IndyHutch

Is it really any surprise that a season filled with games just like the Pinstripe Bowl ended with a heart-breaking, controversial field goal? In many ways, the controversial missed field goal in overtime Saturday against Duke was a fitting way for the 2015 Indiana football season to come to an end.   It was a season of close calls, both in victory and defeat.   Let’s don’t forget that the season began with IU needing to make a defensive play on a two-point conversion attempt in the closing seconds to escape with a 48-47 victory over Southern Illinois.   Indiana had to hang on to beat an eventual bowl team in Western Kentucky, 38-35.   There was a close game with then No. 1 Ohio State, a gift wrapped 55-52 loss to Rutgers where the Hoosiers squandered a 19-point lead heading into the fourth quarter.   There was the Michigan game where the Wolverines scored a touchdown on the final play of regulation to force overtime and then won in the extra session.   And then there was Duke Saturday in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium where Indiana led 41-34 late before the Blue Devils scored a touchdown in the final minute to force overtime.   But I will tell you this. As gut-wrenching of a defeat as Indiana suffered in its most recent postseason appearance may have been, IU football was still extremely entertaining in 2015.   And that’s a start. I don’t think Indiana football will ever be a powerhouse type of program that will mow through the Big Ten schedule and end up playing consistently in a New Year’s Eve bowl situation. That may happen once in a while but in a division that also includes Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Penn State, I think that’s asking a lot.   So the reality is that Indiana is going to have a lot of 6-6 or 7-5 type of seasons and very likely be playing in lower level bowls.   I’m not saying that I speak for all Indiana fans but I think if the Hoosiers played an entertaining brand of football (sure, a little better on the defensive side would help) and made it to a bowl game every year that most IU fans would be happy with that outcome. Of course there will be some who continue with the line of thinking that there’s no reason Indiana shouldn’t be a football powerhouse. The whole ‘If Northwestern, Illinois and Purdue can do, then why can’t IU?’ way of thinking is still prevalent with some.   But one thing all three of those programs do not have in common right now with Indiana is that they are in the other division. And I think the East is just a tad bit tougher than the West. Sure you have Wisconsin and Iowa and usually Nebraska but overall I would trade divisions if I were IU in a heartbeat.   It still comes down to the fact that Indiana had a very entertaining 2015 season in which it scored the most points in school history for one season. In the last four games, Indiana scored 40 points or more in each game. IU boasted two 1,000-yard running backs for the first time in school history and its career record-holding quarterback and some sure-handed receivers, too.   The defense … well … it always come back to the defense. And the reality Saturday was that it was the defense combined with special teams that hurt the Hoosiers. That long kickoff return for a touchdown was a momentum squelcher. And the fumble by Mitchell Paige on the punt return hurt, too.   Still, for me the bottom line was that Indiana was fun to watch in 2015. I go back to my last bowl experience with Indiana in the Insight Bowl in the ‘Play 13’ season after Terry Hoeppner had died and I remember that game was not so much of a game. I think Austin Starr put IU up 3-0 and then it was 28-3 midway through the second quarter. Oklahoma State just ran all over Indiana that day.   What the 2015 season showed me about IU football was that the Hoosiers are closer. Next season IU will have eight home games to utilize in an attempt to make rare back-to-back bowl appearances. That hasn’t happened at IU in more than 25 years.   And that’s what we’ll all be keeping an eye on as the 2016 unfolds. Until then, IU fans can talk about what could have been and whether last-second field goals should always be reviewable or not. [url=https://btownbanners.com/page/index.html/_/football/analysi/analysis-a-fitting-ending-to-the-2015-season-r292]Click here to view the article[/url]

  I appreciate that. I need to do more of it, too. I've been a little crazy with book sales lately and haven't been around here as much as I should. So it sounds like I have a New Year's resolution forming here. But thanks for your kind words. I appreciate it. I think this is a great IU basketball forum.

  He still doesn't seem to me like he has found his way. Only getting extra minutes will help that and I think he can be a contributor. He just doesn't seem completely confident when he's out there.

  You may have been right and I'm glad that's not a path we're necessarily visiting today.

