers -- there were a couple offensive rebounds and put-backs on those plays because the defender had stepped up and could no longer block out. So, Bassett gets the A- because I think he has been the key to making this offense work the last couple of games. Every time he gets the ball, he probes. If something is there, he goes. If not, he backs out, but he is always putting pressure on the defense. Unfortunately, our fan-favorite Wilmont just simply is not getting it done in this category. Roderick Wilmont: B Hmmm....I thought this team needed D.J. and Wilmont to score about 30-35 a game for this team to have a chance. Well, tonight, it was somewhere around 10 and they won big. Wilmont seems to be struggling with the "J" lately, but I think the reason he ranks so highly in the eyes of the fans.....yep, 10 more rebounds tonight. I believe this is the 3rd game of the year that he had pulled down 10 boards. Unfortunately, it seems that they are never in double-double fashion. Instead, it always seems to be on a night he is struggling offensively. But hey, if you can't hit the jump-shot, you better help out in other ways or you will be grabbing some splinters. I still see a big game out of Wilmont in the very near future. After all, "In Rod We Trust". Earl Calloway: B Always a struggle to grade Earl. He does some really questionable things but then he does some great things. As long as the team is winning big, we can live with the questionable things and give Earl a B. Just checked the box score and couldn't believe he only had 2 turnovers. I would call it: Actual turnovers = 2 Near turnovers = 9 A.J. Ratliffe: A+ Game-time decision with the wrist injury, but he came in and blew this game wide open. 6-6 from the field, including 4-4 from the arc and a dunk plus a couple of blocked shots and a couple of steals. When he went down with the injury, I was saying it was the one position that we could afford it because we have Wilmont, Bassett, and Shaw. However, if he can play like this, Wilmont may become the odd man out if he doesn't step it up soon. Joey Shaw: A Granted, his defense is suspect and he picks up fouls faster than Nik Heynen picks up party fouls. But the object of basketball is to put the biscuit in the basket and this kid can surely do that. He came in tonight and poured in 19. Sometimes he looks unorthodox doing it, but it goes in the basket. A couple more things that I really like about Shaw -- he was solid as a "late in the shot clock" guy tonight. I think you need to have that guy if you are going to be successful in some of these ugly defensive-minded Big Ten games. And what I liked even more was how he did it....remember when Bracey would just jack up a 25-footer....that's not what Shaw was doing. Instead, Shaw was penetrating (see above notes) and was drawing fouls or converting with only a couple seconds on the shot clock. X-Man: B+ Maybe a little raw, but I am really starting to like this freshman class of Bassett, Shaw, and Keeling. The future is bright for IU basketball. Mike White: C- I guess we saw why "40 cent" isn't getting a whole lot of PT and it wasn't his FT shooting. Two things stood out tonight when "40" was in the game -- one, you just had this feeling of 'we need D.J. back in there to guard Landry' and two, he has the hands of da Brick House (which I believe was also a nickname option). One series of plays that has to be pointed out if you did not get to see the game. On one possession, "40" got a nice feed for a wide-open dunk, he went up and realized he may not be high enough so he tried to just lay it over the rim, but it caught the rim, bounced on the rim 3 or 4 times and then bounced out. It literally looked like all he had to do was drop the ball in the basket and he missed it. It was the kind of miss that you could hear the crowd gasp. As a player, you can only hope that you get a chance to redeem yourself at some point in the future. Fortunately for "40 cent", his opportunity for redemption came about 15 seconds later. IU got the ball back and someone gave "40" another great feed just inside the FT line. This time, he took a quick dribble, built up some momentum, and gave it a monster dunk. The players on the bench, including D.J., went wild. Ben Allen: not worthy of a grade Was pretty convinced that he had quit the team until there was a Bendeman citing in the final 5 minutes of this blow-out game. It should be noted that he was in there at the same time as Kyle Taber and it was difficult to tell the two of them apart. If this trend continues, there may be a need for a Ben Allen/Kyle Taber mixed nick-name -- perhaps Ken or Byle? Or if you put it all together, it could be Kendeman. Kyle Taber: F It seems impossible to get an F in a blow-out win over PU and Taber had been grading well previously in garbage minutes, but it was not his night tonight. It all started when he had an apparent easy save under IU's basket. However, after he had leaped in the air, grabbed the ball (again, this was all easy, it wasn't like he was diving or anything), turned to throw it back in, and then proceeded to hurl it off the back of the backboard. Now, I know that it is clear glass and you can see through it, but anybody that has been playing basketball for more than 3 minutes in their life should know it's there. Then, he had another horrible play that I don't care to describle and a couple fouls and some other crap-ass plays. In the end, he was an embarrassment to the uniform. Errek Suhr: B Average in 9 minutes of play. Adam Ahlfeld: C Not as embarrassing as Taber. Poll Results 3 people correctly predicted a 13-plus point victory over Purdue, but they were in the minority. 4 people predicted a 6-12 point win and 4 people predicted a win by 5 or less. As for the rivaly, the majority (6 votes) limited the rivaly to the Top 3 in the Big Ten. 3 people gave it the credibility of Top 3 in college hoops, and 1 person puts in the Top 3 of all sports. My personal opinion is that the IU/Purdue rivalry currently stands as a great Big 10 rivalry, but nobody else in the country will care much about it until the teams are top ranked teams in the country again. However, I have a feeling that the rivalry may get back to the status of the glory years in the very near future -- both IU and Purdue have excellent recruiting classes coming in next year and I think they both have very good new coaches. As early as next year, I think the IU/Purdue game may have implications on the Big Ten title. Go Hoosiers!