A bold and possibly stupid notion

Look, we all know how this is going to go. We do, right?

Purdue comes to Indiana tonight having won 10 of its last 12 games.

Indiana has lost 10 of its 12.

The Boilers, who have emerged as one of the top three teams in the Big Ten, are going places. The Hoosiers are going nowhere.

And so it's entirely reasonable to expect this will go the way it went last month, when the Purdues laminated the Indianas by 15 in Mackey Arena, in a game that wasn't that close and was never for a second in doubt. Yeah, this time it's Assembly Hall, but Assembly Hall these days is just a joint with a bunch of antique laundry hanging at one end. Indiana's lost its last four games there, including two to teams (Nebraska and Ohio State) it should have easily dispatched if the Hall were still the Hall.

All of which goes nowhere in explaining why the Blob has this gut feeling Indiana is going to win tonight.

I know, it's crazy. The Hoosiers just got floor-waxed by 21 by a middling Minnesota team in a game the Gophers led by 27 with fewer than three minutes remaining. The Hoosiers pretty much could do nothing right, and didn't even act as if it bothered them.

In the wake of the disaster, Archie Miller, whose voice his team has apparently tuned out, promised drastic changes. It sounded exactly as desperate as it reads, sounded like a man at the end of a very frayed rope who had no idea what to do next.

Except.

Except I keep thinking back to that night in East Lansing, when Indiana suddenly jumped up, played basketball and beat the Big Ten leaders, Michigan State, in overtime. It didn't last, but for one night, the Hoosiers played like the team that started the season 12-2. Shots fell, for one thing. And when they did, as usually happens, Indiana suddenly got a lot better.

The Hoosiers do, after all, have some athletes besides Romeo Langford. None of them are the projected NBA lottery pick he is, but at some point someone besides Indiana wanted them. And for one night they played like those someones.

I don't know why I keep thinking about that, and why I have this feeling in my gut we'll get a replay tonight. There is, after all, absolutely no reason for me to have that feeling.

But I do. Maybe it's the drastic changes thing. Maybe it's the idea that it's Purdue and there is nothing Indiana hates so much as getting embarrassed by Purdue the way it did a month ago. Maybe it's because it's been that kind of year in the Big Ten this year, with teams that had no business winning managing to do so on a given night.

In any case, I think this might be one of those given nights.

After which, Indiana goes to Iowa.

Where the Blob has an equal gut feeling the Hoosiers will get floor-waxed again.

Like I said: That kind of year. And that kind of Indiana.