Brunt: Can’t find a weakness in the Indiana Hoosiers’ armor

Cliff November 16, 2012 0

By CLIFF BRUNT
ISL Editor

I saw IU for the first time Thursday night and came away with my head spinning.

What a complete basketball team Tom Crean has put together. I searched and searched for a weakness during the Hoosiers’ 99-45 win over Sam Houston State and came away with little.

Of course, the team the Hoosiers played is not what they will face in the Big Ten. Still, there sometimes are issues that you can see, even against an overmatched team.

The only problem I saw was the 30-for-44 free-throw shooting, but then again, they shot 44 free throws. Oh, and they made one of two free throws with 98 points and didn’t get 100.

Here are my observations. Keep in mind, these views are from someone who spent the better part of the past seven years covering Purdue and has had far less exposure to Indiana.

IU fans like hustle and people who overcome adversity.

Cody Zeller didn’t get the loudest cheers on Thursday, Jordan Hulls and Maurice Creek did.

Hulls scored his 1,000th career point yesterday, and the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Creek, a former superstar who averaged 16.4 points in 2009-10 but has had three major surgeries since, came in and gave the Hoosiers good minutes. He went for a couple layups on breakaways; consensus was those would have been dunks in 2009. You could see him thinking about it when he went up. He still needs to get more comfortable, but he gets credit for being on the floor at all.

Hulls has blown me away. I saw him in the Indiana All-Star game against the Kentucky All-Stars and came away thinking he was overrated. But the things he had then — court vision and hustle — have only improved with time. He doesn’t have to score to be effective, but he can. And he is a confident, dangerous 3-point shooter. He has come a long way.

IU drills lesser teams.

The Hoosiers won their first three games by 25 or more points for the first time since 1979. The Hoosiers have their collective feet on the gas. You can tell a lot about a team by watching the players’ demeanors in press conferences. The Hoosiers had Watford, Will Sheehey and Hulls in the interview room, and multiple times, they talked about playing 40 minutes. Most teams blow smoke when they say that. These guys meant it. There were literally no lapses against a completely overmatched team.

Christian Watford has NBA potential.

Crean sat Christian Watford at the start of the game, and he led the way with 23 points. He’s 6-foot-9, well put together and shoots the 3 well. He looks like an NBA player. And after Crean got his attention, he played like one.

Yogi Ferrell is a beast.

I covered Ferrell’s state championship game when he was a sophomore at Park Tudor and saw a ridiculously talented kid who was trying to do everything. I covered him in the state final his senior year, when he had better teammates and he scored less, distributed more and was more apt to let the game come to him. Now, he’s fitting in nicely. His stats last night: three points, seven assists, no turnovers in 24 minutes. Perfect.

I can’t wait until Ferrell matches up with Purdue’s Ronnie Johnson. It appears that Johnson is quicker and more apt to try to score, while Ferrell is stronger and perhaps a bit more mature at this point.

There will be more as the season progresses. I will be covering the Hoosiers for ISL and for The Sports XChange (Reuters) and sometimes for The Associated Press, so I’ll be in Bloomington a lot.

Here is the link to my Associated Press story on the game:

Indiana 99, Sam Houston State 45