Season Obituaries: Indiana

Year Three of the Official Crean Rebuilding Project has now concluded, and while there has been definite improvement since 2008-09, how could there not be? The Hoosiers team three seasons ago was one perhaps the worst in the Big Ten over the past decade, winning one conference game and only five games total during the year. That's not on Crean; no coach that ever lived could have made that Indiana team competitive in the wake of the Sampson implosion. Much like Rich Rodriguez at Michigan, Crean took over a program that was elite only in heritage, and the stunning drop-off in year one should not be held against him.


And it's not as though there have been no green shoots since then. The 2009 recruiting class was an accomplishment considering how bad Indiana was; the 2011 class looks even more promising; the 2013 class is downright Calipari-like in its potential. The 2008 team would not have been within ten points of the 2011 versions of Michigan or Illinois, teams Indiana defeated this season. And there were deceptively competitive games along the way, including a contest against Final Four-bound Kentucky that was much closer than the score might indicate.


Still, what has been the crowning moment in Indiana basketball during the Crean era? A win over a disappointing 2011 Illinois team at home (an Illinois team that won by 30+ later in the season in Champaign)? A 20 point victory over Michigan before the Wolverines began their climb to respectability? The biggest headlines have come from recruiting, not on the court, and while the results in April have been encouraging, they haven't meant anything in February, much less March.


I made an unfavorable comparison to Iowa in the previous obituary, but Indiana has several things going for them the Hawkeyes never will. For one thing, they are Indiana; those five national championships aren't getting taken down from the rafters any time soon. Recruits are still attracted to the Crimson and Cream, and fans have shown a remarkable patience during the rebuilding (scenes like the Orange Krush takeover of Carver-Hawkeye Arena are unfathomable at Assembly Hall).


The time for moral victories is over, however. The 2011 recruiting class were freshmen in high school last time Indiana made the tournament; the 2013 class was in junior high. After a while, kids forget that being Indiana means something beyond Big Ten also-ran. Heckling a batter who gets two strikes is silly, because the at-bat isn't over. Crean is down in the count; he still has pitches coming, but he doesn't have any left to take. That's a lot of pressure for a coach who, while not without returning talent, is hoping for young players to make an impression in a notoriously physical conference.

The Big Ten and the NFL Draft: 1st Round

While none of the players likely to be taken in the top five picks this evening will hail from the Big Ten, the conference will be well-represented tonight at the Music City Concert Hall. I’m going to err on the side of including everybody that could possibly be taken in the first 32 picks in this, partly because it will make my job easier tomorrow when I look at the next two rounds.

Illinois:

Corey Liuget, DT: In a draft less stocked with interior defensive line players (Nick Fairley and Marcel Dareus, for starters), there’s a good chance that Liuget could have been the first player at his position off the board. Even with the deep defensive line stock this year, Liuget is almost certain to go somewhere in the first round, with a range anywhere from the St. Louis Rams at 14 to the Chicago Bears at 30.

Martez Wilson, LB: A stretch for the first round, but possible after an impressive showing at the combine. There’s still some question as to whether Wilson will play in the middle or on the outside, mostly focusing on his ability to cover and fall backwards into a deep Tampa 2 zone. This is a very weak draft for linebackers, especially in the middle, so a team with a serious need (San Diego, perhaps) could reach, but Wilson is probably a late-second to third round pick.

Mikel LeShoure, RB: LeShoure has neither hurt nor helped himself greatly during the pre-draft workout process, showing reasonable speed for his size. Concerns about reliability (he had some poor games against awful defenses like Indiana and Purdue) and receiving skills have dampened his stock. The first round might be a stretch, but LeShoure is a lock to be gone by the second round, and he may be the second running back taken off the board (behind Alabama’s Mark Ingram).

