Unfinished

 Of course they're not gonna go easy on themselves. Who really thought they would, in this weird pratfall of a season? 

Here were your Indiana Hoosiers last night, up a point with 90 seconds to play out in Eugene, Ore., and, listen, you win this one and your late-season transformation into a Real Basketball Team is ... OK, so not complete, but right next door to it. A W here, against a 21-8 Oregon bunch that had won its previous five games, and it's four in a row yourselves and five wins in your last six. A W here, and you're at the top of the NCAA Tournament bubble, if not completely free and clear of it.

Instead ...

Well, you know. It's Indiana, right? 

It's Indiana, so the Hoosiers get outscored 10-0 across those last 90 seconds, the Ducks sealing it with a 3-pointer, a couple of steals and 7-of-8 at the stripe as Indiana was forced to foul. The final was 73-64, another unfinished finish for a team that has turned unfinished finishes into a miniseries this season. And now they're 18-12 instead of 19-11, and they have to beat Ohio State at home in their regular season finale Saturday if they want to stay atop that bubble.

They're not gonna go easy on themselves. Which in an odd way -- and what other way has there been this season? -- is hewing to form for a team whose signature characteristic across this long winter is not being able to find a form?

The Hoosiers started the season with Mike Woodson having won the transfer portal and assembled an on-paper powerhouse, and they will end it with Woodson having already resigned and playing out a string his guys will try to stretch as long as they can for his sake. And yet here at the end, after all that, they seem to have found a lineup rotation that works, and with it an identity.

Buncha scrappy street fighters, that seems to be it. Punch it inside to the one-two punch of Oumar Bello and Malik Reneau and hit the spot-up threes at one end; turn loose Trey Galloway and the engine of chaos that is Anthony Leal at the other. 

Sometimes the magic works, to quote Old Lodgeskins from "Little Big Man." Sometimes it doesn't.

Last night it didn't.

Last night Indiana ran into a team that likes the scrappy stuff as well as it does, and that did it a little better. The Ducks outboarded Bello, Reneau 'n' them 43-36. The Hoosiers forced just nine turnovers and turned it over 10 times themselves. And, yeah, they got home-cooked a bit, going just 3-of-7 at the line while Oregon shot 21 free throws and made 19 of them.

That sent Woodson into an f-bombing rage in the postgame, although that 7-of-8 for the Ducks in the last minute made the totals look more biased than they were. 

No matter. It was what it was. And now Saturday is what it is: An absolute must win instead of a kinda-sorta must win.

They're not gonna go easy on themselves.

Surprise, surprise.