Honeymoon = Over

Loyola of Maryland has beaten Indiana. That's the same Greyhounds team that lost to Niagara by 20 and Mount St. Mary's by 19. Boston University, another team that defeated IU this year, has already lost six games and that includes setbacks against Harvard and Iona.

It's way to early to make any determinations about Tom Crean, who is in the infancy of his 2nd year at the helm. However, one thing is clear: this Indiana team is not competing at a level where they should be by now. If the Hoosiers are indeed making progress, they're doing so at a snail's pace. They're improving about as quickly as Zydrunas Ilgauskas on a fast break.

Losing to Kentucky, Mississippi, and Maryland is one thing, but falling to .500-level mid-majors at home is unacceptable.

Indiana currently has five wins. Let's say for the sake of argument that they find a way against Bryant College next week. That would be win #6 going into the Big Ten season. I think the absolute best-case scenario for IU in conference play is 4-14. That would be a season-sweep of Iowa, and stealing two home wins somewhere - unfortunately they don't get Penn State in Bloomington.

I said that 12 wins (double last year's total) was a fair expectation, even though I was hesitant to grade this program's progress by a wins number. That would be a 10-20 regular season record. That's an improvement from 6-25, but I'm pretty underwhelmed with what I've seen from this team so far.