The Greatest Time in our history

All credit to The Daily Show for putting this image on television Tuesday night. I know that they had other things to cover, but they did not give this picture it’s propers when it got home. They could, no should, have spent the entire 22 minutes on this picture.

Let me break down for you the reasons this may be the greatest photo ever taken.

1.) There was a time in our country’s history where Mr. T was such a big star that the First Lady sat on his lap while he was dressed in a Santa suit. Try to pick the biggest TV star today and put Michelle Obama on his lap. I can’t do it. I can’t come up with anyone who is even close to that famous.

2.) This photo doesn’t happen unless the political beliefs of Nancy Reagan and Mr. T are perfectly aligned. That sentence is just funny.

3.) Look at their feet. Nancy has little red puffy balls on her shoes and Mr. T’s are held together by duct tape.

4.) In a world where Mr. T is Santa, everyone, regardless of their position in the world, gets Mr. T related toys for Christmas. “Merry Christmas Foo’ Here’s a Mr. T doll.” People are giving Obama shit for giving the Queen of England an iPod. At least it wasn’t an Obama action figure with the words “Gentle Giant” written on the front.

5.) President Reagan is being held back by secret service just off camera because just prior to Nancy sitting on Mr. T’s lap, Mr. T looked at Nancy and said, “Hey, Woman. Hey, Woman! Listen here. Since your old man ain’t got no heart, maybe you like to see a real man. I bet you stay up late every night dreamin’ you had a real man, don’t ya? I’ll tell you what. Bring your pretty little self over to my apartment tonight, and I’ll show you a real man.”

6.) Right after this picture was taken, Mr. T cut down that tree behind them. And every other tree in the White House. The neighbors were pissed.

7.) And finally, Mr. T and the Reagan administration have been linked in my mind and heart for well over 20 years now. I can’t tell you the number of times I went to school on a Wednesday morning really, really pissed at Ronald Reagan for having a press conference at 8pm the night before and pre-empting the A-Team. All the while they were working together.

I’d rather light a candle than curse your darkness

I’ve been having some doubts recently. As I watched this Indiana basketball season pass by at roughly the same pace as an economics lecture at Shermer High School, I had less and less interest in the college basketball season. I began to wonder whether I would care about the NCAA tournament without Indiana in it.

As I sit here, less than 24 hours away from the start of the tournamnet (it’s now 3:15 in the pm on Wednesday) I am happy to report that I am excited about the tournament. It’s going to be more fun to watch than last year, when I was just ready for the season to be over, that much is certain. If you are having trouble getting into the tournament this year, let me present to you, in no particular order some reasons to care.

1.) Kentucky isn’t in it either. I find this particularly gratifying as there are no extenuating circumstances. They have at least one REALLY good player. Their conference was particularly weak this year. They aren’t made up entirely of Freshmen, Juco Transfers and walk ons. They just failed.

2.) Illinois drew Western KY and I haven’t filled out a bracket yet that has them winning that game. If I’m right, big smiles.

3.) There is no stress this year. Of course I’d rather be in it and fighting for a championship, but as we’re clearly not good enough to be in that position, I’ll just enjoy not having to stress out over our performance.

4.) No Billy Packer. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the vacuum that has been created by the absence of a complete gas bag, but if you haven’t, I bet you will over the next three weeks. I hate Billy Packer and couldn’t be happier to watch a Final Four without his asinine comments. No wild statement completed unsupported by facts. No crazy predictions about what’s going to happen in the game that never turn out to be correct. No making up statistics to prove him points (Don’t worry, the Packet Method has been employed widely by others. It’s not going anywhere). And with Packer gone that only leave Bill Raftery to deal with and since there’s just one of him I think I can guard him MAN a MAN.

5.) Louisville is the #1 overall seed. I like this for a couple of reasons. 1.) While I hate UK I’ve never really had a problem with UofL, with the exception of hating Denny Crum’s chosen style of play and finding it nearly unwatchable. So, I’ll be pulling for the Cards. and 2.) And I’ll leave on this, most overly-optimistic of notes. The last two times Louisville won the national championship, we won the next year.

