Friday, December 9, 2011

Hoosiers in Myth and Reality

One of the most interesting things about reaching middle age is that you can see how history simplifies and distorts reality. For example, take the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team. It is not the case that IU has always played in the sort of cautious, plodding style for which they are currently known. Back when Branch McCracken's teams were winning national titles in 1940 and 1953, they were known as the "Hurryin' Hoosiers" because of their breakneck pace of play.

It's also not the case that Bobby Knight's disciplinary system required IU to run slow patterns on offense. Knight's legendary 1975-76 team -- the last team to go undefeated in college basketball -- averaged 82.1 points per game, and scored over 100 points four different times -- all in an era with no shot clock and no three-point shot. Knight's greatest pupil, Coach K, has been running up-tempo offenses at Duke for decades.

Nor is it the case that IU won its titles with a bunch of no-name kids from the heartland. During Knight's glory years, IU had a number of big-time players, from Scott May to Calbert Cheaney. And not all of those kids stayed for four years: Isiah Thomas left after his sophomore year, and I don't think the Hoosiers have returned the 1981 title he won for them.

In short, the IU teams that were great powerhouses from the early 1970s to the early 1990s weren't that different from the sort of teams produced by other powerhouse programs. And that's not surprising, really. Even a great coach needs great players to achieve the sort of success that Knight enjoyed. And great athletes can play at a fast pace. And some of them leave early to turn pro.

But over time, Indiana fans created a myth about their team and its history that clouded these basic facts and led their program in a very strange direction. It is true that Knight was ahead of most coaches in terms of teaching defense, and that his emphasis on defense generally led to a slower-paced game. And it's certainly true that Knight believed that almost everyone else in the NCAA was cheating -- especially Kentucky -- and that he said so loudly and often. (I think this is the primary reason Joe B. Hall never made the Basketball Hall of Fame.) And Knight seemed to return to this theme more often after he stopped getting big-time recruits. So in the 1990's, as Kentucky started winning and winning under Rick Pitino, and the Hoosiers started to fall off the pace, IU fans spent less and less time talking about how they were going to beat Kentucky, and instead emphasized the fact that they do things "the right way," while we, of course, are a bunch of crooks.

But over time, this emphasis on doing things "the right way" became a trap. It encouraged them to cashier Knight (who, for all of his preaching, was constantly embarrassing the school). Then it encouraged them to stick with Mike Davis for far too long, even though he was clearly in over his head. And then it came back to bite them when Davis's replacement, Kelvin Sampson, was himself busted for cheating.

By this point, however, it was too late to escape. IU fans were so committed to their myths about the program -- and so certain that everyone else was cheating -- that they have struggled to compete in the real world. Tom Crean was a very successful coach at Marquette -- but at Marquette he had Dwayne Wade on his team, and Dwayne Wade (who had academic problems in high school and who left college early) is not exactly the poster child for the Hoosier Way. For the last few years, I had the impression that Crean was coaching with both hands tied behind his back, because of his obligation to win "the right way." In his first three seasons at IU, Crean's record in Big 10 play is 8-46 -- which is just spectacularly bad.

Of course, myths have their own power. And while IU fans watched their beloved team struggle, they did get the benefits of their myths. Because of their myths, the folks from a state whose racism ran off Oscar Robertson can look down on racial attitudes in Kentucky. Folks who spent decades supporting a coach who threw chairs and abused his own players can claim that it's Kentucky fans who care too much about winning. And folks whose team is currently on NCAA probation can, with a straight face, accuse UK of cheating.

I have wondered, in recent years, whether IU would ever overcome these myths, or whether they would simply turn Assembly Hall into a shrine for losers who "do things the right way." Fortunately for the Hoosiers, Tom Crean apparently does not intend to be a martyr to their beliefs. He is aggressively recruiting, he is getting better players, and his team is off to an 8-0 start this year. Tomorrow he has UK at home, and Ken Pomeroy says he has a 31 percent chance of pulling off an upset that would tell everyone IU is back. So he may turn the Hoosiers back into winners in spite of themselves. But if he does so, it will be in spite of the myths, not because of them.

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