Doyel: Is IU content to be Little Engine That Could?

OMAHA, Neb. – The best Indiana we've seen this season, the most likeable, the most promising, reared its head at the right time. The Hoosiers played 27-win Maryland to a near standstill last week in the Big Ten tournament, then did the same Friday against 29-win Wichita State in the NCAA tournament.

Indiana lost both games.

There is a lesson here, for anyone who wants to learn it. There also is a question to be answered, but not by you or me. And not by IU coach Tom Crean or the IU players. In the next few days – after 10th-seeded Indiana's 2014-15 season ended Friday in an 81-76 loss to seventh-seeded Wichita State – this question will be answered by whoever calls the shots at Indiana, whether it's athletics director Fred Glass or the richest boosters.

Going forward, what does Indiana want to be?

Right now, and for most of Crean's seven years, the Hoosiers have been less locomotive, more Little Engine That Could. The Hoosiers have been a true power just once in those seven years, in 2013 when they had a pair of lottery picks in Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller and reached the No. 1 ranking and earned a No. 1 seed and scored 50 points in a loss to Syracuse in the Sweet Sixteen. The other six years, Indiana tried really hard and overachieved here and there. In 2012 the Hoosiers beat No. 1 Kentucky and No. 2 Ohio State, and that was remarkable. This season they were picked to finish 11th in the Big Ten yet earned an NCAA tournament bid, something to be proud of, and something Tom Crean was sure to mention during his opening statement after the loss to Wichita State.

Is that what Indiana wants to be?

Proud to be a program that doesn't finish 11th in the Big Ten?

This is a deep and expensive question, given the $12 million it would cost to buy out Crean's contract, and it doesn't have an easy answer beyond the obvious: Indiana wants to be great!

Terrific.

Can it be great?

Can it be great … with this coach?

Indiana hasn't been great since Bob Knight was coach, winning three national titles and being nearly perfect in 1975 and being completely perfect in 1976. Knight lost his mind and then his job in 2000, Mike Davis had a Little Engine That Could moment in 2002 when he led the fifth-seeded Hoosiers to the national championship game, and Kelvin Sampson almost had Indiana in locomotive mode in 2008. But he cheated. Got caught. Got fired.

You know the history. You've watched the present. What's the future? For now, the near future looks like a replica of the season that just finished, perhaps a little better given the signees coming in, perhaps a little worse if Yogi Ferrell turns pro, as his father said two weeks ago was a possibility. Perhaps a lot better if Indiana hits a late recruiting home run and reels in either of the five-star big men it chases, albeit with a roster that already is oversigned by two players, with the annual offseason "Creaning" – the magical whittling of the roster, to make the scholarship numbers work – still to come.

Indiana's players expect more than this, and not in a disparaging way toward Crean. But to a man, every player I spoke with in the locker room said he expects more than 20 wins and a spot on the good side of the NCAA tournament bubble.

Just as telling? Two IU freshmen told me they reported to campus without any idea of their program's legacy.

"I didn't know," said IU guard Robert Johnson of Richmond, Va. "Being here, I do now."

Said IU forward Max Hoetzel of Calabasas, Calif.: "Not until I got here (did I know the Hoosiers' history)."

That's how long it's been since Indiana was Indiana: Kids close to 20, lifelong basketball players, had to move to Bloomington and join the IU program to learn the IU legacy.

How does Indiana get back there? And does it have the right coach in place? On Friday the Hoosiers had a coach who got the better of his counterpart, Wichita State's Gregg Marshall, the national coach of the year a season ago. Marshall's team won, but Marshall's team was supposed to win. Marshall's team was better.

But Crean's team controlled the tempo, made Wichita State play at its pace. The Shockers came in allowing 55.8 points per game, their best defense in 66 years, but Indiana scored 76. Indiana sped up the Shockers, made Wichita State run a track meet it prefers to avoid, and couldn't pull off the upset because Wichita State had the best player (point guard Fred VanVleet) and because Wichita State got the better whistle.

That final phrase may seem like a homer thing to read in The Indianapolis Star, but both teams played at the same pace, in the same attack mode, with the same clawing defense. One team (Indiana) was called for nine more fouls, and the other team (Wichita State) was granted 14 more free throws. When this game was over Crean didn't walk immediately toward the Shockers' sideline. He walked toward one referee and told him, right in front of me, "You suck."

Wichita State is the better team – but Wichita State got the better whistle.

Back when Indiana was Indiana, neither would have been true. A mid-major never would have had the better seed, the better talent – and that mid-major never would have had more respect from the officials. But that's what happened Friday, and that's a credit to what Marshall has built, and what Crean has not: You get what you deserve.

Going forward, what does Indiana deserve?

In the next few days, whoever runs the athletic department in Bloomington will give us that answer.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.