Are we who you thought we were?

Well, it’s been a year. Happy Anniversary everyone! I hope you can forgive the lateness of my card, coming as it does, two after our actual anniversary.

It was on February 22nd 2008 that Kelvin Sampson was finally no longer a going concern as IU basketball coach.

So, since it is our anniversary, it seems like a good time to take stock of where we are now, to look back over the last year and inch the door just that much closer to closed.

I’d rather not rehash everything that has happened over the last year. If you’re reading this, I’m working under the assumption that you know all of it. What I’d like to do is ask a question.

Are we where you thought we’d be? After one year of rebuilding, are we where you thought we’d be at this point in the season? Now’s a good time to be honest. If you are disappointed, pissed, hopeful, comforted, pleased shout it out. There are no wrong answers.

I’ll tell you what I think in a later post. I’d hate to skew the results one way or another. I do have an opinion, though I don’t guess that’s hard for you to imagine.

But, I’m curious about yours.

Are we where you thought we’d be? Why or why not? What did you expect? Better? Worse? More Kip Schutz?

Blown Up, Sir!

I’m pretty sure I saw my uncle in the stands at the IU game against Wisconsin. It was right before the half and he was sitting on the left-hand side of the screen. He was on screen for a good five seconds, wearing this hideous yellow sweater and clapping.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t actually at the game. In fact, I don’t think he’s ever been to an IU game. The closest he’s ever come to an IU game was Fort Knox, KY.

Let me explain. In 1980, my uncle took his wife and three daughters with him to Fort Knox to watch a movie being filmed. They sat in the stands for three days, I think, and watched as a rag-tag group of Army misfits struggled their way through the graduation ceremony of their basic training course.

He ended up in the final cut of the film. You can’t miss him. Hideous yellow sweater, clapping.

Go ahead, check it out. It’s at the 1:13:36 mark of Stripes. It’s about halfway through the movie, and roughly one minute before the movie stops being good.

That’s why I’m fairly certain I saw him at the IU game just before halftime, wearing his yellow sweater and clapping. It was roughly one minute before we stopped being any good as well.

We are the Stripes of basketball teams. We start out strong and fun to watch, then about halfway through, we are put in charge of the EM50 project, Uncle Hulka returns, some of the team ends up imprisoned in Czecheslovakia and needs to be rescued by the rest of the team driving a heavily armed recreational vehicle.

The second half just doesn’t make sense.

Do you realize that we scored a field goal at the 19:41 mark of the 2nd half, then didn’t score another one until the 9:34 mark, then didn’t score another one until the 2:31 mark. That’s three field goals in 17 minutes of play after we shot a Packer Method 61% in the first half.

We might as well be going on a top secret mission to Italy with Ox and Francis.

I’ll go you one further. I think Tom Crean is our Big Toe. Our Unlce Hulka. He is a consummate professional and he’s charge of a group of guys who can’t seem to get it right no matter what they do. He looks like he’s been blown up in the middle of practice sometimes, and if you listened to any of his recent press conferences he sounds just as pissed at this team as Uncle Hulka was at his team.

And lastly, and I’m not sure I even need to point this out, it’s so obvious, but Devan Dumas, is a lot like Ox, he’s swallowed a lot of aggression, along with a lot of pizza.

I was able to find proof on-line. Please enjoy my Uncle Joe and his sweater.

I think I’ll run through the sprinkler with my gym shorts on

It’s 50° in Chicago today, after a month where there were only 3 days above freezing a number of days in single digits, and a few below zero. There has been about a foot of snow on the ground since Christmas.

And today it is 50°.

It’s almost impossible to explain what that has done to my mood. I left the house this morning wearing one of my IU sweatshirts and no jacket. I drove with my window down. I was in such a good mood I almost sang along to Elton John. It is a joyous moment when, after a long winter you get a glimpse of spring.

It’s actually easier to explain how I feel today than I thought at first. It’s how I felt after we beat Iowa on Wednesday night.

