Hoosier Gnashin'

 Your Indiana Hoosiers head west tonight to Iowa City, and woe betide if they soil themselves against the Iowa Hawkeyes. That would surely unleash the Lost In The Past Division of the Get Off My Lawn Corps of the Hoosier Nation Army.

You know who I'm talkin' about: The minority of folks who wrap themselves in those five moldering banners at one end of Assembly Hall and wail that these Hoosiers are NOT the Hoosiers of Saint Bob of Knight. And that they're soft and whiny and don't play hard, and did we mention soft?

"You're all worthless and weak!" they cry, channeling their inner Niedermayers.

"The hell are you talking about, Mr. Blob?" you're asking now (and not for the first time).

I'm talking about a handwritten note Indiana's All-American center Trayce Jackson-Davis got after the Hoosiers failed to show up against Kansas and lost by 22. It was not the Hoosiers' proudest moment, admittedly. It was also not that they didn't get trucked by a better team, because they did.

(Arizona, same deal. Arizona, in fact, might be the best team in the country right now. We'll see in March.)

In any case, there's still no excuse for what some creature named Tim Weaver wrote to Jackson-Davis, which TJD subsequently made public by posting a screen grab of it on Twitter.

First he said TJD was "a horrible leader" (and underlined it!). Then he said head coach Mike Woodson was a horrible leader, too. Then he said he hated the way they "cried" to the refs instead of "getting back on D" ... and that IU had been "soft for years" and this was the "softest team yet" ... and that "you guys don't even seem like you care anymore."

Credit TJD with maintaining his sense of humor after reading this garbage, even puckishly thanking Weaver for his "words of encouragement." Not sure the Blob would have been so even-tempered.

What I do know, from decades of experience covering IU buckets, is that Tim Weaver is clearly still carrying a torch for Saint Bob. "Getting back on D" is the giveaway, although the entire tone is a marker, too.

Here's what I think about that: "Fans" like Tim Weaver aren't worth the name. And they are some sad individuals, pining for a glorious past with the selective memory reserved for those who do that.

I also think their tongues would be mopping the floor if they had to play one possession the way Trayce Jackson-Davis plays possessions. And that they'd be the first (and loudest) whiners if they were subjected to the kind of hard fouls that D-I basketball players routinely absorb in 2023.

Everyone's job is always harder than you think it is, and that includes the job of being a college basketball player. No one who plays the modern game at the level Indiana plays it is "soft." If they were, they wouldn't be playing at the level Indiana plays it.

For instance, I don't recall anyone calling Trayce Jackson-Davis soft when he took it to Armando Bacot of defending national champion North Carolina. Or when he went for 30, on 13-of-16 shooting, in a road win at Xavier, which subsequently took down No. 2 Connecticut.  

Oh, and that Kansas game?

TJD only scored 13 points, but he blocked nine shots taking on the Kansas bigs pretty much by himself. Which doesn't sound to me like he didn't care, but what do I know?

I'm not one of the loud, but thankfully small, number of Tim Weavers in Hoosier Nation.

Or Hoosier Gnashin' (Of Teeth), in their case.