Author: Dustin Dopirak

The possession that put into sharpest relief the current chasm between Michigan’s current state of affairs and Indiana’s took more than 45 seconds off the clock. It started with a turnover in transition with 12:07 to go in the second half when IU freshman guard Trey Galloway tried to drive baseline and throw the ball into the middle of the lane to freshman forward Jordan Geronimo, but saw it deflected by Michigan’s Isaiah Livers into the hands of fellow wing Franz Wagner. The Hoosiers defended well for 35 seconds, but when center Austin Davis missed a hook shot at the…

Indiana center Joey Brunk was not listed among the IU players and managers who will be giving recorded Senior Day speeches, according to a list provided by Indiana athletics. This apparently means Brunk intends to return for a sixth year of college if he is healthy to return, utilizing the NCAA’s decision to not count the 2020-21 season against anyone’s eligibility because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Brunk has not played in a game this season due a back problem that required surgery early in the season. He averaged 6.8 points per game and 5.2 rebounds per game last season in…

Indiana sophomore guard Armaan Franklin is apparently out for Saturday’s noon game against Michigan. When the rest of the Hoosiers took the floor for warm-ups, Franklin was wearing track suit pants and a boot on his right foot. Franklin came out of Wednesday’s game against Rutgers with an injury and sat out the entire second half. Indiana coach Archie Miller said the injury was an aggravation of a previous one, but the previous injury he suffered was an sprained left ankle. This, then, would appear to be a new injury. Franklin is the Hoosiers’ second-leading scorer with 11.6 points per…

Trayce Jackson-Davis said he couldn’t explain why. It’s possible, and understandable, that he simply didn’t want to. The Indiana sophomore center and likely All-American was asked during a Zoom press conference Friday whether he agreed with IU coach Archie Miller’s assessment that the Hoosiers were “fractured” during the period from the middle of the first half to the end of the second half against Rutgers Wednesday when the Scarlet Knights swung the score 35 points in their favor en route to a 74-63 win. Jackson-Davis said he couldn’t deny it, but rather than diagnose the factors that led to it,…

Indiana sophomore Trayce Jackson-Davis was named one of five finalists for the Karl Malone Award on Thursday. The award goes to the nation’s top power forward. Gonzaga’s Drew Timme, Pittsburgh’s Justin Champganie, Seton Hall’s Sandro Mamukelashvili and Villanova’s Jeremiah Robinson-Earl are the other four players on the list. Jackson-Davis is averaging 20.3 points and 9.5 rebounds this season.

Up until less than a week ago, there was exactly one thing about his Indiana team that Archie Miller could say was foundational. One thing that he could count on no matter what happened. He couldn’t promise that his Hoosiers could shoot the ball, especially not from outside. He couldn’t promise that they would defend as well as his best Dayton teams did, especially on the perimeter. Sometimes they’d turn the ball over too much. Sometimes they’d miss free throws. Sometimes they’d start slow. Sometimes they’d fade down the stretch. But he could trust that they would fight. They wouldn’t…

Indiana has just three road wins all season and two of them have come against the bottom two teams in the Big Ten standings — Northwestern and Nebraska. That’s a problem because the Hoosiers’ best chance at wins in their remaining four games come away from Assembly Hall. Their last game at home comes Saturday against No. 3 Michigan and the Wolverines just are coming off one of the most impressive wins for any team in the country this season Sunday at Ohio State. Their first chance at getting one comes at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Rutgers where the Scarlet…

Archie Miller fell short of making the statement definitive, but he gave every other indication possible Tuesday that transfer guard Parker Stewart and center Joey Brunk will not play at any point this season. That much is probably obvious by now at this point anyway. The Hoosiers remaining schedule consists of four games in two weeks time and neither player has appeared in a game this season. Brunk has been out since November following back surgery and Stewart just joined the team at the semester break after transferring from Tennessee-Martin following the unexpected death of his father and UTM head…

As would be expected for a team with a 12-10 record and a sub .500 conference mark, Indiana has been held back by an array of deficiencies. And each time the Hoosiers have a course correct with one, another seems to pop up. For much of the early going, Indiana struggled with outside shooting. The Hoosiers can’t exactly call that problem fixed, but they’re shooting a respectable 35 percent in Big Ten games, which put them fifth in the conference. They only have four shooters with at least 40 3-point attempts, but three of them are shooting 36 percent or…

Part of what drives strength and conditioning coaches is a belief that the players they work with can always be better than what they are. More can always be done to help them improve, which also means more could have already been done. To be good at the job is to deny oneself the satisfaction of ever believing the job is done. “I think I have always felt behind,” said Aaron Wellman, whose official title at Indiana is assistant athletic director for football performance. “I have been doing this for 25 years and I do not think there is a…