Indiana Red in a Vast Sea of Killer Blues

    Ahh. Two games in the 2023 season, and my "hopefully" good enough Hoosiers, men's basketball team of my hometown, clad in white with red crimson trim, do not look as good as I and others had hoped. My Athlon magazine that I in good hopes purchased this fall picks IU to be a one and done NCAA Tourney team, meaning good enough to be in the final 68 in March. But, with struggles to win at home against lightly regarded Florida Gulf Coast and the once and future then 0-2 Army Knights. Noted that the West Pointers had three native Hoosiers that played their tails off. Good on them; love me some cadets of the U.S. military. But my civilian boys from all points of the map should blow them out, wipe the floor with them.

    Back to my civilian, and rather pedestrian-looking Hoosier boys: they need to shoot more and more often. Push the ball and be more aggressive. When they pass 8 times and throw away the ball, and get a dozen less shots than the lesser opponent, it does not bode well.

    Then there are the true-blue killers in the college world of division 1 men's hoops, who have dominated the college NCAA scene since I was a kid in high school and I (we) had hopes that our red-blooded Hoosiers could win it all every 5 or 6 years. Where to start? Duke, those Blue Devils. Knight's protégé Mike Kzezevsky. I mean Krzyz -ewski. Easy to spell, harder to pronounce? No, Coach K, the former Army point guard under Knight went on to win in 1991 and 1992. Then who else? UCLA with some blue won it in '95, then came the vaunted Kentucky Wildcats. There were kids in southern Indiana, in Bloomington, rooting for the Cats of Lexington! Oy, vey!

    Egads. It got bad. Then the blue-clad Huskies of Connecticut started winning the Championship regularly. Then the Tar Heels, who did it right after the Duke run, with an Indiana big man, no less. And UNC continued to do it with big dudes from the Hoosier starte-- from Bloomington, no less! With Sean May, the son of Knight's IU All-American Scott, leader of the last undefeated team in men's history. A record older than most people alive on the earth...

    And of course, Kansas has one its titles, from '88 to 2008, to more recently. And they are killers again this year.

    All these killer blue teams.

    Even the best Big Ten team in recent years, is the Maize and Blue Wolverines.

    Can the red and white, the Cream and Crimson boys somehow get it together?

    I dream banners of red; but that it from last century. Or, the Terrapins from earlier this one... Who beat my runners-up Indiana men.

    And who... No, I am lost in reveries. I can no longer bring myself to hope much more. The Cavaliers of Virginia has blue, and they won the ring with a former Indiana Mr. Basketball, of course.

    But there is Purdue.

    

The local rivals give me more blues.