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North Carolina has just handed IU their first loss of the year...it’s well past midnight...I’m suffering from some kind of anger-induced nausea...and I have an intense, white-hot pain in my eyeballs (which is most likely due to that ballpoint pen I kept trying to shove into my skull after every one of Indiana’s wheelchair-league-like
offensive possessions).  In short, I’m not in the mood to beat around the proverbial bush right now.  So I’ll just get to the point.

Indiana is a miserable, miserable basketball team. 

More specifically, Mike Davis is a miserable, miserable basketball coach.  Period.

(Let’s get this out of the way right now.  Yes…I just criticized an African-American.  And contrary to the overly sensitive policies of the Indianapolis Star and the Indiana University Board of Directors, this does NOT make me a racist.  Mike Davis is a horrible coach NOT because of his race, but rather because his understanding of basketball is similar to my understanding of the space/time continuum.  Let's just move on.)

In all honesty, I have no idea how or where to begin writing about IU's loss to the
Tar Heels.  I really don't.  My current state of exhaustion and Artestian rage are preventing me from even thinking rationally.  (It’s as if I’ve morphed into
C. Jemal Horton, what with my blinding anger and inability to create coherent thoughts and all.)  Never has IU had such a winnable game, and never have I been so disgusted.  So you’re just going to have to bear with me...this could get ugly.

And by “could,” I mean “will unquestionably.”

I guess I should start by admitting that I kept a running diary of this game.  I naively assumed that it would make a great article should Indiana either, (A) pull out the upset, or (B) become the first team in NCAA history to lose by 105 points.  But as the game wore on, it dawned on me that I was merely writing the exact same sentences over and over.  And not just “kind of vaguely similar” sentences, but “dead-on verbatim sentences.”  In order of frequency, here are the thoughts I kept repeatedly writing:

(1a) "That was the worst offensive possession I’ve ever seen." (21 times)
(1b) "I feel physically ill."  (21) 
(2) "No...THAT was the worst offensive possession I’ve ever seen." (18)
(3a) "Bracey heaves  a disturbingly horrible shot after only ONE pass."  (16)
(3b) "Offense started roughly 60 feet from basket...not good."  (16)
(4) "UNC...shaving points?" (15)             
(5) "QUIT DRIBBLING, HOT SAUCE!!!!!!!!!  FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, QUIT DRIBBLING AND PASS THE F------ BALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (11)
(6) "Why!?!  Why am I watching this?"  (9)
(7) "'Hot Sauce' Strickland shoots a 25-foot pull-up jumper."  (8)
(8) "Hoosiers have trouble inbounding the ball AGAIN!  How can this be?" (6)
(9) "Duaney Duaney, who goes by the name Robert Vaden for some reason, is now 1-for-63, and there's still over12 minutes to go in the first half."  (1)

Sadly, that’s it.  That’s really the entirety of my whole running diary, in all its redundant glory.  As you can see, it ended up being about as creative as colon cancer...and slightly less amusing.  Whereas I once planned on having a somewhat articulate article completed upon the game's final buzzer, I now have nothing but the urge to spew out all of my venom Ms. Magazine-style (i.e., in a highly unorganized and irrational manner).  Worse yet, I had to endure three hours of disjointed Indiana basketball that had that unmistakable and disturbing Bayside-Tigers-look to it (sans the eye-pleasing footage of Kelly Kapowski).  Three hours of my life...gone.  What a shame.  What an absolute shame.

Am I bitter about it?  You bet your crimson sweater-vest I'm bitter.  After all, I could have spent that time doing something more enjoyable (like—I don't know—trying to saw through my ACL with a pocketknife while simultaneously paying bills and listening to my dad explain "the birds & the bees" to me again). 

So I’m done.  I’m officially done.  I simply cannot watch this Hoosier team anymore.

Without getting too specific, I simply cannot watch a team that begins each possession by dribbling the shot clock down to single-digits while everyone just stands around 50 feet from the basket.  I cannot watch an offense that somehow manages to incorporate NO movement, NO screening, NO communication, and
NO organization.  I just can’t.  My mere modicum of basketball knowledge prevents me from doing so.

However, I fully understand that there are those among us who actually enjoyed watching this game, people without the aforementioned “mere modicum of basketball knowledge.”  There's a name for these people: "Mike Davis Supporters.”  These are the people who love the direction that this team is heading.  These are the people who take great pride in the fact that IU only lost by seven points to one of the best teams in the country.  Most notably, these are the people who hang their Davis-is-a-great-coach-hat on the two-pronged argument that (1) “he took us to the championship game in 2002!” and (2) "he is an unbelievable recruiter!"  These are the people I'd like to address now...

