This is the face of the return of Indiana Hoosiers basketball. |
For the Indiana Hoosiers it has felt like decades since they've fulfilled their championship name. Actually it has been exactly a decade since they've been to a title game, since the days when somehow Jared Jefferies was their best player. But I'm not talking about that mag ical one year run in 2001-02, I'm talking about the days of Bob Knight. The days when the old ball coach was throwing chairs, chewing out his players and most importantly winning ballgames. Well, after three brutal years, Tom Crean has finally found a Hoosier team that has got us reminiscing on Bobby Knight's Hoosiers.
Led by a big awkward country boy freshman center by the name of Cody Zeller and a normal more athletic forward named Christian Watford, the Hoosiers are 17-1 and are sitting comfortably at #7. More importantly though, the Hoosiers have re-ignited the famous Assembly Hall and restored it completely. Once Indiana burned the roof down after Watford's game winner over #1 Kentucky, everyone knew the Hoosiers were back. Add that to back-to-back wins over #2 Ohio State and #13 Michigan and you've got the best home court in college basketball.
Indiana basketball, like the Alabama Crimson Tide in college football, are vital to the overall success of their respective collegiate sports, whether you enjoy them or despise them. The Hoosier history is too storied and too emphatic to be denied for as long as it was and though it took 3 years for Crean to impose his philosophy it finally seems like he's got Indiana back for good. But maybe it isn't Crean's philosophy. Maybe it's the addition of a lanky, 6'11, born and bred Indiana boy named Cody Zeller, who looks like he belongs in the movie Hoosiers, not on the 2011-12 version of the Indiana Hoosiers. With ten years of futility, excluding a couple NCAA tournament 1st round exits and a guy by the name of Ben Gordon, maybe it was going to take something more, something a little bit different. But ironically, something a little bit more conventional, coming in the form of a white country boy in his home state playing how his home state is supposed to play. Fundamentals, yes, fundamentals.
So in an age of one and dones, high flying dunks and three pointers, the Indiana Hoosiers reached back into the past to rejuvenate their squad. And let me tell you, March is going to be that much sweeter because of it.
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