March Laziness

Watching the Indiana Hoosiers play basketball is a difficult thing. Sometimes -- a lot of times, in fact -- they are beyond stellar. Multiple players score lots of points, people are picking up rebounds, the defensive intensity is there, and everyone finds a way to contribute.

Then there's the game that just ended. What in the name of all that is good in this world was that? I almost want to ask for a refund or something. A lot of things came together to make Indiana simply forget a fairly simple fundamental of the game: defnese. It turns out, if the guy with the ball gets to the basket before any of the defenders, it's really easy for him to score. All of the usual suspects (that'd be you, ESPN) are going to talk about "Michigan State's inspired performance on Senior Night" blah blah blah.

Don't buy it. I could've shot 70% against the defense that Indiana put up today. It looked like an NBA defense that was going against the Spartans today. The baseline was always open. Somehow, the middle of the key was always open as well. People weren't stepping out on people who should probably be defended like, say, Drew Neitzel. There was no effort at all from the Hoosiers when MSU had possession of the ball.

One thing that kind of bothers me is that people are going to point the finger at Interim Coach Dan Dakich for the sheer lack of...well, anything. The problem is that the seeds for this issue have been growing in this team for a majority of the season. Considering the former head coach was apparently such a stickler for defense, this team did not play defense very well. The only thing that seemed to keep the team from imploding on itself was the intensity that Kelvin Sampson instilled in the team. Unfortunately, Coach Dakich doesn't share that intensity. Once the intensity was taken out of the picture, the team decided to simply stop playing (winning by 3 against Northwestern (0-14 in conference) and Ohio State (8-8)). The thing is that the Hoosiers were barely beating teams that they should have been destroying even before Sampson "resigned". The defense was barely there against middling teams like Georgia Tech, Penn State, and several others.

One nice thing to take out of all of this is that we know Dan Dakich's lack of intensity won't be on the sidelines in November. It remains to be seen, though, if the new coach (please let it be Sean Miller or Brad Brownell) can undo the hurts done by the lack of defensive coaching by Sampson and Company. Quite frankly, IU has the talent this year and they will have the talent next year to be extremely good. They just need the right person to get the talent out of them. Kelvin Sampson couldn't do it, and Dan Dakich isn't able to do it. We will just have to wait until next year to find out who might be able to.

Oh, by the way, IU stands a strong chance of not winning another game this season. Watch out for that.