Who Needs Consistency?

In many ways, this year's Indiana Basketball team is very much the same as it has been for the past 15 years or so. In every game, there seems to be one aspect of the team that just goes wrong and causes the team to falter. Sometimes it's a lack of defense, or shots are not falling, or there are too many mental errors. The key difference here is what happens at the end of games.

In those past years, that inconsistency would cost the Hoosiers the game. It's the reason that the Hoosiers have been so lackluster since the 1992 trip to the Final Four. This year, however, the scores have nearly always gone down in favor of IU, the Xavier game being the one exception. For some reason, when IU manages to throw one aspect of their game out for the evening, the other aspects step up and pick up the slack. This is allowed the Hoosiers to pull out several tough wins this season.

Last night, the mental errors were running rampant for the fellows wearing crimson in Minnesota's Williams Arena. On most nights, with most teams, twenty-six turnovers would spell immediate and certain doom. On top of that, having the conference's leading scorer sit for nearly the entire first half and one of the best rebounders in the country pick up his fourth foul about 14 minutes into the second half would kill a team. Indiana, however, picked up the scoring with Gordon on the bench. led by a very inconsistent Jordan Crawford, and found a way to just hold on when DJ White was on the bench. It was a very telling, but very good team victory for IU in front of a very loud and active crowd in The Barn.

All of this does make me think, however: what happens when this team clicks on all aspects of the game? It's a frightening thought for those who might oppose the Hoosiers this season, especially fellow Big Ten contenders Michigan State and Wisconsin. Winning games at MSU's Breslin Center or UW's Kohl Center is a rather tough proposition for the visiting team, and it has been a long while since IU has taken victory in either arena. However, given that IU has found ways to win at both Iowa and Minnesota over the last few weeks, victory against the Big Ten's upper teams in their own houses seems a lot more likely. I feel that, should the Hoosiers find a way to click in every aspect of the game -- defense, shooting, and mental -- for at least 30 minutes, they could easily beat anyone in the Big Ten, and possibly even teams like Kansas, Memphis, and North Carolina. I think Kelvin Sampson knows this and, seeing as IU has a trip to Wisconsin upcoming, he will be coaching his team especially hard. If everything clicks right, Indiana could conceivably run the table right through the Final Four.