Cannot Falter

The Hoosiers won the first “game” of the Tom Crean era although to steal from ItH, remember that this is what it is, “a glorified practice against a Division III opponent.” But IU played well and won the game, and considering Michigan State’s debacle against Grand Valley State last year or Northwestern losing to Robert Morris “Don’t call me University” College (new home of DeAndre Thomas), it is a tiny something to hang your hat on. But all it really tells us is that IU is better than a Division III team.

A couple of things stood out though. Devan Dumes did in fact look like a guy who had played Division I college basketball before. He was aggressive, he was got out on the break well, he only turned it over once, and he was perfect from the free throw line. Might like a better than 5-14 shooting night, but otherwise he was great.

The real revelation was Tom Pritchard, who had a double-double in his first collegiate action. With Taber out for a couple more weeks with his knee injury, Pritchard and Tijan Jobe are all IU has in terms of size, forcing Malik Story and Nick Williams to line up at the 4 for much of the game. Pritchard looked much more athletic and active than expected. He ran the break well and he was aggressive going to the hoop. While he had a size advantage he won’t have in most Division I games (Anderson also didn’t really roll out more than one really big guy at a time), he still had a nose for the ball.

Now the bad news: this team did not pass the eyeball test. And while it’s entirely possible it was the Big Ten Network’s poor streaming quality, this looked like a high school team. Which is probably closer to truth than a lot of fans would care to admit. All of them looked like Division I caliber players, but none of the guys is imposing, or physically mature. Aside from Tijan Jobe, this team will not look good getting off the bus. But, on the bright side, this showed one of the two ways that IU is going to win games this year: play swarming D, force turnovers, and get out on the break (although better defensive rebounding would be nice). The other way is to get hot from three. The Hoosiers were OK in that respect, but not great, shooting 4-11.

Next the Hoosiers take on Bemidji State on Tuesday at 7:00pm. Hopefully the team looks almost the same and the streaming looks totally different.