The cruelty of optics

Saturday was a very bad day in the mythical realm of Greener Pastures, where everything will immediately get better if we just get rid of This Guy, and then replace him with This Other Guy.

For one thing, This Guy was having himself a merry old time, because he was off beating the ninth-ranked team in the country on its home floor with his new team.

For another, This Other Guy was getting his head kicked in by the 15th-ranked team, albeit the 15th-ranked team was also home and plays in a league where the home team traditionally is very hard to beat.

Here were the scores: Georgia 65, Memphis 62, and Maryland 75, Indiana 59.

Georgia is coached by Tom Crean, who of course used to coach at Indiana before Indiana decided it could do better.

Indiana is now coached by Archie Miller, whom everyone assumed was the guy who could do better.

That might still happen. But so far (or at least Saturday), the optics are inescapable, and no doubt provokes this reaction from at least a portion of Hoosier Nation:

"Tell me why we got rid of Tom Crean again?"

It's a fair question this morning at least, because, again, the optics are inescapable. Crean's Bulldogs got the win over a Top 25 team they'd been building toward. Miller's Hoosiers continued to be what they were last year: A team that only intermittently can shoot worth a damn, and even more intermittently plays something that vaguely resembles defense.

A 16-point loss on the road to a ranked team in the Big Ten might not immediately look like an utter embarrassment, but look again. Maryland led by as many as 30 points in the second half, and only a 9-0 Hoosier run to finish the game kept a 16-point loss from being a 25-point loss. The Terrapins didn't score a point in the last two minutes and still won by 16, having closed the show with a ridiculous 35-8 second-half run that included mini-runs of 8-0, 11-0 and 12-0.

Indiana, meanwhile, shot 36 percent and missed 14 of 18 from behind the 3-point line. Devonte Green, who led the Hoosiers with 18, was by far Indiana's sharpest eye, and even he missed more than half his shots. The rest of IU's starters were a collective 11-of-27; the bench made just five field goals in 21 attempts.

In other words ... same-old, same-old.

And, yes, Indiana has also had games this season when it looked like the team Miller no doubt envisions. But until the Hoosiers start looking like that team consistently, Miller will not be what Indiana envisioned when it sent Tom Crean packing. He'll just be the guy who'll make you wonder why IU sent Crean packing in the first place.

That is perhaps a harsh assessment at this point. But, at this point, not an unreasonable one.