Hoo(sier) Day

Alrighty, then. So now we know ... something.

Now we know who these Indiana Hoosiers are, or at least we have an important piece of the evidence. We know they can get an actual live basketball team in Assembly Hall and subject it to a sheep-shearin',  just like they used to. We know when Devonte Green's mind is right and Justin Smith is doing his Justin Smith things and Trayce Jackson-Davis is posterizing and rebounding and blocking shots, they can straight-up plain make folks look silly.

We know Armaan Franklin can man the point and Joey Brunk can handle the low blocks and, oh, yeah, the starting point guard (Rob Phinisee) wasn't even out there 'cause he's got a bum ankle, and, oh, yeah, don't forget Al Durham and Damezi Anderson and The Guy Who Didn't Play Last Year, Jerome Hunter.

Look. Beating 17th-ranked Florida State 80-64 at home isn't beating Duke in Cameron or Kentucky in Rupp or Kansas in Allen. But it's not beating Directional Hyphen Adjunct College Tech, either, which is what Indiana had been doing before last night.

In other words, the Hoosiers were 7-0 and we didn't know a damn thing about them. We knew they occasionally looked good in practice, which is essentially what their schedule was in November. But what did that tell us, actually?

No, they needed to get a ranked ACC team in the house, a team that was itself 7-1 and already had a couple of top 25 wins in its pocket. They needed to have Green go off on the Seminoles for 30 points, which is what he'll do on the nights he's not going 3-for-12 with five turnovers. They needed the freshmen, Jackson-Davis and Franklin, to continue to impress, and for Smith and Brunk and even Anderson to do what they can do.

All of that happened. And now you're allowed to think, if you bleed cream-and-crimson, just how high up might be for this bunch, instead of wondering why the Hall doesn't make visitors' knees turn to water the way it used to.

You never want to get too far ahead of the curve with a team, especially a young team and especially when it's a team with so many cautionary tales in its immediate past. So it's worth remembering last year, when Archie Miller's crew was 12-2 through December and entered January having won seven straight.

After that?

Well, after that, the Hoosiers lost 12 of their next 13, finished 17-15 and watched March Madness from their living rooms.

This does not look like a team that's structured to do that again. The bench is too long, the talent too varied, the chemistry yea different. Take from all that what you will.

For now, it's at least better than the alternative. And for now, that's enough.