Analysis: How many people REALLY expected IU to go into Iowa and come home with the outright B1G title?

[IndyHutch 1,718]

I'm sure there were a lot of IU fans that were wishful or hopeful that Indiana could knock of Iowa on Senior Night before a national television audience in Carver-Hawkeye, but I can't believe a lot were super confident. All I can say is this IU team continues to impress me in ways I never expected. Here is my take on IU's 81-78 win Tuesday night.

True show of hands please. How many people were really confident that Indiana would go into Iowa City Tuesday night and knock off the No. 16 Iowa Hawkeyes and win the outright Big Ten championship?

 

C’mon, tell the truth. How many of you really expected that to happen?

 

I’ll be honest. I didn’t really see it coming. I thought Indiana would win the outright Big Ten title this week but I expected the Hoosiers to do it at Assembly Hall against Maryland on Sunday where IU is 16-0 this season. I expected it to happen at what would be a Hoosier Lovefest on Yogi’s Senior Night. What I didn’t expect was the final outcome Tuesday night.

 

Indiana 81, Iowa 78.

 

The Hoosiers are outright Big Ten champs for the second time in four seasons. In the previous 19 seasons, Indiana had shared the Big Ten title once and that was in 2002 when IU went 11-5 and shared it with several teams in Mike Davis’s second season in Bloomington.

 

With 14 wins IU has now equaled the most wins by an IU team in close to forever. The 2013 team won 14 games. So did 2008, Kelvin Sampson’s final group before he was shown the door and team was hit with NCAA sanctions. The 1992 Hoosiers with Calbert Cheaney and company also won 14 games.

 

And IU has one game to play to reach that 15-win Big Ten plateau. The last time IU won 15 or more Big Ten games was 1993, the year Alan Henderson tore his ACL in practice before the Purdue game at a time when IU was 13-0. That year, the Hoosiers were 17-1 in the Big Ten.

 

But to say that I’m a little surprised that Indiana is sitting here today at 14-3 in the Big Ten and outright champs with one emotional game to be played on Sunday would be a huge understatement.

 

Tuesday night just seemed like the Perfect Storm set up in Iowa’s favor. Iowa was reeling and in a must-win situation in order to get its season back turned around. The Hawkeyes were playing at home where the crowd at Carver-Hawkeye would certainly be able to will Iowa to a crucial home victory, right?

 

It was Senior Night, an emotional night to send off four of its own including guys like Jarrod Uthoff, Anthony Clemons, Adam Woodbury and Mike Gesell, who by himself seems as if he’s been at Iowa about 10 seasons. It seems like Jess Settles all over again.

 

It was a national television audience and Iowa had a chance at revenge against an Indiana team that started Iowa on this bad streak it had been on over the past three weeks when the Hoosiers won on Feb. 11 at Assembly Hall.

 

This was expected to be the perfect payback for an Iowa team that needed to win to boost its national ranking, its potential seeds in both the Big Ten and upcoming NCAA Tournaments and get back on track toward at least sharing a conference title for the first time since 1979.

 

And it was playing an IU team that was essentially a man down with Robert Johnson missing his second game after injuring his ankle against Purdue. Often times a team can rally around the loss of player for that next game (in this case a road tilt last week at Illinois) but to have to make up for the loss of a starting guard for two games in a row was a tall order. And the first time the two teams had played Johnson had scored 11 points and knocked down three 3-pointers. He had been a solid contributor.

 

No, it just seemed like the deck was stacked against Indiana. When asked by my friends for a pregame prediction I said I thought Iowa would cover the 5-point spread and win by around 8. It just didn’t seem like a good matchup for the Hoosiers.

 

But take out the broom. Indiana swept Iowa. The Hoosiers will go down as the only Big Ten team that this group of Iowa seniors did not have a home victory against in their careers.

 

Indiana did it Tuesday night by defying all the odds. The Hoosiers really shot the ball well on the road for about 35 minutes including hitting one timely long range bomb after another. IU did it despite an almost overwhelming foul differential. I’d be interested in what non-IU fans watching that game as a unbiased observer felt about the foul disparity. To me it didn’t seem like IU got a fair shake and I’ll admit it’s nice to say that after a victory so it doesn’t like sour grapes. There were a couple of plays late that made absolutely no sense including Colin Hartman’s fifth foul and that drive to the basket by Yogi where he gets slapped on the arm but there’s no call. In many ways, it felt like the officials kind of got caught up in the wave of emotion inside of Carver-Hawkeye.

 

Again, it’s nice to be able to make those observations and not sound like sour grapes because the Hoosiers lost. And they did almost lose but found a way to overcome a couple of critical errors in the closing seconds. It didn’t hurt that Iowa missed 12 of its final 13 shots including the 3 at the buzzer to tie.

