A basketball team grows in B-town

 Indiana University lost a basketball game last night, which did not used to qualify as news but might in these fresh new days.

See, it's not that the Hoosiers lost, on the road, to Syracuse, a real ACC basketball team. It's how they didn't lose.

They didn't lose by 30 after trailing by 14 at halftime.

They didn't lose by throwing in the towel after playing like goofs in the first half, instead choosing to throw down the gauntlet.

They didn't lose until a couple of free throws with a sliver of a second showing in the second overtime made the final Syracuse 112, Indiana 110.

They also didn't lose because they threw bricks at the rim all night; Tennessee-Martin transfer Parker Stewart scored 18 of his 20 points on 6-of-12 shooting from the 3-point line, Northwestern transfer Miller Kopp was 4-of-9 from there on his way to 28, and the Hoosiers shot a respectable 40 percent (11-of-27)  from Arcville -- which would have been 11-of-23 had Tamar Bates not missed all four of his attempts.

They didn't lose because their north star didn't show up, either. Trayce Jackson-Davis dropped 31 and 16 on the Orange, hitting 11-of-16 shots. Race Thompson added 17 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists, and Xavier Johnson added nine dimes from the point.

As a team, Indiana had 26 assists. The Hoosiers outboarded the Orange 46-31, which is quite an outboarding. They also turned it over 25 times, which is quite a lot of turning it over.

Still.

Still, after going 7-0 against the pastry course of their schedule, they did what Indiana teams haven't done in awhile: Fought to the end against a big-league opponent in circumstances where, in the very recent past, they might have just said "Ah, screw it."

This Indiana team, Mike Woodson's Indiana team, didn't do that.

Instead, they regrouped at halftime, shifted Stewart to a place on the floor where he was more comfortable, and clawed their way back into it.

I know you can't gussy up an L enough to make it a W. But you can use to illustrate that maybe, just maybe, the Ws won't be so hard to come by from now on.