  I think there's a lot of truth to that. Especially the "even our own players" point. A win like this one can give a team some confidence. They had seen the other model which was the debacle at Duke. Now they know that the outcome can be different. Some of these guys haven't been in a lot of these situations before. People sometimes forget that.

We learned a few things about Indiana Saturday. Rallying from a 16-point second half deficit said a few things about the character of this Hoosier team. But there were other things, too. Read on for my analysis. The first point that has to be made about Saturday’s 80-73 victory by Indiana over Notre Dame is that in the grand scheme of things it was a huge victory for this IU basketball program.   As I wrote on the morning of the game, this was a perception game. And the difference in that perception based on a win or a loss in the Crossroads Classic would have been major. The difference between being 9-3 and 8-4 on paper may not seem like a lot but in this particular case it would have been. Indiana needed to beat a quality opponent and that’s what it did on Saturday afternoon.   It wasn’t pretty for major stretches of the game, there’s no question about that. Robert Johnson said after the game that he was pretty sure that there were times in the second half when the Hoosiers got down by 16 points that a lot of people at home very likely turned off their televisions out of frustration. I’m guessing that’s probably pretty accurate. If people didn’t, they may have been thinking about it. Heck, as I was sitting there in Bankers Life Fieldhouse I was wondering the same thing myself.   But after rallying from that 16-point deficit, the largest come from behind victory for IU in the Tom Crean era, to beat the Irish 80-73, I’d like to turn to a thought of just what did we learn about Indiana basketball Saturday afternoon in the Crossroads Classic.   Here are some thoughts:   1. THERE IS STILL A GREAT DEAL OF FIGHT IN THIS TEAM: If ever a team had a chance to mail it in, I would think the 56-40 deficit with just over 15 minutes to play in the game would have been the time. Fans in the building were getting restless (as they should have been) and things were not going well. It was Duke all over again in terms of a lopsided result. Notre Dame was having its way with Indiana especially inside and it just didn’t seem like IU had any answers. But the Hoosiers kept chipping away. They stayed the course. (Sorry, I’ve it’s turned into Cliché Central here but the ideas seem to be the right ones). And it probably didn’t hurt that there was a large number of IU fans inside the building waiting for a reason to erupt and IU finally gave it that reason down the stretch. 2. IU WAS REALLY GOOD ON THE OFFENSIVE GLASS: Indiana had 20 offensive rebounds in the game. Notre Dame had 19 defensive rebounds. That means Indiana got to more of its missed shots than the Irish did. That’s pretty impressive. And it was eight different players that were getting to those rebounds. Troy Williams had five of them but three other players had three each. Two of them, Thomas Bryant and James Blackmon Jr., you would expect. The one that didn’t I thought was impactful in the game and that was O.G. Anunoby. He had two points and four rebounds in the 7 minutes he played. There was a sequence with IU trailing 71-64 that really stood out for me. Williams missed a free throw and Max Bielfeldt got an offensive rebound. Nick Zeisloft then missed a 3-pointer and Anunoby got the offensive board. Williams got open for a long 3 and missed it, too, but Anunoby was there to clean it up and slam it home. That cut the lead to 71-66 with 5:37 to play. 3. THE ZONE WAS EFFECTIVE: I never would have thought that Notre Dame with a good inside/outside combination would have been a team that you would have wanted to zone a lot. Apparently Tom Crean thought the same thing because he mentioned that point in his postgame remarks. But when other things aren’t working well you need to have a Plan B and I’ll credit Crean and his staff for going that direction Saturday. It was 2-3 zone. It looked like a 1-3-1 at time but it was more of a 2-3, almost a matchup 2-3 zone as people were still getting out on a specific man. But the important thing is that it worked. In the final 6:32, Notre Dame was 1 of 11 from the field. Notre Dame also missed two free throws in that stretch. It also didn’t hurt that Zach Auguste picked up his fourth with 2:44 to play and then fouled out a few minutes later. But what that zone did for Indiana was it showed this group that there are other ways it can win and the players seemed to buy into it and that’s a huge point with just 10 days to go before the start of the Big Ten season.   It’s just one victory, but again it’s a big victory. This game has the feel of one that you can look back on later and think that it was a turning point. Indiana should now go into Big Ten play on a five-game winning streak after dispatching Kennesaw State this Tuesday.   Then there are plenty of games early in IU’s schedule that should give the Hoosiers a chance to be successful. (That Jan. 10 home game with Ohio State game may look a little more difficult now after what the Buckeyes did to Kentucky on Saturday). But the point remains: IU should have a chance to now build a little momentum and maybe even get back in the top 25 before too long.   The perception coming out of Saturday’s win over Notre Dame is that Indiana has a chance to do some things if it can play at a high level and play together.   It’s just one game, but it was really a big one in the grand scheme of things. [url=https://btownbanners.com/page/index.html/_/basketball/analysis/analysis-a-few-things-we-learned-about-iu-in-s-r290]Click here to view the article[/url]