 

I still can’t believe that Yogi missed both of those free throws late (or that Thomas Bryant got the offensive rebound after the second miss). And I just expected more out of Max Bielfeldt than that lazy pass he through in the direction of Nick Zeisloft with IU protecting a 3-point lead with 6 seconds remaining.

 

Still, truly there were many more positives than negatives for Indiana in this one.

 

Now, Indiana will hold its collective breath until we find out the severity of Juwan Morgan’s shoulder injury. One thing positive on that front was the mention in the postgame that this was a recurring injury for Morgan. So at least it is something he has dealt with in the past. But man, the way he has played of late Indiana really needs him in the lineup at the very least in the Big Ten Tournament and beyond.

 

I still am curious though how many of you really saw that one coming Tuesday night? I’d like to see that show of hands for those who were really confident (not just wishful or hopeful but confident) that IU would come out of Carver-Hawkeye with the outright Big Ten title.

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[MartintheMopMan 7,765]

I love to toot my own horn, so I'll note that I called it with confidence Sunday night. Watching Iowa play against OSU (having watched a good deal of OSU this year since my father-in-law is a huge fan) I could see they were beginning to show cracks in the exact places we would already be exploiting and while a lot of our match-ups were strength-on-strength, their strengths were like iron, dominant against most but unable to stay sharp over a long battle. We met their iron with steel and showed it.

 

Now, I was much less confident an hour before the game hearing RoJo wasn't coming back, since I thought his defense and the depth he adds would be needed at some point. And if you told me Yogi would shoot less than 30% from 2, we'd only shoot 50% of our free throws, be out-rebounded on the offensive glass, have a 25-17 foul differential (after end-of-game fouling), and Iowa was going to score 1.1 ppp? Well, there is no way I would have believed we could pull it off.

 

That's what makes this win so great, beyond the fact that Yogi deserves it, there are so many individual moments in the last quarter you can look to and say "I can't believe we messed that up and still won" or "I can't believe they called/didn't call that and we won" from missed open looks to missed free throws to leaving shooters open in the last 30 seconds to turnovers but we still toughed through it and scraped it out. That's scary for the fans, but a great quality to have in a team. There were a lot of reasons for the players to be frustrated and playing poorly in the last few minutes, but they still pushed and won. I like that.

 

And the last shot? That's why I said we were going to win. There are no legs in that shot. Iowa hit the same wall Indiana hit in the past and they won't overcome it easily. Especially heading out to go play another team who is enjoying a week's rest on Saturday. 

[odd thoughts 15]

I have to admit, you won't see my hand...I did ask my usual question though...which team is going to show up?...I expected a decent season, but never did I expect what has happened...

Easy schedule or not, IU did not make the B10 schedule, they just played it...The thing I do like is that during their toughest stretch of the season they played like a championship team...

The other thing, to win the B10 you have to win at home, and they made AH a really bad place to play for visitors...

If you have been watching IUBB as long as I have, you find yourself remembering certain teams, not championship teams, but certain teams that did the unexpected...Teams that weren't expected to do squat, and come out of it as a special IU team...this group with all the weirdness going into the year...will be remembered...

[Brass Cannon 24,069]

I called it. I thought we would win in a blowout tbh. I think we would have if the refs had called it fairly. 2 straight games the refs tried to give Iowa and they couldn't grab it. That's gotta hurt.

[ALASKA HOOSIER 11,177]

*Hand raised* you naysayers can suck it. Especially, you naples. If it wasn't my super positive yin to your dark, nasty, negative, yang.. we wouldn't be big10 champs. Your welcome Hoosier nation. Hutch should have done an article on my yin instead of Naples yang!

[Hoosiers High Life 278]

I. I believe. I believe that. I believe that we. I believe that we will. I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win!!!!........

[IndyHutch 1,718]

I don't think it's a product of being positive or being negative, I just didn't expect Iowa to continue on its 3-week train wreck portion of the season. But the Hawkeyes did just that. I wonder if Iowa wins another game THIS SEASON!

[MartintheMopMan 7,765]

I don't think it's a product of being positive or being negative, I just didn't expect Iowa to continue on its 3-week train wreck portion of the season. But the Hawkeyes did just that. I wonder if Iowa wins another game THIS SEASON!

I doubt it. Michigan is another team with fresh legs (haven't/won't have played since the previous Saturday) and we worked Iowa hard this game. Fran has totally lost the fans too. 

 

Great play by their bench though, if they can maintain it for these next few games they have a shot. I'd be nervous going into Michigan if I were Iowa because they will rock the house since they feel like they're playing to get off the bubble. It's going to be a very good game. KenPom has it as a toss-up.

 

That likely slides them to the 5 seed in the BTT too, which is not a great place for them to be. No idea what they'll play like during post-season.

[jmsgws 2,030]

My hand is NOT raised.  I'm with you Terry. I figured Iowa would cover the spread. 

