Countdown to the beginning...

of the future of Indiana Basketball. The exhibition game is against Grace on Wednesday night, and I believe my DVR will be taping it early in the morning on Thursday, and some point after that, I'll be watching to see what the new Hoosiers look like. Speaking of exhibition games, I generally watch the box scores of other Big Ten teams for three-point and free-throw shooting, and the assist-turnover ratio. Generally, the exhibition foes are so much smaller that it's hard to get a read on the accuracy of our league foes' FG% and rebounding acumen. Not that shooting is much easier to predict, but good shooting always stands out. Purdue plays tomorrow night, but two exhibition games have actually already occurred.

MSU trounced Northwood, with 18 assists to 11 TOs, going 18 for 30 on frees and 4 for 18 on threes.

Illinois beat down Southern Missouri, 16 assists/19 TOs, and went 26 for 37 on frees and 3 for 15 on threes.

So, no good shooting to really standout here, although Alex Legion hit a couple of threes for Illinois, and frosh Paul & Richardson showed some scoring abilities. For MSU, Morgan and Chris Allen (not Chris Hill, as the MSU website listed complete with a link to Hill's senior profile) were out and Roe only played 7 minutes. Of the newcomers, Derrick Nix showed a nice ability to score in the low post and Summers scored from all over. But Kalin Lucas did go 5 of 21 from the field. That's gotta be a little worrisome for the green gang.

Good bit on the improvement of returning players at Big Ten Geeks. I think an improvement from Tom Pritchard specifically, would go a very long way in helping the Hoosiers.