I've written a new IU basketball book along with co-author Tom Brew that is the perfect last minute Christmas gift for the IU fan on your list. I can personalize it to you or the IU fan on your list and mail it as early as today. See all the info below. Looking for an easy Christmas gift for that IU basketball fan on your list?   Or would you just like a great read for yourself?   I have two Indiana basketball books that are out in time for the holidays.   The new one, released just last Saturday and not really available in many bookstores yet is Missing Banners, a book I co-wrote with my friend Tom Brew. This book looks at all the years in IU basketball history where people felt the Hoosiers had a team worthy to hang a national championship banner but for whatever reason it didn’t work out that way.   We focus on five years in particular from five different decades: 1975, 1980, 1993, 2002 and 2013. If you look at the cover closely that is provided here you’ll see that we have the five national championship banners in the background and the years on them on the ones of the teams we focused on.   What makes this a fun read is that Tom and I went back and talked to players from all those teams and we get their perspectives all these years later. In many cases there are a lot of stories told in here that I’ve never seen before in print. We also talk about a few other teams that could have made a claim at a banner like 1954 and 1960 to name a few.   My guess is you’ll be hearing a lot about Missing Banners in the next few months. First week sales have been brisk.   My other book that has been out for a few months is an IU basketball trivia book called “So You Think You Know Indiana University Basketball”. It’s 450 questions of IU hoops trivia with chapters on players, coaches, national championship teams, venues, numbers worn by various IU standouts and a lot of fun facts, too. There’s also a 50-question chapter on Bob Knight.   So how can you get your hands on copies of the book by Christmas?   If you want autographed copies with personal inscriptions, send me a note via email at Terry_Hutchens@yahoo.com and I’ll take care of you. Missing Banners goes for $18 and my trivia book retails for $14. For Btownbanners.com folks, I can do the trivia book for $10. There isn’t as much wiggle room, however, on Missing Banners.   One easy form of payment is to use Facebook Messenger and just send me the payment that way. Add $3 for shipping and handling if you want one book, $5 for two and then an extra dollar per book beyond that. But just drop me a note at Terry_Hutchens@yahoo.com and let me know how many you want, who you want me to sign the books to and where I can mail them. Then let me know if you’re going to pay via Facebook Messenger or send me a check. If you’re sending a check I’d prefer to get it before I mail the books out unless you’re somebody I know. That’s why the Facebook Messenger option is so easy. You go the Facebook place where you would send someone a direct message and click on the three dots next to that. You’ll see ‘Send Payment’ as an option and then you just choose the amount that will be transferred from your debit card to mine. I’ve probably had 25 people order books this week using that method and all say it is extremely easy.   If you live in the Indianapolis area, make note of that in your email and I’ll try to find a way to meet you with books either Sunday, Monday or Tuesday of this week. In other words I can easily get them in your hands by Christmas. Do it this way and obviously don’t worry about the shipping charge. I’ve spent a lot of time this week either mailing the new books out or personally delivering orders.   If you don’t want a personalized, autographed copy mailed to you, then both books are available on Amazon and the trivia book can be purchased through Barnes and Noble, too. We’re working to get Missing Banners in that system as well.   If you’re in Indianapolis, Tom Brew and myself will be signing copies of the books tonight, Saturday Dec. 19, from 7-9 p.m at the Barnes & Noble in Carmel. I’ll also be doing a signing on Sunday in Fort Wayne at the Barnes & Noble Jefferson Pointe from 1-3 p.m.   If you get on this quickly though and order books from me through my email address there’s a good chance if you use the Facebook Messenger option for payment that I can still get your books in the mail today.   Thanks for your support….Terry [url=https://btownbanners.com/page/index.html/_/basketball/need-a-last-minute-christmas-gift-for-an-iu-bas-r289]Click here to view the article[/url]