At one point, I thought I was going to have to turn off the game.  I had gone into the game saying as long as we don't get blown out, and we play well, I won't complain. 

Then when we gave up that 14 point lead, I had to turn off my computer, as I was getting ready to post something I was going to regret later....  :)

I even had to get up and go into another room for a minute or two, because I was simply beside myself that we had given up the lead. 

My family, since my son left for college, refuses to be in the same room wtih me during an IU game.  Well, I really pissed off my wife and daughter when I started yelling and screaming when Iowa missed that last shot as time expired.... 

All I can say is: WHAT A GAME!!!!!!

[incrediboy 919]

I really DID expect IU to win, less from a fan perspective (although you won't find many bigger fans) and more from the fact that we appeared to be peaking while Iowa seemed to be slumping.

 

I sat with my dog's head in my lap, and she gets really, really upset if I start cussing at the TV so I had to behave myself or face her wrath. I was surprisingly cool -- and still believing we were going to win -- even when Iowa took that lead. I saw Iowa kick the lead away Sunday at OSU against a lesser team, and I had confidence we would ****** it away.

 

And I am shocked that the word I used (a synonym for take) was blacked out with *'s. I know it's also a slang vulgar term for a part of the female anatomy, but that never crossed my mind until after I saw the post with its *****

[Alford Bailey 12,273]

I was 80% sure we win it outright this week. 40% sure we do it at Iowa.

[WayneFleekHoosier 46,978]

I was 80% sure we win it outright this week. 40% sure we do it at Iowa.

i was 90% sure we did this week and 15% sure we did it at Iowa on Senior night. Great win. National media has taken notice as prognosticated.

[biteoftheapple 4,115]

I will let my post in the pre game thread vs Iowa stand on its own merit.

[Alford Bailey 12,273]

Couple of weeks ago I had at Iowa as a 100%  sure loss. With us playing well and Iowa in their late season swoon I began to think we could win this one.

[hoosierdogg 3,093]

I felt the Hoosiers would win the last two games and said so in another thread.  Iowa has looked worn down in their losing stretch, and did in this game as well.  Uthoff's shots throughout the game were falling short.  As mentioned in a post above. the two desperation 3 point heaves at the end were both short.  In one of Iowa's previous games, can't remember which one, Woodbury was so gassed near the end he couldn't even run the court and TV analyst even made note of that.

 

I told a friend of mine at work who is a big Wisconsin fan, that if Gezell gets in foul trouble, Iowa is in trouble.  He is essentially the only Iowa point guard of any mention.  Fran pulled Gezell for a good portion of the first half after picking up his second foul.  IU goes on a big run,  Conversely, Yogi picks up his second foul, in the first half, and Crean leaves him in the game.  CTC showing confidence in his star point guard to play smart, and did he ever. Didn't get called for another foul the rest of the game, hits the massive three pointer near the end of the game, plays 37 minutes.  In a huge game like this, you would think Fran would have stayed with his senior point guard as Crean did - advantage Crean.  If Yogi hits those two free throws, or Bryant hits both free throws after the big rebound on Yogi's second miss, the lead would have been 7, 3 possessions, with 13 seconds, and a less dramatic finish

[Uwe Robb 1,072]

I will answer original question with........Not me.

[IUsafety 2,775]

Not me and for pretty much all the same reasons Hutch said. I would also add that I didn't expect us to shoot that well on the road. I figured we would keep the B1G race interesting until the final game.

[Old Friend 8,389]

I did.  Until Johnson got hurt.  Iowa not playing very well, going the direction Indiana has until this season late in the year.  Wasn't surprised...we're more connected right now and going in a better direction than they are and they were.

[MartintheMopMan 7,765]

I did.  Until Johnson got hurt.  Iowa not playing very well, going the direction Indiana has until this season late in the year.  Wasn't surprised...we're more connected right now and going in a better direction than they are and they were.

Yeah, for me it all depends on what point in time we're capturing. February 15th? No, I didn't think we could play on the road well enough. Then Iowa lost to PSU and gave me a little confidence. Then we did well against Purdue to boost the confidence some more. Then RoJo was hurt and it went down. Then Iowa lost against Wisco. Then we went to Illinois and looked great even without RoJo and it went up more. Cruised right around "I feel like we might be able to win this game" until Sunday night when Iowa lost to OSU and it became "We're going to win this game".

 

I mostly judge my confidence in a game based on how upset I predict I would be at a loss. Like, MSU bummed me out but was expected and not a source of deep sports feelings. PSU on the other hand... But by Monday going towards Iowa, I would have been pretty brokenhearted about a loss. My wife said the tension in the room was palpable at the end.

[DChoosier 7,073]

With RJ hurt, on the road, their senior night a need for a win I thought we had a 1 in 3 chance to win.
Glad to be wrong.