After struggling through a month’s worth of losses, some of them close, some of them not at all, when it felt like the sun my never shine again on IU basketball, even though logic said that it would, finding a win on Wednesday was like waking up to a 50° Ferbruary day in Chicago.

Now, I know it’s only February. And thanks to the predictive powers of Punxsutawney Phil I know there are at least six more weeks of winter ahead. 50° today does not mean that there are nothing but warm days and pleasant nights ahead. Just as one Iowa win doesn’t mean we’re going on a winning streak that will take us to the NCAA tournament.

But joy, even if it is fleeting, is still worth embracing. Celebrating.

Spring won’t officially be here in Chicago until the restaurants put their sidewalk cafe tables out. If you don’t now, or never did, live in a big city this may not mean much to you, but trust me when I say that seeing those tables and chairs outside is the happiest day of the year. It means that businesses have decided that it is financially viable to provide outdoor seating. The market has decided it is spring, and there’s no stopping the market.

Spring won’t be here for IU basketball until next season at the earliest, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t have some unseasonably warm days here and there.

Let’s all enjoy them. I think we’ve earned them.

Today’s theme song looks back and forward to warmer days.

Johnny, you’re a cremepuff!

I’m in real danger of falling so far behind that I actually miss posting about a game. I’d like to blame this on being back at work, but I was even worse when I was on break. So, either I’m a busy backson, or it just takes me longer than I would like to get my brain around this season. I’ll have to ask my uncle Trespassers W.

So, on to the Iowa game.

That was more like it.

That is the kind of competitive play I expected from this team all year. My glasses have always been an appropriate shade of not rosey, but I have been clear about my expectations for this team. I expected to get jumped repeatedly by Johnny and the rest of the Kobra Kai throughout the season, but I expected that we would slowly learn our home-repair themed lessons, and maybe not crane kick our way into
Elizabeth Shue’s arms at the end of the season, but I thought we would get a few turn-the-shower-on-Johnny-while-he-was-rolling-a-joint-dressed-like-a-skeleton-at-the-halloween-party moments along the way. Hell, maybe we’d even get to go to Golf ‘N’ Stuff.

All that talk about whether we would win a single game in the Big Ten, I thought, was pretty ridiculous. Now, I’m aware that we didn’t win, but is there anyone who watched that game who thinks we won’t be competitive at the All Valley Tournament, assuming we can get past the registration desk?

Our turnovers have come WAY down over the last few games, our ball movement looks better and I’m starting to get a feeling for who these guys are as players.

Devan Dumes is the leading scored on this team, but prior to the last two games I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that without looking it up. We didn’t have anyone who I felt confident was going to score other than Pritchard and it’s been a lot harder to get him the ball lately.

Nick Williams can also score the ball, but please for the love of Mike, confine yourself to 12-15 foot shots. You look great when you do and, like the one Asian guy in all of the the valley, when you don’t. You jump around spin, kick and look kind of cool, but then you get punched in the chest by the guy who was just standing there watching you do all that crazy crap.

I was disappointed in our attempt to run the exact same play we ran four times in a row against Lipscomb at the end of the Iowa game. AJmydog beat me to the punch on that one, and apparently so did Todd Leary. When Daniel tried to Crane kick the Japanese Johnny in Karate Kid II it didn’t work either.

Oh, and I almost forgot, did you listen to the press conference after the game? Tom Crean was pizzissed izzoff. He’s been pretty calm thus far, but he took exception to a couple of things and really got full hot on the deal.

The following exchange took place. Reporters comments in italics

After the Lipscomb loss, the kids announced that the whole program felt down…

Wo, who said it was?

They felt like they were down

Do you spend a lot of time with them last week? Were you in our practices?

No.

Then you just gave me your opinion. Don’t tell me what my players are, I am with them every day.. Were they down because they lost a game? Absolutely. But we continued to work on things through the week and I did not see a lot of down guys. I see a lot of down guys right now.

We are not traveling in that light of getting caught up in perception and getting caught up in things that don’t have anything to do with them. I don’t mean to be negative towards you but if we are going to ask something about the team it needs to be prefaced by something we actually know or something that we have an opinion on. Do you have anything else on that?