Indiana:

James Brewer, OT: If Brewer played for Illinois or Wisconsin I’d probably just wait until tomorrow to write him up, but he is Indiana’s only hope of sneaking into the first round, so here you go, Hoosier fans! He’s probably a better bet for the third or fourth, though he could go as high as the mid-second round, with some whispers that Brewer might be higher than anticipated on a few teams’ draft boards.

Iowa:

Adrian Clayborn, DE: That Clayborn is still considered a possible first round pick is a testament to his fantastic junior year, because (in my opinion) Clayborn may have been the most disappointing player in the Big Ten last year. The potential is still there, and every now and again the ability snuck through, but despite claims to the contrary, Clayborn wasn’t even drawing double teams by the end of last season. Add in that two other Iowa defensive linemen will be drafted this weekend, suggesting that he had quite a bit of help in creating pressure, and Clayborn looks like a huge risk. That being said, he’s unlikely to fall lower than the mid-second round, and a mid-first round pick is still possible.

Michigan:

No potential first round picks.

Michigan State:

No potential first round picks

Minnesota:

No potential first round picks.

Nebraska:

Prince Amukamara, CB: The Big Ten’s likely first draft pick this evening, depending upon how you look at things (he never played a single Big Ten game, nor is Nebraska a conference member yet, but why let silly little details like that get in the way?) Most people have Amukamara going with the 7^th pick to the San Francisco 49ers; he’ll almost definitely be the second cornerback taken, after Patrick Peterson.

Northwestern:

No potential first round draft picks

Ohio State:

Cameron Heyward, DE/DT: It’s a little crazy that so much of the Big Ten’s elite talent last year was on the defensive line. It’s also a little crazy that Ohio State and Michigan have only one player combined that could possibly go in the first round tonight (add Penn State to that list as well if you think Stefen Wisniewski has no chance of going in the first). Heyward is probably a lock for the first round, but I think he’s no better than the fourth-best defensive line prospect from the Big Ten, behind Ryan Kerrigan, JJ Watt, and Corey Liuget. Part of Heyward’s value comes from his versatility, as he could play the interior or exterior in a 4-3 defense or play defensive end in a 3-4, so he could go to any team with a need anywhere on the defensive line.

Penn State:

Stefen Wisniewski, OG/C: A stretch for the first round if only because of his position (interior offensive lineman are usually seen as later picks), Wisniewski will nevertheless be one of the first guards taken off the board, whether today or (more likely) tomorrow. He is probably a lock for the second round, though it’s more likely a team with a need for line help at the end of the first round (Chicago, perhaps) would reach for him than that he’ll fall all the way to the third round.

Purdue:

Ryan Kerrigan, DE: The Big Ten’s best NFL prospect this season, if you don’t count Nebraska’s Amukamara. What Kerrigan did last season for Purdue was downright heroic, considering how little talent he had to support him on defense and how long the defense stayed on the field. Unlike Clayborn, Kerrigan was facing double and even triple teams all season, yet his numbers remained solid. The one question mark for Kerrigan is where he will play; a defensive end in college, NFL teams may see him as more of a 3-4 OLB. That limits his potential draft locations, but it shouldn’t keep him from falling out of the first round.

Wisconsin:

JJ Watt, DE: Competitor with Kerrigan for first non-Nebraska Big Ten player taken tonight. I like Kerrigan a little bit more, but that’s quibbling; Watt was a fantastic player last season on a defensive line that, while talented, did not give opposing offenses nightmares (besides from Watt, that is). Like Kerrigan, he may be seen as a better fit for the 3-4; unlike Kerrigan, he would still play defensive end. It’s not impossible that he’ll be drafted as an interior lineman either, but unlikely. Watt is a lock for the first round.

Gabe Carimi: The latest in a long line of great Wisconsin linemen, Carimi isn’t quite the prospect of Joe Thomas but isn’t all that far off. Indianapolis looks like an extremely strong possibility for Carimi with the 22^nd pick; if he doesn’t get taken there, he probably won’t fall much further.

