“Here lies a toppled god. His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, A narrow and a tall one.” ? Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah.

It’s no secret that I root for the other college in Indiana. That was already my team of choice and now my boy plays for their pep band which cranks it up a notch. Rooting against Purdue is in my blood, and – truth be told – there was a bit of schadenfreude when I learned of top seeded Purdue’s historic loss against #16 seed Farleigh Dickinson the other night. I didn’t see it because we were in Berlin at the time, five hours ahead, trying to catch a few hours of sleep before leaving for the airport at 3:45 a.m. local time. I woke up to a text from my mom sharing the  shocking news.

This was a horrible loss for the Boilermakers. There’s no other way to spin it. But what tends to get lost in the discussion is the level of success necessary to make this loss even possible. If Purdue had performed to pre-season expectations, they are probably somewhere in that Big Ten logjam, placing somewhere between 2 and 9th in the league; maybe a 5 or 6 seed in the tournament. If they do that, they exit in the first game or two, folks are disappointed for a week or so, but then fans look forward to next year with more experience on the court. Instead, Purdue set itself ahead of the Big Ten pack. They get swept by Indiana but otherwise stand above the Big Ten winning the  regular season and the tournament. It’s only that success that makes the historic loss possible. Instead of remembering the Big Ten championship, fans and detractors alike will remember the face plant against FDU. That’s inevitable, but I’m not entirely sure it’s fair.

Expectations are an insidious thing. I saw that in my rec soccer coaching – being up a couple of goals and then coming away with a tie felt like a loss whereas being down a couple of goals and then getting a tie felt like a win. It’s not just athletics either – it’s most things in life. Things that are objectively neutral or even good can feel bad if they don’t live up to expectations. Compared to basically every other era in history, most humans on the planet now have things better than in any other era in history; but their existence can, nevertheless, feel fraught and miserable simply because we know better is possible.

Likewise, Purdue fans feel miserable because so much more was possible. But it was only possible because of the work and success of Painter, Edey, et al, through the rest of the season. Don’t expect much empathy for Boilermaker basketball in these pages in the future, but I hope after the pain of this loss fades, there will be some ability among fans to appreciate the real accomplishments even if they are alloyed with the sting of disappointment.

Before the various basketball seasons come to an end and fade into memory, I just want to take a moment to talk about what a delight the season has been. Given the realities of tournament basketball, the strong likelihood is that any team I care about will end its season with a loss and then fade into memory. The West Side basketball teams have already hit that end. The WL boy’s team showed some resurgence as compared to last year and won quite a few games in the second half of the season. But they made a quick exit from the tournament. My main complaint with them was that their home games seemed few, far between, and unpredictably scheduled. The West Side girls were really good. Their main problem was being in a conference that was having a strong year overall. They had a good season and took an undefeated Twin Lakes team to double overtime in the tournament.

Now, on to the Big Ten where the State of Indiana has owned basketball this year. Purdue won the men’s side. I’m going to call Indiana tied for second. (Technically, Northwestern gets the tie breaker, but I refuse to credit the uncalled travel/push-off game “winner” by Buie as time expired.)  The Boilermakers have a national player of the year contender in Zach Edey and a plausible chance at winning the NCAA tournament.

Despite that, IU swept Purdue. I was raised a fan of the Hoosiers, and I’m even more in the bag now that my son plays trombone in the Big Red Basketball Band. Whenever there is a broadcast, Amy & I play a game of “Find Cole.” Typically he’s in the front row toward the left side of the band. Things could still fall apart – I’ve been hurt before – but you get the sense that under Coach Woodson, the Hoosiers are moving toward a return to prominence. This season Trayce Jackson Davis established himself as an all-time Hoosier great. He has set school records for rebounds and blocks, is currently sitting in fourth all-time on the scoring list and looks very likely to grab the third spot. The Hoosiers have a team that can beat to anyone but which can also lose to pretty much anyone. So, to me – a basketball amateur who still thinks guys getting shoved around in the paint is probably a foul under the rules as they’re written and who can’t reliably predict whether the referee will call a charge or a block – the likelihood of IU stringing together three wins in the Big Ten tournament or six wins in the NCAA tournament seems remote. I’ll be delighted to be wrong. What’s great for the state, however, is having both IU and Purdue nationally ranked, playing closely contested games at Assembly Hall and Mackey Arena. We love hating each other and doing so on a massive stage is a wonderful thing.