(Please speak loudly)  

All of you “Mike Davis Supporters” listening to this article being read to you, put down your “Hooked on Phonics” and your lottery tickets and concentrate for a moment.  I need you to answer my following questions:

—Do you think it’s a coincidence that IU ends 75% of their offensive possessions with a tightly guarded 25-foot fade-away heave?

—Can you tell me why a team built around speed and quickness and athleticism is running a slowed-down,
half-court, grind-‘em-out offense?

—Just out of curiosity, do you regret flunking out of junior college or naming your kid Clive?

—Do you find it troubling that an NCAA Division I team basically has a 50/50 chance of inbounding the ball safely during any given out-of-bounds situation?

—Most importantly, do you find it odd that North Carolina continued to play man-to-man against the Hoosiers throughout the whole game (despite the fact that Indiana is the worst perimeter-shooting team on the planet NOT sponsored by And-1 and Mountain Dew)?

Please have the person reading you this article email your answers to royhobbson@flipsidesports.net.  Thanks. 

Personally speaking, that last question represents the most troubling realization.  Let it be said here and now...should Roy Williams ever face another team who shoots 8% from 3-point range, I absolutely guarantee you that he will play a zone against them.  Why?  Because Coach Williams understands that against poor-shooting teams, you want to “pack it into the paint” and dare them to take outside shots.  Why even risk giving them layups off penetration or back screens or curl cuts (all of which being the risks of playing man-to-man)? 

However, against Indiana, Williams knows that there is absolutely no chance of giving up layups off penetration or back screens or curl cuts because, well...
because THERE ARE NO penetrations, back screens, or curl cuts.  Mike Davis wants his team jacking up 3’s, regardless of what defense you’re in.  So if you're
the Tar Heels, why not man-up and force a few dozen turnovers in the process? 

(And while we’re on the subject of North Carolina, let’s just be honest here: Indiana caught them at the absolute best possible time.  Sean May’s heart-rate looked to be somewhere in the 700-800 bpm category…Raymond Felton played with a Limited Edition Jonathan-Bender-designed cast on his arm…Rashad “TruWarier” McCants looked about as disinterested in the game’s outcome as my wife did…and some guy named Marvin Williams tried to create the first ever antithesis of the “Bird/’Nique Shoot-Out” by matching horribly missed shots with Robert “Rifleman” Vaden. 

All and all, the Tar Heels played in a rather Prairie View A&M-esque manner—a manner that would have gotten them beat by 70 had they been matched up against Illinois or Michigan State or Wabash—and yet they won by seven.  And while that is enough to make you want to gag yourself with an Adidas headband, it gets even worse: this game was unanimously considered a “moral victory” for Indiana.  How the mighty have fallen.)

Actually, I can’t go on like this.  I can’t keep dwelling on the shortcomings of Mike Davis and his Angela-Lansbury-like coaching skills.  I can’t keep wondering if  ankle-length shorts might aid the Hoosiers in properly running an out-of-bounds play.  And I can’t keep worrying that Sean Kline (who looks exactly like Bill Buckner’s flamboyantly gay and severely arthritic younger brother) is expected to log serious minutes in Division I games this year.  Trying to rationalize this Hoosier team is literally driving me towards criminal behavior.  It’s two o’clock in the morning and I want nothing more than to go all Stephen Jackson on somebody.  Anybody.  And when it comes right down to it, this just isn't a healthy way to live. 

So I’m going to wrap it up right here.

Indiana has now officially joined the unenviable ranks of UCLA, Holy Cross and Louisville as one-time national powerhouses that have become perennially mediocre.  And the saddest, most ironic part of it all?  The “House that Bobby Built”—a house built on the purest form of basketball this side of Hickory—is being taken down by political correctness.  That’s right.  Truthfully, I don’t even blame Mike Davis for IU’s Maverick-and-Goose-like tailspin.  He’s about as qualified to run a college basketball team as Mark Patrick is to run a sports-talk radio show.  And everybody—everybody—is aware of this now, just as I'm sure they suspected as such five years ago.  Yet nothing is being done about it.  This administration’s complete and utter fear to look past race and make a purely basketball-related decision is tearing down a dynasty that took a half-century to build.

And I just can’t watch it anymore…at least not without wanting to jam ballpoint pens into my eye-sockets.
Emergency Rant
Emergency Rant
December 2, 2004