Not now.

I was reminded of this gem. I miss when our press conferences were radio gold. I think Coach Crean has been pretty frustrated this year, how could he not be in this situation, and he knows that going off on the players isn’t going to get them where they need to be, and he got the chance to tear into someone and took it. I’m not so sure he was really mad at this guy, so much as he needed to yell at someone.

I just can’t resist this as the theme song, complete with spanish subtitles. Y supergracias a GOYA!!

MetaComment

I spent a lot of my free time yesterday reading the comment thread on indystar.com following the article about drug use on last year’s team. I don’t often have time ot read through people’s comments on articles like that, but I was curious as to people’s reactions to this story as I was still trying to decide how to react myself. I think I’ve decided, but I want to talk about the comment thread first.

If you have some time, I recommend you take a look. I read through 26 pages of comments. I have no idea how many are there now, but 26 seemed sufficient to me. The reactions to the article basically fell into the following categories.

1.) Journalism student at IU who was critical of the grammar in the headline. He was also upset that as someone who is preparing to enter the workforce, that he wasn’t able to get an interview with the Star because of his “lack of experience.” There was quite enough discussion about his opinion of the headline, but what struck me was that he seemed legitimately offended that the biggest paper in the state of Indiana (Packer Method) would expect him to have some sort of portfolio before considering him for a position in an industry that is bleeding money. Kids today, they don’t want to start at the bottom and work their way up. They was to start at the top and work their way sideways.

2.) The conservative wing of the state of Indiana who condemn drug use and think that we should forfeit every game played by people who have used drugs, and don’t seem to realize that drug use and college go hand in hand for the majority of students. I’m not saying they aren’t right that college athletes, or college students in general shouldn’t be using drugs, but I am a realist. As Jimmy would say, I mean, come on.

3.) The Spock-With-A-Goatee to the group in number two. This group decided this was the forum to lobby for the legalization of marijauna. To be fair, most people who fall into this category deem every discussion as the proper forum for this argument. I would, however, question their decision to make this argument to a bunch of people who are pissed at the people who are alleged to have done the drugs and not likely to see any argument favorably that doesn’t point out their innate douchiness.

4.) Those who think this isn’t a big deal because everyone who has graduated from IU has at least one story of seeing an IU basketball player at a party. The libel police should raid these comment threads. I once saw Landon Turner do a speedball of a hooker’s ass. My favorite one of these was the guy who claimed to have seen a picture of Bracey Wright snorting coke.

This seems like a good time to tell my Todd Lindeman story. One weekend a friend of mine was coming to Bloomington and we were looking for a party. He jokingly suggested we call “The Neck” (Thus named because Dick Vitale once said that Lindeman wasn’t a true seven-footer because he had such a long neck) as we heard he was at a lot of parties.

We found a party to go to at one of the apartment complexes. We walked in the door and who do you think was manning the keg? Award yourselves 50 points if you said Todd Lindeman, Give yourselves 100 if you called him “The Neck.”

5.) Those who think EJ is wearing a big Rastafarian hat in the middle of Sonic Youth’s set at Homerpallooza. NARC!!!

and 6.) Purdue and Illinois fans who thought it was funny.

Where do I come down on this story.

A.) They don’t say who it was but the penalty for testing positive twice is a three-game rip. There were two guy who got three day suspension last season for unspecified reason. I’m not naming names, but 2+2=4.

B.) They don’t say what the drugs were, but I find it highly unlikely it was just pot. Eric Gordon will be 20 years old next week (He shares his birthday with both Jesus and Donna Martin) It is incredibly improbable that having gone through high school in America that he has had no contact with the stoner crowd. He’s bound to know people who smoked pot. That being the case I can’t image he’d be so shocked or offended by that that he felt the need to talk about it a year later. That just doesn’t make sense.

C.) I’m disappointed that they were doing whatever they were doing, but let’s just add that to the list of things that disappointed me about this group of guys. I’d like to pretend to be surprised by this, but I just can’t get there.

