Stuff happens

 Hey, I don't know. Maybe Bob Knight had something to do with it.

Maybe somewhere up there in the celestial realm he looked down and saw Michigan State's Tom Izzo about to pass him as the Big Ten's all-time winningest coach, and he got his back up. Threw an ectoplasmic chair. Stomped around the ether. Looked down at these Indiana Hoosiers and said, "(Bad word he's not supposed to say where he is), now play some basketball, you (other bad word he's not supposed to say)."

Whatev'. All we can say for sure is what was on the Breslin Center scoreboard there at the end Tuesday night: 71-67. In favor of the visitors.

"But ... but I thought Michigan State was 19-4 and ranked 11th," you're saying now.

They were.

"And they were at home."

Indeed.

"And Indiana had lost five in a row and seven of its last eight, and Mike Woodson had stepped down, which means they were a ghost ship riding the Limbo Sea for this last month of the season."

Horrible metaphor, but ... yup.

So how to explain Indiana 71, Michigan State 67?

How to explain Oumar Bello, who'd been AWOL the last two games, going for 14 points and 10 rebounds despite being saddled with foul trouble? How to explain Malik Reneau, who'd been virtually invisible since a knee injury knocked him onto the sidelines for 20 days in January, coming off the bench in beast mode, busting the Spartans with 19 points and a dozen boards?

That's 33 points and 22 rebounds between them against the Michigan State bigs, if you're keeping score at home. The Hoosiers still couldn't throw it in the Gulf of Mexico from the 3-point line -- they missed 13 of their 16 tries from the arc -- but Luke Goode, who started in Reneau's place, got two of those on four attempts and made four steals on the other end. 

Michigan State, meanwhile, shot even worse (38 percent overall, 4-of-23 from the arc), and Indiana played a remarkably clean floor game, turning it over just nine times. That included Nervous Time down at the end, where for once the Hoosiers didn't blow it with an opponent filling their mirrors.

Hit six free throws in the last 13 seconds. Outscored Sparty 11-4 over the next three minutes after the home five got within two with 6:17 left. Stuff like that.

"Why, that doesn't sound like Indiana at all," you're saying.

Nope. For one thing, it was the first time they'd beaten a top 25 team all season.

So, who knows, maybe Sir Bob of Knight was pulling some heavenly strings. Or maybe with all the Woodson drama finally resolved, the tension is gone now. The Hoosiers had been playing like a held breath as they fumbled away games and their fans turned on them and the speculation about Woodson's future mounted. Now, finally, they can exhale.

Which of course would be the irony of ironies, if there's anything to that.

For Mike Woodson's team to play the way Mike Woodson wanted it to, Mike Woodson had to leave.

It's a theory.