With the 2011 college football season ending six days ago, we’re already five days into the 2012 preseason. For the next eight months I’ll be following recruiting commitments, de-commitments, NCAA investigations, and conference realignment but writing about it is a different matter. The off-season tends to be more static and frankly difficult to write about.
Onward to college basketball. After all, cold Saturday afternoons in the winter bring to mind arenas filled with the smell of popcorn and sweat, not police blotters and high school verbals. To lead us out of the tunnel, let’s take a look at Indiana through their first six games of Big Ten play.
IU is a young team, talented enough to knock off the #1 and #2 ranked teams in December. They won’t lose a player off this year’s squad and will plug in the #2 ranked recruiting class for 2012 . Considering where Tom Crean started from in 2008, he should be in consideration for coach of the year. All is not roses. There are troubling tendencies I’ve noticed since the beginning of Big Ten play:
1. In the words of Coach Norman Dale, your defense is awful. Is doesn’t take a roster full of five star recruits to play effective team defense. Look at Wisconsin over the past decade or UVA this season. A good coach can have average talent playing great team defense. As a team, IU’s help defense, rebounding and stopping dribble penetration are the worst in the Big Ten.
2. Ball movement – Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but the best offense involves movement and screens away from the ball. Crean runs an NBA offense. Most of IU’s shots are created off the dribble drive and screens on the ball. Screening away from the ball is essentially non-existent. The lack of movement makes IU an easy team to defend given their talent level.
IU is entering the easiest four game stretch of their Big Ten Schedule. At Nebraska, Penn State, at Wisconsin, Iowa. Anything less than 3-1 and IU is probably looking at a sub .500 year in the Big Ten. IU would still make the tournament given their big December, but backing in the tournament is not something typically done by a team ranked #7 as late as January.
As long as IU makes the NCAA Tournament this year, the season will be a success. It won’t be until next Fall when Crean finally goes face to face with typical IU expectations.
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