On the women’s side, Teri Moran has built a monster of a team. They only lost two regular season games despite playing in by far the toughest conference in the nation. Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Ohio State, and Michigan were all top 20 teams. They won the Big Ten outright for the first time in 40 years. The day we went down to watch a game against Purdue, the women’s team sold out Assembly Hall for the first time. We’ll lose Grace Berger next year, but the talent that should be coming back is crazy. Purdue’s women’s team isn’t quite on that level at the moment and they had to play in an insanely competitive conference. But, Katie Gearlds looks like she has great potential and Purdue’s women will be in good hands. (I make all of these predictions for a bright future hesitantly. I know from bitter experience and bright hopes past that any of these teams could spiral into mediocrity or worse.)

Between the West Lafayette boys and girls teams and the IU men’s and women’s teams, I’ve watched way more basketball season this year than in recent years. Having grown up in Richmond (Beast from the East), that’s a good thing!

 

The police are investigating a shooting at the Coke Lot next to the IMS.

Speedway Police confirmed one person was shot and killed shortly after 2 Saturday morning.

Police were called to Lot 1-C after people reported shots being fired. When they arrived, they found a man shot to death.

So that’s a disturbing kick off to race weekend.

Update The Indy Star has identified the shooting victim as a 25 year old Kokomo man by the name of Max Levine.

Gabriel Rosenberg has a fairly brutal opinion piece in the Indianapolis Star entitled “Learning to Hate the Pacers, a Team I Have Long Loved.” Reading the title, I thought it was going to be some superficial rant complaining about the Pacers’ change in fortunes and level of performance toward the end of the season.

Nope. He clearly loves the Pacers and Indianapolis, but he’s pissed about the decision to give the Simon family $160 million to support the Pacers and Banker’s Fieldhouse at the same time the roads are crumbling and the police seemingly don’t have the resources they need to keep order.

He says:

The latest handout is a craven abdication of responsibility by the city’s leaders. The Simons squeeze the life from the city. But the mayor and the council fear the immediate political wrath of fans. Why pay a grievous political price now when the human cost can be amortized by decades of crumbling infrastructure, winnowing public services, violent crimes and shuttered schools?
. . .
I rage at something I love. I try to reject something that is a part of me and always will be. I can’t really ever walk away from the Pacers, but my stomach is knotted in anger and sorrow when I think of them. I’m saying things I don’t really believe. But I must learn to believe them. I hope Paul George misses his next 160 shots. I hope the Hawks outscore the Pacers by 160 points. I hope they lose the next 160 games. How else will I count the 160 million lacerations the Simons leave on the body of the city?

I once loved a city that bled blue and gold. Now I love a city that simply bleeds.

Continuing on my kids’ sports theme from yesterday, I’m curious what folks think about travel sports. When I was a kid growing up in Richmond, it seems this mostly wasn’t a thing. There were some recreational leagues through the YMCA and various local organizations in the younger years, then most of the sports went through the junior high schools that played the other ones in the city during the junior high years, and, then the high school athletic teams traveled around to other high schools.

Now, with soccer at least, there are travel teams that seem to start at 9 or 10 years old. They travel around to other parts of the state and even do tournaments in Illinois and Ohio, I think. If you’re grooming your kid to be an elite athlete, I guess I can see this. Expanding the pool of competitors allows the best to play the best. But beyond that, I think I’m missing the point. My goal with my kids and their athletics is mostly to get them exercising, developing coordination and motor skills, learning some things about teamwork and competition, getting to spend some time with them (as a coach), and – if there is time left over – have a little fun.

