This year was marked with a small degree of optimism for IU fans as the incoming freshman class was heralded as a top-10 class. With actual talent in the program, IU was sure to be more competitive at least. No one was expecting a run to the NCAA tournament, but a NIT bid wasn't out of the question.
But that didn't happen of course. There was the 11 game slide and fans became dismayed with how little things had changed since last year: Stagnant offense, porous defense, turnovers turnovers turnovers. With such a losing streak it's easy to overlook the fact that progress *did* occur.
IU won more games by the start of January than the 2009 squad managed all year. There were conference wins, road wins and the team was keeping themselves in games they had no business being in (Pitt, Kentucky, Maryland).
Also, you can't overstate the impact that losing Maurice Creek had on this year's team. He was the one player that could create his own shot, get to the rim and consistently knock down an outside shot. Losing him really caused the offense to deflate.
But even after he went down IU looked decent. They won against Michigan in an emotional win-one-for-the-gipper game. They beat Minnesota in an overtime thriller and then Penn State on the road. They displayed their immaturity in losing to Iowa at home but then bounced back and put together perhaps their two best games in losing at Illinois at the buzzer and dropping a close game to Purdue at home.
That Purdue loss really set this team back. They gave it everything they had and played their best game but still came up short. I think this team was just emotionally spent after those two games and probably thought to themselves "if we can't win playing like that then how can we?".
And they didn't. not for another 9 games. It wasn't the losses that really bothered fans, but the way they lost. They weren't fighting and they weren't competitive. In those 8 losses they looked even worse than the 2008 team getting beat by an average of 20 points
However, I think that those loses had alot to do with the level of competition than anything. At the midpoint of the Big Ten season, some teams figure things out and get better, others tread water and don't get better. This IU team did the latter which just accentuated their existing deficiencies. In the middle of that losing streak they played Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Minnesota and Wisconsin again. Those teams are as well coached as any in the country and (with the exception of Minnesota) gearing up for a run at the conference title. It was, quite literally, men against boys.
But excuses aside, the team didn't execute well at all during that horrid streak. So who's to blame for this team's lack of progress during that span? As much as I want to make excuses, the buck always stops with the coach. It's the coach's responsibility to get the players to understand the gameplan. It's the coach's responsibility to teach the players the skills necessary to execute it.
But I don't think you can't put it all on Crean. When the coaches have to spend so much effort on teaching the basics, that means less time to work on the more advanced things that the competition is working on. Keep in mind that the amount of time a team can work is regulated so it's not like IU can put in extra time to catch up.
So it all comes down to experience, or lack thereof. This team is just too young--the 10th most inexperienced team in the country and second most inexperienced team in the conference behind Iowa (who IU finished tied with in conference at 4-14). Sure, you can win with inexperienced players but only the elite young players that can make up for their inexperience in other ways (see: Kentucky). And more importantly, even when young players are starting in a program, there are usually more experienced players on the team that these young players are practicing against on a daily basis. IU doesn't have that luxury.
So to prove my point, here's some fancy graphs that correlate experience and winning:
That is Conference Finish related to Conference Experience rank (1 being most experienced and 11 being least experienced). I see a pattern there, do you? The more experienced big ten teams did better. Shocking!
Let's look at some more!
The first graph just took into account wins and losses. So how much the team won. But we all know that college basketball is a silly place. Weird things happen, teams win games they shouldn't, injuries occur at bad times, etc. So the second graph relates Conference Experience Rank and overall Pomeroy Rank (pomeroy ratings are the first and only stats you should care about for college basketball). This essentially compares how experienced a team is with how well they played
And Lookie there! an even prettier correlation! The most experienced teams have a lower (better) pomeroy rank. And surprise surprise, the two least experienced teams are clear outliers.
more, more!
The third graph is a pure relation between pomeroy experience rank and overall pomeroy rank. Here the difference between the two least experienced teams (IU and Iowa) and the rest of the pack is even more pronounced.
(here's the data table if you're curious)
But when analyzing the importance of experience in the Big Ten you really have to look no further than the first 3 most experienced teams: Ohio State, Wisconsin and Purdue. Ohio State was the conference's most experienced team in 2010 and, unsurprisingly, ended up wining the conference regular season and tournament titles. Purdue was picked to win the conference before the season and didn't disappoint, going toe-to-toe with OSU until the end.
But Wisconsin is perhaps the most interesting story here. Wisconsin was picked in the middle of the pack in preseason polls but roared to the top of the standings during conference play. What a surprise! They became media darlings, the little team that could. Bo Ryan is amazing! How does he do it year after year? Behold:
It's pretty simple, really. Bo recruits players that stay 4 years and his teams are constantly at the top of the conference in experience. Unfortunately, Pomeroy has only tracked the experience stat since 2007 so I can't go back further, but I'd be willing to guess it's more of the same. His players are experienced, they know his system, they execute it well. Wisconsin is always a fundamentally sound team because they've had time to develop those fundamentals. Sprinkle in just a little talent into this system and you have yourself a very competitive high major program year in, year out.
So what's the moral of this story? EXPERIENCE MATTERS. alot. and Indiana has none. My advice to Indiana fans is this: don't panic, and be patient.
From my perspective, Tom Crean is doing everything right. He's recruiting quality kids (both in character and ability), he's stressing the right things to win in the Big Ten (toughness, rebounding), and he's done a spectacular job at galvanizing the fan-base by relishing the program's tradition. He has his work cut-out for him, but he knows what he needs to do (bring in size, quickness and even-out the recruiting classes). The guy plum gets it. He knows how to run a program. Is he the best X's and O's coach? probably not. But I have complete faith that he can be successful by doing what he's already doing. The guy has a 10 year contract, Fans need to give him the time to develop the players he's brought in and build the program the right way.
The alternative is to rebuild quickly by hiring somebody like Calipari to do it the wrong way. This IU fan is not willing to sell the program's soul to get wins quickly. IU basketball means too much to too many people for compromise.
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