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BLOOMINGTON – Tamar Bates made a good point.
Above is a video montage. The IU Basketball Twitter account. Among the clips was Bates, who delivered an emotional message.
“Everybody’s coming for our necks, brilliant,” he said in the video.
Insider:Why IU’s schedule is the biggest threat to Big Ten title hopes.
This season, the Hoosiers are among the Big Ten favorites — if not more of Big Ten favorite. That’s by default based on where else in the conference and less than a true belief that IU is the league’s best team. But for the first time in a while, the Hoosiers’ ever-increasing expectations on the inside can match the expectations on the outside.
CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein has the Hoosiers as a dark horse Final Four contender. IU coach Mike Woodson doesn’t shy away from such bold predictions.
“I can’t say it out loud, guys: I’m back here to win Big Ten titles and a national title. That’s all I want,” he said at IU’s media day last week. “I’m not pushing the team in any other direction. If they’re afraid of that challenge, they shouldn’t be here. That’s the way I see it.
“… I know the expectations are high. I understand that. That’s a good thing. But we have to go out and do it on the floor and show that we can win a Big Ten title and a national title. That’s all I care about right now.”
In more ways than one, IU’s expectations this season make for an impressive storyline. Historically, this has been a program used to deal with high expectations. But faster? Not so much. Especially on this season’s roster, IU hasn’t dealt with such external expectations at the collegiate level.
The juxtaposition between then and now is obvious. It can be a big factor in how IU navigates the peaks and valleys of an outsider’s perspective.
“I had to hold everyone to a standard,” star Trace Jackson-Davis said. “You can’t get too high, you can’t get too low … We can’t get too far ahead of ourselves talking about Big Ten championships, national championships. We have to win one at a time and that’s what we’re going to do.
We’re now heading into season two of Woodson’s head coaching tenure, and Woodson seems to have the program headed in the right direction. Last season was somewhat of a rollercoaster, with IU playing at its best and at its worst in various seasons. He survived a memorable Big Ten tournament with a nose at the end of the regular season. The Hoosiers punched their ticket to the NCAA tournament, knocking off Michigan and Illinois. It was IU’s first appearance in the Big Dance since 2016. That stretch also seems to confirm the program’s direction.
But the dynamic between IU and external perception remains compelling.
Take, for example, IU’s veteran frontcourt duo of Reece Thompson and Jackson-Davis. Thompson is one of those included. As a redshirt freshman (2018-19), IU was ranked near the top of the Big Ten during the preseason. That being said, Thompson had a limited role on that team, and those hopes were dashed as Indiana had a very disappointing season. Take Jackson-Davis, who has done a lot in an IU uniform and has the potential to go down great as a Hoosier. He didn’t do it at IU, but he’s on a consistently dominant team. Additionally, handling very high external expectations for the team.
“I’m obviously going into my freshman year with no expectations, just being a freshman,” Jackson-Davis said. “I didn’t really know how historic this program was. I mean, I knew a little bit about it. I knew about the championships, but I didn’t really know the in-depth details of how important it was to college basketball.”
“So learning over the last three years and then having Coach Woodson come in and tell us the story is huge. And then finally, just regaining national relevance. Like Scoop (Tamar Battis) said, the hunt. It’s big not just for us, but for college basketball because a lot of people say that when Indiana is good, college basketball is good.
Even Xavier Johnson and Miller Kopp – who started their college careers elsewhere – were good players on bad teams at their former schools. Johnson in Pittsburgh. Cope in the northwest. At his previous schools, his teams finished each season below .500.
What’s even more surprising is that there are players on IU’s roster who look like top outside prospects in high school. Bates, now entering his second season with the Hoosiers, played at powerhouse IMG Academy. Standouts Jalen Hood-Schifino and Malik Reneau were teammates at Monteverde Academy and won back-to-back GECO High School National titles (2021 and 2022).
“Are you the hunted? Take advantage of that, like you’ve worked hard,” Hood-Schifino said of his approach to dealing with expectations at Monteverde. “You know people are going to come at you, so you have to go in every day like someone’s trying to rip my head off. It’s good because you want to have that competition and people try to come to you.
Woodson has a somewhat different view. As a player at Indiana, Woodson lived up to high outside expectations — the Hoosiers were ranked in the AP preseason top-10 in three of his four seasons.
“Levels are what they are,” Woodson said. “You’ve still got to play the game, man. That is what is important and what happens between these two lines. And it’s going to be my job to make this team play at a level every night and win every time they step on the floor. That’s it for me. They are the levels.
IU has a legitimate chance to win the Big Ten this season. It has a center in Jackson-Davis. He has the depth of talent and potential around him to be successful. But there are still questions. Who can produce more than the 3-point arc? Can Bates and Jordan Geronimo explode? Can IU close out games?
One of them is dealing with external expectations. It’s a question IU can probably guess now, but you won’t really see the results until the games start. The real answer is one that IU can find on the road — and it will help determine whether it can stay in the hunt.