Around the Big Ten: Spring Games

Spring game disclaimers: These are only glorified practices. Every team has fifteen practices each spring, but the spring game attracts far more than 1/15th of the fans' offseason attention. Some players aren't particularly interested in practice, and anyone can have an off day.


To make matters worse, some teams run only skeleton offenses, others run vanilla defenses, and most run both. What we saw this weekend is a reflection of what we will see in the fall, but only a murky one; we can discern the outlines but the particulars are muddled. Finally, almost every observation is zero sum. A missed tackle is a broken tackle. Great pass blocking means bad pass rushing. 


The most valuable things we learn are the things that filter out the zero sum. Who looked slow? Who dropped passes? Who overthrew receivers? These are valuable because they aren't context-dependent. The schemes may be watered down, the systems may not be installed, and players may still be feeling their way, but overthrowing a receiver by 10 yards is always bad. 


Unfortunately, context-neutral observations tend to be negative, because the positives usually have offsetting negatives (good accuracy on throws? Why was the pass defense so bad? Bad accuracy? This QB stinks.) That being said, lets go ahead and over-analyze some scrimmages!


Michigan


The Positives: Mike Martin is still very good. Devin Garner might have the strongest arm in the Big Ten; he threw one pass 60 yards while moving away from his throwing arm (it was incomplete, but still). The wide receivers showed some ability, especially Je'ron Stokes, who made nice adjustments on a couple of passes. Redshirt freshman Jake Ryan had a nice day, getting a sack and an INT-TD (the sack honestly impressed me more as he kept from doing that thing that most young linebackers do on an end rush and get sucked in too far and lose contain on the outside). The offensive line opened up some nice holes when the offense went into plow-ahead mode, which they'll probably be doing a lot more of under Brady Hoke than under Rich Rodriguez. Denard Robinson is still really fast. Mike Cox had a nice 68 yard touchdown run.


The Negatives: Kickers might be a problem again this year. Denard Robinson had a really poor day throwing, especially when asked to stand in the pocket and deliver a ball accurately 15-20 yards through the air. Decision-making was a problem for both Robinson and Gardner, with both throwing interceptions. Besides from the long TD run from Cox, none of the running backs did much to distinguish themselves, and most of the gains on the ground seemed to be from good blocking, not necessarily good play from the rusher (the Cox TD had a broken tackle, which zero sum means could be good or bad). On that same note, the middle of the line is vulnerable; I focused on junior Will Campbell for much of the scrimmage and he was getting beat pretty easily in one-on-one situations every play while non-existent in the pass rush. The hustle is there, but the results are not.


Penn State


The Positives: Matt McGloin led the offense on a nice touchdown drive, showing moxie and spunk and verve and whatnot (also, some sharp passes). Backup receiver Brandon Moseby-Felder had two completions, including the only touchdown of the scrimmage. The defense looked solid, though no one really stood out. No one was hurt.


The Negatives: The weather, which shortened the game by almost half while rendering the rest almost useless. Like the Michigan/Purdue game last year in which Michigan scored its third lowest point total of the season, the conditions almost certainly made the offenses look worse and the defenses look better than the are.  That being said, Rob Bolden had an awful game, with zero completions and an INT (there was a drop in there, maybe two depending upon how generous you want to be in your definition of drop). It's unwise to take too much from a spring game no matter what, but this was more of a washout than usual; quite a shame for a team whose quarterback competition is perhaps the single biggest question mark in the Big Ten heading into the season.

Football Preview: Indiana

I’ll start with the disclaimers, so that this doesn’t come off the wrong way: Bill Lynch strikes me (from afar, of course) as an honest, decent gentleman. He is not, so far as I know, a tax cheat or a fraud, and I would be very, very surprised to learn otherwise. He ran a clean ship during his years at Indiana, free from any hint of tarnish or scandal—in marked contrast to the basketball program, which was caught up in the Kelvin Sampson affair while Bill Lynch was taking Indiana to a bowl game. If I were an athletic director at an FCS or DII school, I wouldn’t hesitate to hire Lynch, and I’d know I’d be getting someone who would, at the very least, not bring disrepute upon the program.

