IU Basketball Facts Lead To One Obvious Conclusion

So now that we’ve had time to digest IU basketball signing another guard, what does it mean?

Why would Tom Crean add another guard when he has so many? Specifically, if you’re going to do that, why not sign a point guard? The Hoosiers don’t really have one on the roster. They do have half a dozen shooting guards, off guards, whatever you want to call them. Why do they need another, which is what they got when they brought in Remy Abell?

So we have a basketball mystery.

What IU really needs is another inside guy. Somebody who can take the pressure off of incoming freshman Cody Zeller. In an ideal world, that would be veteran Tom Pritchard. At times, he is that guy, but he fouls too much.

Here’s a likely scenario. Zeller and Pritchard start and six minutes into the game Pritchard gets his second foul. Now you’ve got to bring in Derek Elston or Bobby Capobianco and neither is the kind of inside presence the Hoosiers need.

They need somebody like Dennis Rodman, without the wedding dress. Wait. The wedding dress might be negotiable if the guy goes to class, breaks no laws, defends, rebounds and doesn’t care about scoring. He’ll rebound your misses and get you the ball back so you can shoot again.

Yes, we know. Nobody is like that anymore.

Still …

Crean continues to recruit inside players -- reported candidates are 6-9 Yemi Makoanjuola, 6-9 Ibrahima Djimde, 6-9 Robert Goff, 6-8 Percy Gibson and 6-7 Jamari Traylor -- and if he gets one he’ll have more players than scholarships. Somebody will have to go.

Who?

We’ll get to that in another blog. Let’s get back to the guard mystery. The best way to figure it out is to ask Crean, but he’s not going to publicly talk about it. The second best way is to hypnotize him and make him talk without him actually knowing it, but our hypnosis skills are weak. We can’t even convince the dog to stop whining so we can finish this blog.

So we are going to go all Sherlock Holmes on the situation. We will deduce the facts and come up with the obvious answer.

Fact: Indiana fans really want to return to postseason opportunity.

Fact: Crean knows what he’s doing. He and his staff are the only ones who have the inside scoop on what’s going on.

Fact: The dog is whining again.

Fact: Verdell Jones, Jordan Hulls, Maurice Creek, Victor Oladipo, Will Sheehey, Austin Etherington, Remy Abell, Matt Roth and Daniel Moore are all guards. Christian Watford is basically a shooting guard. That’s about three too many.

Fact: Crean loves competition. Practices should be wars because if you’re not playing at a high enough level in the backcourt, you won’t play.

Fact: Jones has to cut down on his turnovers or he won’t play.

Fact: The most guards to play at one time will be four, and only because of major foul trouble. It could be as few as two with Zeller and Pritchard inside, and Watford doing his hybrid thing.

Fact: Jones should never play point guard again because he doesn’t create enough and commits too many turnovers.

Fact: The dog is whining again. We put her outside in the rain. The family is whining. We bring her back in. Now we are whining.

Fact: The only guy on the roster you could sort of call a point guard is Moore, and he’s not a Big Ten-caliber starter.

Fact: Nobody wants to sit the bench. Guys will get ticked and grumpy.

Fact: IU really needs Creek to return to full health from his two knee surgeries and regain his freshman dominance, when he was the nation’s leading freshman scorer.

Fact: Roth and Moore won’t play much this season. They are the two likeliest guys to either not play and spend an unhappy season as spectators, or move on.

Fact: Indiana won’t have a true point guard until Yogi Ferrell arrives in the fall of 2012.

Fact: IU is in finals week and no one has announced he’s transferring.

Fact: If somebody is leaving, it will have to happen soon.

Fact: All this leads to one inescapable conclusion:

The dog is whining again.