The other kids in town provide plenty of competition to accomplish those goals. Still, plenty of people I know and respect, both friends and family, are getting their kids into the travel leagues. I have trouble seeing how travel versus local contributes anything additional beyond expense and time commitments.

Anyone else spent much time thinking about this sort of thing?

Austan Kas, writing for the Crimson Quarry has a blog post entitled Road warriors: Indiana rallies past Michigan State. For those of you unfamiliar with the site, the Crimson Quarry is a great blog for following IU sports.

This most recent post was on the subject of Indiana’s first basketball win at Michigan State in 22 years. If that drought were a person, it would’ve been legally drunk after last night’s game. It was a near thing and hard to watch at the end. I don’t know if I can blame last night’s officiating on the NCAA’s worst referee, TV Ted Valentine. But, he was there, so I will. The guy running the Breslin Center’s game clock became mysteriously unable to start the clock when MSU was down by a couple of points with 13 seconds to go. After a vigorous monitor review, the officiating crew decided it’s not a foul when a MSU player punches Cody Zeller in the nuts. However, by contrast, it is a three-point shooting foul when Will Sheehey stands still and straight up while an MSU player shoots.

That grousing out of the way, the Hoosiers pulled off a narrow win on the strength of some strong play from Zeller, Watford, Hulls, and, of course, Oladipo. My favorite Oladipo play last night was when he was inbounding the ball under the basket. An MSU player was guarding an IU player with his back turned to Oladipo. Oladipo threw the ball off the MSU guy’s back, stepped in bounds, grabbed the ball, and laid it in. Meanwhile, Dick Vitale and Magic Johnson were too busy gabbing about something or other to even discuss the play at first.

So, the players and coaches – IU and Michigan State alike were high quality. The officiating, clock running, and commentating were all horrible. And IU gets a road win over the 4th ranked team in the country. In doing so, it solidified its hold on the Big Ten, its place at #1, and continues to make a case for itself as a 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. It still has big games against Ohio State and Michigan left on its schedule, then the Big Ten tournament; so there is a lot of tough basketball to come. But, after some time in the wilderness, it’s great to see the Hoosiers back among the top teams in the country.

Once Indiana had the best high school basketball tournament in the world. Now, we no longer do. We gave it away so that more people could get trophies and more athletic directors could feel good about themselves. The people who gave it away and feel good about themselves studied themselves and concluded that they are A-OK.

Current students who were, at oldest, three years old when the single-class basketball format was abandoned don’t know anything about it. They and the administrators of their schools voted heavily in favor of the current class-based system. On the other side, a self-selecting group of people who showed up at hearings on the issue voted overwhelmingly in favor of a return to the single class system. I don’t know whether there has been reliable polling of the state as a whole. Measuring attendance, it is abundantly clear that spectators like the current system much less than the old one.

All I know is that Indiana once had something special; something transcendent and state-defining. Now we don’t. Maybe it’s better for the boys playing basketball to have their end-of-year tournament normalized with the other sports and the other states rather than doing something a little different and exciting. It’s not especially good for a state that used to have a special passion for the sport. We’ve been lobotomized and our Hoosier Hysteria is cured.

Kyle Stokes has more.

Just so you know where I’m coming from, I was raised in a house where we had a hat on display that read, “The Lord is my shepherd, but Bobby Knight is my coach.”

What a turn around for IU’s five seniors: Verdell Jones, Tom Pritchard, Matt Roth, Daniel Moore, and Kory Barnett. They capped off a regular season by sweeping Purdue for the first time since 2005 – 2006, and made up for three years of futility. After three losing seasons, they finished this regular one at 24-7; beating teams ranked #1, #2, and #5 along the way.

Some commenter mentioned that the time in the wilderness really makes Hoosier fans appreciate being relevant again. Probably true. And, now it’s time for the Big 10 tournament – which could justifiably be its own region of an NCAA bracket all by itself. Then, at long last, back to the NCAA tournament itself. Glad to have some excitement in March again.