Ho Ho Hoooollllyyy Shit, 12-0!

A gift from the Indiana Men's Basketball team to you: 

12-0

Good ole Santie Claus is going to have a hard time topping that.

I, for one, did not see this coming.

Game 3 @ Evansville, I was giving us a 50/50 shot of winning.  What reason did we have to believe that IU could go on the road and win a game?  It had only happened once or twice in the past 3 years.  Evansville had already beat Butler -- a Butler team that has now recently beat Purdue (ha ha ha ha ha HAAAAAAAA-ha) and Stanford -- so I figured it was at least a decent Evansville team and they were opening a brand new arena to boot.  Wait, before I go on, one more "ha" for that Purdue choke-job against Butler -- HA!  I know, I know, that was a little obnoxious, almost like the IU fans that I thought might storm the floor when Butler tipped in the game-winner with 1 second to go against Purdue.  But hey, it's a rivalry.

Anyway, back to that early season road game at Evansville.  I think there were valid reasons to wonder if IU would win that game.  Not only did they win, it was a blowout from the get-go.  The Hoosiers easily pass their first test.

Next test -- the aforementioned Butler Bulldogs.  No, this Butler team is not the caliber of their NCAA runner-up teams of the past two seasons, but you still knew they were going to play hard, play smart, and be a tough test for the Hoosiers.  The first half was tight and appeared to be the exact style of game that Butler wanted.  But then the Hoosiers blew them out of the gym in the second half.  Mission accomplished for the second test.

Next would be a road game in the B1G/ACC Challenge at NC State. Down by 7 with 7 minutes to play, I considered this game over.  This game was all too familiar to games of the past 3 years -- IU plays tough for about 30 minutes, but then fades late.  But wait, in this case, the exact opposite happened.  The Hoosiers found another gear and stomped on the Wolfpack.  They quickly erased that 7-point deficit and then went on to win by double-digits (by the way, 11 of their 12 wins have been by double-digits and I think you are familiar with the only one that wasn't).

Ok, Hoosiers, now you have my attention.  An 8-0 record with some nice wins that were done in impressive fashion.  Zeller is every bit as good as advertised.  Sheeladipo has made HUGE strides from their freshmen to sophomore seasons.  Hulls is an assassin from downtown.  Verdell is not forcing things.  Watford is heating up after a slow start.  Elston is playing good off the bench to round out a very solid top 7.  The Pritch is finally playing a role that suits him -- a big man off the bench for some spot minutes.

Color me might impressed so far.  But here comes #1 Kentucky.  Honestly, 1 week out from this game, I gave IU a 0% chance of winning the game.  But then, I saw students camping out on Tuesday for a Saturday game.  Camp Crean would be shut down later that day due to cold weather and finals week, but many of the die-hards got photos with Crean and were handed vouchers to be first in line on Saturday morning.  From that Tuesday leading up to the Saturday game, the buzz in Bloomington, online, and all throughout Hoosier Nation kept building and building and building until it was an insane atmosphere inside Assembly Hall even before tip-off.  The buzz and atmosphere shot my confidence all the way up to a 1% chance of winning.  Assemply Hall was absolutely electric the ENTIRE game and then deservedly went apeshit when Watford hit that ever-so-sweet buzzer-beater.  Keith Smart's shot has to be #1 because it was for the NCAA title, but I now rank Watford's shot as #2 all-time in Indiana basketball history.  I still love the Haston shot and it was a similar circumstance to knock off the #1 team in the country, but two things stand out to elevate the Watford buzzer-beater.  One, it was Kentucky.  Two, that single shot allowed us to finally rise up from the depths of the hell that we had been living in and back onto the national stage.  It was the official turning of the corner and it was glorious. 

The post with the highlight videos and pictures from the Kentucky game are still posted below if you still just can't get enough.  I've only watched that shot a couple hundred times.

Then it was off to the Crossroads Classic in Indy.  It wasn't IU's best game, but they avoided the let-down and beat a down Notre Dame team by double-digits.

IU has even been impressive in their beat-downs of the cupcake teams on their schedule.  It wasn't long ago that we were losing to the likes of Lipscomb, but IU handled their two opponents this week with an impressive 99-point margin of victory, including a 57-point drubbing of Howard.