D.) I don’t think the drugs were the mitigating factor in last season’s melt down. There’s an American Indian in Milwaulkie who gets to wear that hat.

E.) We all want IU basketball players to be great role models to the kids who look up to them. We want them to represent the university, the state, and all of us well, so we hold them to a higher standard, which I think is appropriate, but the guy who used the Packer Method to come up with the fact that 75% of NBA smoke pot, is right. Drug use in college is rampant and statistically speaking there are a few kids on every team in America experimenting with things that aren’t legal either.

So, I’m bothered by this in gut, but when I let the information get all the way to my head I just can’t be too surprised about it. I just hope the guys Coach Crean recruits from now on make better decisions.

Sure they have the best point guard in the NBA and the best 4 man ever as alumni, and the beat the crap out of us last night, but… Well, hell, I lost my train of thought there.

I will be submitting most of these observations to Duh! magazine as well, but sometimes it’s worth pointing out the obvious.

The Packer Method can be used thusly. The winning percentage for any team that turns the ball over 25 times, shoots 37% from the field and 54.5% from the line is not zero, but it is less than 1%.

It’s real easy to see, so you can check sounds from Nate D-O-Double-G.

I’m going to jump off topic here for a second. I decided to drop a quote from Deeez Nuts. I wanted to make sure I had it right, so I google the line. There’s a website called behindthelyrics.com where the lyrics of songs are posted and people can write insights or interpretations of the lyrics in a comments thread. What possible insights can anyone have into Deeez Nuts. It is my considered opinion that one listen and you can pretty much gather the meaning all on your own, without a group discussion.

But, uh, back to the lecture at hand, perfection is perfected so I’ma let ‘em understand. (Sorry, seems like it’s a Death Row kind of day, a Dre Day, if you will).

As was pointed out last night, in between the Jimmy Chitwood and Hoosiers comments, this team is not one with a large margin of error. We are undersized and inexperienced. In order to beat better teams we are going to need to play with fewer errors, shoot better and not leave any points on the free throw line.

The majority of our turnovers last night were caused, not by action on Wake Forest’s part, but by poor decisions and communication on our part. We drove too deep into their defense with no thought as to what we should do next. We knew how to get in there, but we had to exit strategy. We tried to make passes at bad angles, or to people’s feet.

But, there is reason for optimism. All of our mistakes are correctable, and we will learn and improve.

If you would like signs of improvement, how about this. Wake Forest had 22 turnovers and the VAST majority were caused by our defense. We got into passing lanes, deflected the ball and made steals. Our hustle is outstanding.

Wake Forest is a better team than St. Joe’s and we played Wake tougher for longer.

Or how about this, Teague had to have been our defensie focus heading into the game and he didn’t score a point in the first half. The excitement over that is tempered slightly by the fact that everyone else scored on us in the first half, but the guy we were worried about, we contained.

Our 2-3 zone was pretty good. We got beat in tranistion all night, but they are more athletic and if we don’t turn the ball over 25 times, that’s much less an issue.

I know that Tijan Jobe is raw, and I’m sure the coaching staff is having no trouble getting him to work, but if they are, they should put the video of he and Finkelmeier going up for the same rebound, and Finkelmeier coming down with it on a constant loop. If he can’t be shamed into working harder after seeing that, there’s no hope for him.

And finally, the song of the game. It came down to a toss up between anything by Dr. Dre and this song. It’s such an obvious choice, I’m almost ashamed to have made it, but as I don’t believe in shame, I present the following for your approval.

And that is the first time anyone has ever referenced Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Steely Dan and Billy Packer in the same posting. And God willing, the last.

“By the way, I’m aware of the irony. . .

of appearing on TV in order to decry it. So don’t bother pointing it out”

Friends, I want to talk to you about predictions, punduntry. Preposterous!

I have read over and over again how IU is going to finish last in the Big Ten and be lucky to win 10 games. These predictions are based, largely on no available data.

The logic goes something like this.

Given: Indiana has only one returning scholarship athlete from last year. They have a team made up of freshmen, walk-ons and two JuCo transfers. They only have three players over 6′6″.

