An Indiana sighting, Part ...

 ... oh, never mind.

Never mind, because last night, in the archeological dig that used to be Assembly Hall, even the students quit on your Indiana Hoosiers. According to published reports, they started heading back to their dorms at halftime, with the Hoosiers down 28 to an Illinois team that had just lost at home to a fairly beige USC team.

By the middle of the second half, everyone else had quit on the Hoo-Hoos, too, with the place two-thirds empty by that point, again according to published reports. This can be excused, frankly. Doesn't everyone leave when a game is over?

Pretty soon it actually was, with Illinois on the high side of a 94-69 blowout. It was the second 25-point loss for Mike Woodson's crew in 72 hours, and the final score was something of a cheat; the Illini led by 32 before head coach Brad Underwood cleared his bench and the Hoosiers knocked down a couple of threes in the last five minutes or so.

One supposes the latter was the law of averages at work. No one can miss 'em all -- not even an Indiana team that was 0-of-13 from Threeville before Trey Galloway finally got one to bed down with 5:50 to play.

They finished 4-of-18 from the arc, a 22.2 percent clip that sadly is more or less a typical success rate for the Hoosiers these days.

Illinois, on the other hand, made 11 threes in 32 tries -- many of them uncontested because Indiana consistently was late on switches and less than zealous in getting out on the shooter. It was emblematic of the entire evening, as the Illini consistently beat the Hoosiers to loose balls and rebounds, outboarding them 51-37 including 16-8 on the offensive glass.

Rebounding, some wise old X-and-O guy once said, is nothing but effort. Draw your own conclusions from that.

Oh, Indiana did show some life, briefly, scoring the first 10 points of the second half to cut the gap (OK, so it was more of a chasm than a gap) to 18. But before long Illinois had pumped it back up to 28, 29, 30 again, and that was that.

But what was that, exactly? And where did back-to-back blowout losses come from after the Hoosiers had strung together five straight victories and risen to a tie for third in the Big Ten standings?

Woodson had no answers last night, an increasingly prevalent response to Indiana's bewildering no-shows. All he could say was he had to make some changes, which is what he always says.

What those changes might be is anyone's guess. Steve Alford's in his 50s now and busy coaching his own team, and ditto for Calbert Cheaney, who's now Indiana's director of basketball operations. So no help there.

In any event, the hot seat is toasty warm again under Woodson's hindparts, just when it looked as if he finally had things going his way. He has three days now to figure it out before the Hoosiers hit the road again for Columbus, where a beatable Ohio State club awaits. Then it's on to Northwestern, back home to host Maryland, and off to Mackey Arena to face perpetual nemesis Purdue and finish out the month.

Maybe by then the "Fire Woodson!" cries that drifted out of the Disassembly Hall expanse last night will have faded. Or maybe they will have grown into a full-throated chorus.

As always with Woodson and these Hoosiers, you can flip a coin.