Indiana's season ended last night against a quicker, more athletic and more determined Miami crew, and if you didn't see it coming you've been sleeping in class again. Wasn't this season's Hoosier signature all over this?
Play well and get everyone's hopes up one time out; play not-so-well and get punked the next time. Been their pattern pretty much all season.
And so last night here came a Miami team that consistently beat the slower Hoosiers off the dribble, consistently got to the rim because of it, and consistently cleaned up its own messes because it was quicker to the glass, too. The Hurricanes, the smaller team, outrebounded Indiana 48-31, outboarded the Hoosiers 20-12 on the offensive glass, outscored the Hoosiers 46-28 in the paint and 29-11 on second-chance points.
Across the last 10 minutes, Miami outscored Indiana 30-18. It was 8-0 across the last 2:28, as Indiana, clearly gassed from trying to keep up with the 'Canes track-meet pace, was reduced to hoisting one leg-weary brick after another from beyond the 3-point arc.
The final was 85-69, sufficiently embarrassing that some in the knee-jerk crowd were saying the Hoosiers just plain quit. They didn't, really. They simply were done in by superior speed and tempo, the over-reliance on Trayce Jackson-Davis to save them from themselves, and their own consistent inconsistency game-to-game.
In other words, same-old, same-old.
In further other words, typical Big Tin. Er, Ten.
Nothing outside of sunrise is as sure as the conference rolling snake eyes in Da Tournament, and, voila, it did again. The committee handed the Big Tin eight bids; seven of them, surprise, surprise, didn't make it through the first weekend.
Only Michigan State survived, because Tom Izzo's Spartans seem to be the only team in the Tin that doesn't react to March the way a vampire reacts to sunlight. Hence the reason some quipsters Sunday were saying the first three months of the year are January, February and Izzo.
The Spartans, a 7-seed, sent 2-seed and sexy Final Four pick Marquette packing yesterday, and did it by nine, 69-60. A few hours later, their lone remaining companion went down to Miami. If you're a Big Tin school, it's lonely at the Sweet Sixteen.
The Hoosiers, for instance, haven't been there in a decade.
But then you probably knew that.
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