Conclusion: They are going to be awful.

Here’s my problem with that logic, it’s missing a crucial middle step. There is no previous data on which to base that conclusion. There has never been a team constructed in this manner. It’s very much like Dana Barrett’s apartment that way. Nobody EVER made them like this.

So, based on no observable data (many of these predictions came before anyone saw this team play at all) you have concluded this will be the worst team in the Big Ten and struggle to win 10 games.

I cry shenanigans!

While I will admit there is no reason to pick this team to win the Big Ten, there’s also little reason to pick them to finish in the cellar.

We lack size and experience. But there are a lot of teams with both size and experience that are terrible, so that can’t be your entire argument, can it?

We have kids who can shoot. We have kids who can handle the ball. Anyone can play defense if they want to and are taught how.

We have kids who want to be here. Kids who wanted so badly to be Hoosiers that the decided to come despite everything that has happened over the last two years and the uncertainty that lies ahead. That is dedication. That is heart.

If you have kids who can shoot and handle the ball, who are dedicated and willing to work all you need is a good coach to make them competitive.

We’ve certainly got that.

I know we’ve been told to keep our expectations low this year, and I think that’s wise. It’s always better to be pleasantly surprised that horribly disappointed. But I just can’t believe we’re going to be as bad as everyone says we’re going to be.

Maybe I’m Dr. Pangloss, but I just don’t think so. Who honestly thinks it’s going to be harder to watch this team play than it was to watch Mike Davis’ team stand around and watch Bracey Wright dribble and shoot our way to a losing record?

The worst is behind us. There’s nothing to do but celebrate this team. Even if they only win 10 games (which I don’t. I think we’re going to be much closer to .500 than anyone is willing to say) they are going to be competitive. They are going to improve. They are going to work.

This will be a better brand of basketball than we’ve seen in quite a while. And I’m making my prediction (which I’ve just finished telling you is a preposterous thing to do, cause who am I Kreskin?) that we’re going to be battling to start our Big Ten Tournament on Friday, and may well be playing in the NIT.

In which we start another season of IU basketball

Tonight it begins.

The process of moving forward.

Indiana finally plays a basketball game with Tom Crean at the helm.

In some ways I can’t believe we’re ready to tip-off another basketball season. In many, many other ways this day could not come soon enough.

It is no longer the 2007-2008 season. Kelvin Sampson is long gone, so are almost all of his players. We have the youngest team in the history of college basketball (Packer Method). We have, as Kyle Taber is still recovering, no real game experience. We are starting roughly 12 freshmen and a JuCo player.

Tom Crean has kept practices closed to the public, Norman Dale style, so we have very little idea what to expect from this team.

We’ve been told they can shoot. We’ve been told their small. We know they’re young.

Tom Crean wants to run. He wants them to play defense. He’s scared as hell they won’t be able to rebound.

He’s done a fantastic job of lowering expectations. He keeps reminding us that the measure of this team’s success cannot be counted in the Win-Loss columns. It can only be counted in improvement. Do they learn? Do they show that they understand the system? Do they put forth the effort needed to be competitive? Do they work on and off the court to earn the right to wear that uniform?

Maybe I’m the perpetual optimist (see: the fact that I still watch IU football year after year when with the exception of last year Lucy pulls it away right before I’m ready to kick the ball every time) but I have a tough time believing that this team will be as bad as Mike Davis’s 14-15 squad. That team may have had more talent, and experience, but this team has a MUCH better coach. They’re young and small, but they will play with desire and heart, and they will not give the ball to Bracey and watch.

I think that trying to accurately predict how a team will finish when you’ve never seen any of them play at this level before is an exercise in futility. It’s punditry at it’s best.

So, here I sit, anxiously awaiting the ability to form my own opinion, based on more than my hopes. Based on more than my belief that Karma will take care of us for doing what was right and blowing up our entire program.

I don’t know that I can hazard a prediction about our record this year, but what I can say, with almost total certainty, is that this year will be better than the last.

GO HOOSIERS!!!