How much has Indiana improved against its cupcake schedule since that ACC/Big Ten loss to Duke? Indiana fans are about to find out today against a formidable opponent in Notre Dame. It has been 17 days since Indiana’s disappointing showing against Duke in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.   Seventeen days to think about how Indiana looked inept on the defensive end in particular. Seventeen days to replay in your mind one player after another driving the ball to the basket for an easy layup against an IU defender. Seventeen days to question whether there’s truly any reason to be excited about this Indiana basketball team as it prepares to open Big Ten play Dec. 30 at Rutgers.   Seventeen days of misery for many die hard IU basketball fans.   Since then, IU has beaten up on a trio of cupcake-like opponents in Morehead State, IPFW and McNeese State. Basically, in those three games Indiana did what it was supposed to do. It took advantage of three lesser opponents and improved its record to 8-3.   But what do we really know about Indiana today that we didn’t know following the Duke game?   The reality is that we know very little. It’s difficult against those opponents to get a real feel for whether Indiana learned anything about itself in that loss to Duke.   You need a marquee opponent to truly measure your skills against. That’s why today’s game with Notre Dame in the Crossroads Classic is such a significant test for this Indiana basketball team.   This is a big game for Indiana in terms of perception.   Myself, I still think Indiana will be fine when it comes to Big Ten play. Some of that is because I question just how good the Big Ten is this season. Right now I don’t think Indiana is one of the top three teams in the conference. I think that pre-conference honor any way goes to Purdue, Michigan and Maryland.   But is this Indiana team good enough to be at the top of the other 11 conference teams? That’s the question that needs to be answered.   And again, this is just my opinion but I don’t think there’s any reason to think that IU couldn’t be among the top of the rest of the conference and then try to find a way to sneak into the upper three. Ohio State has struggled. Wisconsin has struggled. So have most of the others. Iowa could be the exception and a team that will battle Indiana for that ‘best of the rest’ moniker. But there are a lot of winnable games on that Big Ten slate. And the fact that Indiana only plays those top three teams one time each is a significant note going into this Big Ten season. And two of those games (Maryland and Purdue) will be played in Assembly Hall.   All of which is why today’s game with Notre Dame is so important. Indiana needs to prove to itself and to its nervous fan base that it has a team that is going to compete at least near the top of the conference standings. Go out and beat a decent Notre Dame team today in Indianapolis and Hoosier fans will at least feel better going into conference with likely a 10-3 record (the Hoosiers play Kennesaw State on Tuesday to wrap up non-conference play).   But come out today and look like you did against Duke where Indiana couldn’t get out of its own way especially on the defensive end and that rocky perception moving forward will loom large again. The company line coming out of Bloomington is that the last three games have proven that Indiana can be a competitive Big Ten caliber team.   And yet again, the reality is that it’s all just talk until you are able to perform at a high level against a high level program. That’s where Indiana finds itself today.   Notre Dame hasn’t played a great schedule itself by any means. It does own two victories over Big Ten opponents having beaten Iowa by six and Illinois by five. The losses for the Irish though came to Monmouth and Alabama.   That kind of feels like Wake Forest and UNLV to me.   So It really does come down to this one game because11 days from now Indiana will open Big Ten play on the road at Rutgers.   Will Indiana fans head to Rutgers thinking the Hoosiers are in a better place buoyed by a strong performance against Notre Dame today?   Or will they go there more disappointed following a poor performance against the Irish?   That’s what we’ll find out today.   That’s why today is such a big game in terms of perception. [url=https://btownbanners.com/page/index.html/_/basketball/analysis/analysis-todays-iu-notre-dame-game-is-big-r288]Click here to view the article[/url]