With that throat-clearing out of the way: Kevin Wilson finds himself in the position of a hedge fund manager taking over a corporation that has been cooking the books. The manager knows the fundamentals are bad, which is why he is taking over the company, and he thinks that he can improve them. Yet he may not understand just how far the rot has spread, or that even the shoddy fundamentals are inflated by a series of accounting tricks that, while not exactly fraud, are on the outer bounds of propriety.

For example, look at the most fundamental of fundamentals: win-loss record. Indiana went 5-7 last year. That sounds almost decent; certainly not extraordinarily bad by Indiana standards, and only one game off from Indiana’s 6-7 Insight Bowl breakthrough in 2007. Yet those five wins were the most hollow wins imaginable, coming over an awful FCS school (not just awful because they are in FCS, but awful by every possible metric), two Sun Belt schools, a one win Akron team that was perhaps the worst team in FBS, and Purdue. According to Sagarin’s ratings, all four out of conference wins came over teams ranked lower than 115^th in college football, and there are 120 teams in FBS; so Indiana won the equivalent of four FCS games to get to five wins. One of those wins, against Arkansas State, was by only two points. And the win over Purdue, while certainly meaningful because of the intrastate rivalry and the recapture of the Old Oaken Bucket, came over a team almost literally limping to the finish with gimpy ACLs and no quarterback.

The losses were less uniformly awful—Indiana was a dropped pass away from beating Iowa while hanging tough against Northwestern and Michigan. But the Penn State, Ohio State, Illinois, and Wisconsin losses all came by 17 points or more, including the infamous 63 point loss to Wisconsin (and despite the hand-wringing, Wisconsin wasn't running up the score. Indiana was just that bad). Unfortunately for Indiana, those are the four teams that will follow them into the Leaders Division (along with Purdue) this fall. Indiana could get two touchdowns better as compared to each of the teams in their division and still only win one game.

That improvement is unlikely, especially considering that the two most useful components of the offense (the Hoosier’s strongest unit last season) have moved on. The schedule gets a little tougher, with Virginia coming to Bloomington and a trickier-than-it-looks road game at North Texas. Nor does Indiana get a particularly easy draw in their cross-division games, going to both Iowa and Michigan State.

Indiana fans have plenty of patience, borne from decades of futility. Almost all new coaches get a honeymoon, but Wilson’s will be longer than most, simply because little is expected from him early. A Brewsteresque beginning would be a bad sign, but fielding a competitive team that happens to lose a lot of games—even a couple more games than Lynch’s final team—should be acceptable. Don’t think of it as a decline, Indiana fans; think of it as a necessary correction while Indiana converts back to normal accounting. What little profits you thought you had were probably illusory anyway.

Offense--Offensive Coordinator Brent Pease Rod Smith/Kevin Johns (1st seasons each): Indiana ran a traditional offense out of the pistol the past few seasons, which sounds about as peculiar as it looked at times. Unlike the pistol at Nevada, where the formation was born, Indiana quarterback Ben Chappell was not a threat to run the ball, and so the option capabilities were limited. You don't have to run the option out of the pistol--Alabama ran the formation quite a bit last year, for example--but never did there seem to be much of a philosophy behind the adoption of the system either. Perhaps it was as simple as Chappell preferring to work from a few yards behind center? Whatever the rationale, it was at least reasonably successful: Indiana had the 14th most yards in the country last year, and while Football Outsider's advanced metrics have Indiana's offense as coming in at a far less impressive 55th in the country, that's still at least above average (and better than Illinois, Penn State, Northwestern, and Purdue). In any event, while the offense was a level or two better than serviceable last year, the pistol is likely gone, at least as a primary set.