Clearly, nobody saw this good of a start coming and unfortunately that actually hurts IU in the rankings.  I don't understand why the fact that the voters didn't have IU anywhere on their pre-season radar should mean that IU has to slowly climb the rankings.  They should be ranked according to their body of work.  It doesn't make sense to me.  If voters thought Cody Zeller was going to be the best basketball player to ever play the game of basketball and therefore they voted IU as pre-season #1, then IU would be #1 right now.  Or, if IU was preseason #15, they would probably be #4 right now.  Or if they were pre-season #25, they would probably be #10 right now.  Or if they were even getting pre-season votes at all, they would probably be about #12 right now.  But because they weren't even on the radar, they have only made it to #17/#18 even though they are one of only 6 unbeaten teams in the country and they have beaten the #1 team in the country!

To be perfectly honest, my concern is that our conference schedule is brutal at the outset.  Because we aren't getting the love in the rankings right now, I fear we may even drop out of the rankings if we have a rough start to conference play.  And I happen to really, really, really like seeing that little number in front of 'Indiana' again.  We've missed you, my friend.

But the question remains -- exactly how good is this team?  I still think it's a tough call and the grind of an 18-game B1G conference schedule will help clear that up.  So, why don't we go ahead and make some predictions on conference play.

It should be noted that the injuries have suddenly become a huge concern for this team.  Both Sheehey and Elston missed last night's game and then Verdell also slipped and went down awkwardly.  He left the game and did not return.  Elston is expected to be back with a facemask for his broken nose.  But Sheehey was on crutches and looks like he might miss some games.  Word on the interwebs was a severely sprained ankle, but IU only described it as a "lower leg injury".  I guess the good news is that Crean did not think it was a long-term injury, but no Sheehey against Michigan State, Ohio State, and Michigan could mean trouble.  As for Verdell, he took an awkward spill that looked to be a groin or hip injury.  I haven't read much today on his status, but Crean's post-game comments did not make it sound severe.  But if Verdell does miss some time on top of Sheehey being out, that could really be problematic. 

As long as these injuries are short-term and the Hoosiers don't panic if they take a couple losses to open conference play, I think they'll be just fine long-term.

Before I get to the game-by-game predictions, I will state that I do think this is a really good team.  They have an extremely skilled, talented, and smart big man in the middle.  They have wing players that can slash, get to the rim, shoot mid-range, get to the foul line, and shoot the 3.  They have a player in Christian Watford that hit the big shot and is capable of big games.  They have a guy in Jordan Hulls that simply does not miss.  Check that, Hulls streak of 58 consecutive free throws ended last night.  It was the longest streak ever in the Big Ten and 10th longest of all-time.  Nicely done.  Here's to starting a new streak.  Hulls is a big reason why IU is leading the nation in 3-point percentage, but IU has several guys that can shoot from the arc and that's the perfect complement to Zeller in the middle.  Most importantly, this team is playing hard and they are playing as a team.  The ball movement has been outstanding, which leads to high percentage shots, and they are knocking those shots down.  That will get a lot tougher against Big Ten defenses, but you have to have guys that can put the biscuit in the basket.

So, here we go, my predictions for conference play:

Loss @ MSU.  Perfection comes to an end at the Breslin Center.
Loss vs. OSU.  Would be quite a statement to knock off another top-ranked team, but I ain't seeing it.
Win vs. Michigan.  If they do lose the first two, this one would be critical.
Win @ Penn St.
Win vs. Minnesota
Loss @ OSU
Win @ Nebraska
Win vs. Penn St.
Loss @ Wisconsin
Win vs. Iowa
Loss @ Michigan
Loss @ Purdue
Win vs. Illinois
Win vs. NW
Win @ Iowa (then a non-conf win against NC Central to give IU a 13-0 non-conf record)
Loss @ Minnesota
Win vs. MSU
Win vs. Purdue

So, that would be 11-7 in conference for a 24-7 overall record heading into the Big Ten Tourney.  Ho Ho Holy Shit!  That would be fantastic!  Solidly in the Big Dance.

Basically, the above predictions mean winning at home (except OSU) and beating the bottom-feeders on the road.  I'm sure there will be a couple disappointing losses along the way, but I also think this team is capable of some more big wins as well, so I feel good about the 11-7 prediction.  The great news is with this incredible 12-0 start, even 9-9 should be safely in the NCAA tournament.

Let's get it done!

Hoo- Hoo- Hoo- HOOSIERS!