Indiana looked better on the defensive end Saturday night. As you would expect the Hoosiers to do. But the most important thing I took from the win over Morehead State is that Indiana at least looked as if it was taking a little pride in what it was doing and tried to play together as a defensive unit. And that's a start. The problem with evaluating an effort like Indiana put forth Saturday night against Morehead State was … well … it was Morehead State.   And no matter how much some will try to get to believe that Morehead State is a decent non-conference opponent, the Eagles just really didn’t look that part Saturday night in a 92-59 loss to the Hoosiers.   So you sit back, evaluate the effort and then try to decide just what it all really means.   This is what I took away from Indiana’s win Saturday night over Morehead State.   It seemed like Indiana was trying to do something different on defense. And you know what, no matter the opponent, that is a start. The only way IU is ever going to get better on the defensive side of the ball is to string a few good defensive efforts together and try to do something very different than what we saw displayed in Maui and what we say displayed in Durham, N.C. on Wednesday.   And I felt like this was a start.   I liked the 30-second shot clock violations that IU was able to force.   I liked the way the Hoosiers had a couple of other defensive possessions that were pushed almost to the shot clock buzzer.   I liked the fact that I could actually see some help side defense and an awareness by a couple of players in particular.   I liked some of the energy I saw and the seven blocked shots.   What I liked the most is that it just felt like there was a team defensive concept going on. It seemed like Indiana was really trying to do something as a group and not just as individuals.   I just thought it was better. Yes, it was Morehead State but that was the next team on the schedule. IU could have come out and played awful again and really left Hoosier fans wondering what was going to happen next. Instead, it played solid ball on both ends of the floor.   The reality is that outside of Notre Dame in the Crossroads Classic that it’s probably going to be hard for us to really get a gauge for what to expect from this team moving into Big Ten play.   But again, the only thing you can really hope for right now is to take baby steps in that direction and then by the time you play the Irish perhaps give a performance that gives you hope again when IU plays against a good foe.   So yes, it was just Morehead State. But the good news is that it wasn’t the defense played in Maui and it wasn’t the defense played at Duke.   That’s a step in the right direction. [url=https://btownbanners.com/page/index.html/_/basketball/analysis/analysis-it-was-just-morehead-state-but-r282]Click here to view the article[/url]

  I think this is an important stretch for O.G. as well. Eight games in we haven't seen a lot but I really thought I saw a few things against Duke that I hadn't seen in other games. Maybe the bright lights woke him up a little bit.

  I think a segment of the administration does for sure but it's hard to tell what the folks in Bryan Hall think. I think Fred Glass and the athletic side care. No one seems more intune to the IU brand than Glass and company. 

  But who is to say that those guys would come to Indiana at this point. People always want to characterize the Indiana job as an elite job and this program just hasn't been that elite program for a long, long time. It has been almost 30 years since IU last hung a national championship banner. Enough said.

  Well said. And welcome to the board. I think the SportsCenter point is a really valid one especially with TW and JBJ. It's just part of their mentality.

  There has to be accountability all across the board here. The head coach certainly has to share in that accountability. I'm not wiling to mail in this season just yet but things have to change and they have to change fast. The frustrating thing is that I think I was saying these same things coming out of Maui, and here we are a week later saying them all over again.

  I expected a little bit more out of Yogi in terms of that leadership. I don't know if he's the guy that can walk into that locker room and call people out or not. But I'm not sure who the legit leaders are on this team.

  Defensive preparedness does no good unless players are complete buying in. These guys, through their actions anyway, don't seem to be there.

  There has to be shared blame here. No question about it.

  I thought he showed last night in his limited minutes some really good things. You may be on to something there, too.

  That's another one of those things that makes you scratch your head. You would think the pride factor would be enough but for whatever reason it isn't. It's just not that important and the consequences don't seem to be bad enough to make anyone willing to make changes.

Hey, do me a favor guys and check out the Freshman Tracker article that is done by IU student Hailey Hernandez. She's a student in the class I teach at IU and she wanted to contribute and I gave her that little slice of the pie. I think she offers some good analysis, too. But if you could comment on something she has written, perhaps today's Duke Freshman Tracker and engage her in a little conversation that would be great. I'd appreciate it. Thanks.