IU 69 Minnesota 55

I was going to skip the post tonight because I am still pouting about Sunday's lackluster performance. Throw in the Brett Favre retirement news and I feel like I have been getting kicked in the nuts repeatedly for the last 96 hours straight. But since this game was on the BTN, I figured those are the games that many of you are interested in hearing my rambling thoughts. Speaking of the BTN, the coverage was horrible tonight. They must have had an intern operating the main camera because the player with the ball was not even in view about half the time. Can someone with BTN back me up on this? It was really strange. It was like they were using a camera without zoom capabilities. Anyway, back to the game. For those that did not see it, I think the best thing that I could tell you was that this was pretty much a typical home victory for IU against a weaker opponent. They've played this type of game all year. You know the one. They look decent and have a 5 or 6 point most of the way, but they let the team hang around. Then the game is tied or they lose the lead by a point or two and it stays tight until about 8 minutes to go in the 2nd half. Finally, IU hits their FTs down the stretch and eventually secure an unimpressive home victory. Highlight of the Game: After Minnesota had cut the lead to 1 with 1.7 seconds to play....Stemler throws a baseball pass to DJ....DJ catches, turns, rises up with a defender in his face, and drains a 25-footer at the halftime buzzer. It was awesome. DJ's first career 3-pointer comes on a halftime buzzer-beater on Senior Night. He ran off the court with the biggest grin on his face. He looked like a grade-schooler who just scored his first points ever. Overall Team Performance: C Let's just say that this game certainly did not make me forget Sunday's grotesque performance. But once again, I do have to say how much I love the way this team shoots FTs. 20-22 from the line tonight. That can win you a lot of games when you are not getting your ass beat by 30+ (see, I'm still not over Sunday's debacle). D.J. White: A+ The actual game performance was probably in the B range, but DJ gets the A+ from me on Senior Night. D.J. White is a great Hoosier and has done himself, the team, the university, and the entire Hoosier Nation proud. I still don't think they try to get DJ the ball enough. For example, DJ was 6-8 at halftime and the rest of the team was 6-22. They would go through 4 or 5 minute stretches tonight without a FG and wouldn't get DJ any touches. The only problem with trying to feed DJ is that this leads to a lot of turnovers. Gordon, Stemler, and Bassett all had turnovers tonight when trying to get DJ the ball. Anyway, find a way to get the Big Ten Player of the Year the ball more! After hitting the halftime buzzer trey, DJ then tried his luck with an 18-footer in the 2nd half. It rolled around the rim twice, went half way down, but then popped out. I was bummed because if he would have hit the 18-footer, you know another 3-ball would have come next, but no such luck. Be sure to check out The Hoosier Scoop's "Senior Speeches" link for some paraphrasing of the speeches. I am hoping that bigtennetwork.com will release video of the speeches as well, but nothing yet. Armon Bassett: B Armon was pretty good again tonight. The shot wasn't falling a lot, but he did still hit a few big treys. 3-9 from the arc on the night, but that's a helluva lot better than some of the guys we will be talking about a little bit later. Jamarcus Ellis: A Jamarcus was great tonight. I think Ellis has been pretty bad the last couple of weeks, but he looked like the J-Ellis we saw for the first half of the year. 13 rebounds, that's outstanding. He even added 10 points to make it a double-double. And the points were key because they came in the lane against the zone defense and they came at times when IU could not hit any jump shots. He also had 4 steals and was around the ball all night long. Eric Gordon: C- Gordon continues to struggle. First, the bad: 4-11 from the field including 0-4 from the arc and 4 turnovers. His shot is gone right now. IU has down-played the wrist injury, but that's a long time to be wearing protection and a heavy wrap. It also seems to coincide with Gordon's struggles from the arc. I haven't done any specific research, but I know his 3PT shooting percentage has been on a steady decline. As for the good, Gordon still managed 20 points, mainly by hitting 12-14 from the line. He also hit a 15-foot jumper and a nice floater in the lane that helped fuel IU breaking this game open. As bad as this team has looked in the post-Sampson era, I still think there is one way this team can make a run in the tourney and that is for Gordon to get his shot back and simply play better all-around basketball. If he starts feeling it from long range again and gets his overall game on track, that can elevate this team to another level. But the way he has been looking lately, that would seem to just be wishful thinking. Lance Stemler: D+ Just play Taber. Stemler was another 0-3 from the arc tonight. Jordan Crawford: D+ Head firmly up the ass tonight. After missing a dunk on Sunday, he misses a layup tonight. Hit his first 3, but looked like crap after that. Kyle Taber: B+ Only 13 minutes, but grabbed 3 boards and made his only FG attempt on a nice offensive rebound and put-back. DeAndre Thomas: C 5 minutes and 1 foul....seems about right. Go Hoosiers!