My Early Keys to the Game

1. IU's 3-Point Shooting The Hoosiers have gone icy from the arc and that will have to change if they want to advance. Gordon, Bassett, Crawford, and Stemler have all been abdolutely ice-cold from downtown and that ain't Dakich's fault. These guys need to start knocking down some shots. 2. Rebounding As noted earlier, Arkansas pulled off the big wins over Vanderbilt and Tennessee by owning the glass. However, I also went back and looked at the box scores of the 11 Arksansas losses to try to find a theme. The only theme that I could find was that Arkansas got outrebounded in 9 of their 11 losses. In general, they are a good rebounding team, but if you keep them off the glass, you can certainly beat them. 3. The IU Fog/Funk Their head coach is gone, the interim coach may not be their favorite, another player serves a suspension, their last 2 games were their only losses to non-tourney teams including a heart-breaking buzzer-beater in the Big Ten Tourney, and now they get slammed with an 8 seed and a horrific draw in the tournament. The players will try to be prepared and try to be ready. But for whatever reason, things are not clicking on the floor for this team. And I don't think that is a switch you can just turn on for the NCAA tournament. If we as fans are feeling like it is us against the world, I can only imagine what the players are thinking. 4. FT Shooting Statistically, it would appear to be the most significant advantage that the Hoosiers have over Arkansas. Let's hope they can take advantage of it. Let's also hope that the play-in game winner can be the first team to pull off the #16 over a #1 upset. I'd love a rematch against Coppin State in the second round.