Indiana Hoosiers' Blueprint for a Deep Run in the 2015 NCAA Tournament

“Just enough."

These words are becoming a refrain for Hoosiers fans, a mantra of dull hope for an Indiana basketball season that’s shifted from embarrassment to fortunate surprise and, ultimately, a downhill cheese-wheel chase over the course of the last four months.

After starting Big Ten conference play 5-1, Tom Crean’s squad ended the regular season in a loosely controlled slide, doing just enough in the end to punch a ticket to the NCAA tournament and steal a 10th seed in a stacked Midwest Region. 

The question now is, how much noise can this Indiana team potentially make in the Big Dance? How weird can Yogi Ferrell and company make things for bracketologists who began pulling the plug on Indiana’s tournament chances over the last week?

The answers are “a lot of noise” and “real weird”—but it all depends on a number of moving parts clicking for an Indiana team that’s rarely been able to stroke on all eight cylinders. 

The following is a blueprint for the perfect storm of madness Indiana must manufacture to blow past a well-balanced Wichita State team and make a shockingly deep run into the NCAA tournament.

Hey, it’s a long shot, but if you’re not into miracles, you’re not into college basketball.

James Blackmon Jr. Sustains “Killer” Mode

Even in the on-again, off-again landscape of college hoops, Tom Crean’s 2014-15 squad stands out as the basketball equivalent of Russian roulette. 

They're the flamethrower guy in a battalion, equally as capable of toasting the enemy’s entire front line as they are of exploding in a fiery mess at any moment. This is the group that can toast you for a school-record 18 triples and implode in a double-digit loss at Northwestern 10 days later.

Unsurprisingly, the lynchpin of good Indiana craziness is James Blackmon Jr. When the blue-chip freshman plays to his potential, Indiana wins.

The golden number for Blackmon Jr. is 18. Indiana has won 13 of its 15 games this season where Blackmon has scored 18 or more points. 

It sounds obvious—scorer scores, team wins. But further investigation shows how Indiana—a team replete with scoring potential—is specifically tethered to Blackmon Jr. thriving.

For perspective, Ferrell has matched or eclipsed 18 points on 14 occasions this year—eight of those games ended in losses. Troy Williams’ 18-or-greater split is four wins to three losses.

The importance of Blackmon Jr.’s success continues to stand even when scaled back for role-player fireworks. Nick Zeisloft’s 10-or-better split is four wins to four losses. Robert Johnson, with eight wins to four losses in 10-or-better scoring performances, appears to have the second-most important offensive performances for Indiana.

In other words, if Indiana and its spin-the-bullet-chamber offense wants to make it anywhere in March, Blackmon Jr. will have to trend toward the type of performance he had in his 25-point outing against Northwestern in the B1G tourney. 

If he can hit shots and stay clear of a freshman burnout, Indiana has a chance to trade body blows with anyone in the tournament.

The Rebirth of Johnsonism

Dan Carson

Harken back to early November, when Indiana’s ugly off-the-court issues were abruptly washed away in the cleansing light of Johnsonism—a belief system where Robert Johnson is Indiana's savior and clearly the hybrid love child of Isiah Thomas and Tom Coverdale conceived in a Cook Hall centrifuge. 

Yeah, might’ve gotten ahead of myself with that take, but I still believe Johnson is essential to the stewardship of Indiana basketball and a telling bellwether for the team’s general mojo. If Johnson enters the paint, sees his shadow and scampers away, Indiana will probably struggle. If he isn’t spooked early, however, Indiana typically sallies forth to victory. 

Furthermore, a confident and potent Johnson creates a domino effect. A better Johnson means less Stanford Robinson, which means fewer hip-shot layups and head-down turnovers in traffic. Fewer turnovers in the lane mean more drive-and-kicks for three, which we all know is the Colonel’s less-than-secret spice for Indiana basketball wins. 

No one’s asking for 20 points from Johnson. That's unrealistic. But if he’s going to start, 12 to 14 points over 30 minutes is the kind of contribution that helps alleviate pressure on Blackmon Jr. and Ferrell. Johnson doesn’t have to be a bazooka for Indiana to succeed in March, but he does have to be a weapon.

Indiana Has to Run Plays for Nick Zeisloft

Andy Lyons/Getty Images

I’ve been solidly Team Zeisloft since watching him drop three important triples on Illinois in January.

For the last month, the redshirt junior from Illinois State has battled back and forth with Central Michigan’s John Simons for the honor of being Ken Pomeroy’s most efficient offensive player in the nation.

KenPom.com currently has Zeisloft as the second-most efficient player, with an overall offensive rating of 139.2. He isn’t just Indiana’s Kyle Korver—he’s the NCAA’s Kyle Korver. 

Like many Indiana fans, I often wonder aloud at the fact Zeisloft isn’t in the starting lineup. He’s a nearly peerless shooter, and with Johnson’s penchant for fading into the background, the upside for increased Zeisloft minutes seems like a no-brainer in Crean’s shoot-or-die offense.

In any case, for Indiana to get the most out of Zeisloft in the tournament, they’ll need to do more to free up open looks for him to attempt. This, of course, assumes Crean can find a whiteboard and summon the wherewithal to use it for good.

But it can be done. It must be done. Zeisloft is no longer a secret. You don’t drop five triples on Wisconsin and remain an unknown quantity. Teams have increasingly game-planned for Zeisloft, making sure to blanket him every time he checks in.

It’s an honor most bench players don’t receive, but the flattering is limiting his effectiveness. Zeisloft spent all of Indiana’s 75-69 loss to Maryland in the Big Ten tournament standing in the wings, waiting for an outlet pass that never came. At no point did Crean appear to have any game plan for his team's most lethal shooter other than sitting him in the corner and hoping open looks organically appear.

If Indiana wants to beat teams it shouldn’t beat, it has to maximize its best shooter's potential when it deigns to put him on the floor.

Hanner Mosquera-Perea Must Play

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

A large and weird cross section of Indiana fans became strangely bullish when Hanner Mosquera-Perea went down with a knee injury in January.

The thought was addition by subtraction: Indiana would be better off not pretending to have a big man. Crean would finally take off the restrictor plate, shout “Buckle up, boneheads!” and launch the team into the small ball troposphere.

This wasn’t exactly the case. The Hoosiers won four of its seven conference games without Mosquera-Perea, blowing out Maryland at Assembly Hall and getting groin-stomped by Wisconsin at the Kohl Center.

As much as Mosquera-Perea’s glacial development has frustrated fans, his game has quantifiably improved, and the Hoosiers need him if they want to send any balled-up brackets flying toward the waste bin this month. 

Bracketologists know this, and Mosquera-Perea reinjuring his knee during Indiana’s Big Ten tournament tilt against Northwestern could have been one of the reasons guys like ESPN’s Joe Lunardi began making unfavorable noises about Indiana’s tournament chances. 

March is a grind, and while Indiana isn’t going to beat you with size, Mosquera-Perea is still the closest thing the Hoosiers have to a stopgap when facing teams with athletic bigs. You have to have the bodies. Troy Williams and Emmitt Holt can’t physically sustain the demands of post play for a long tournament run.

We’ll have to wait and see if Indiana has been sandbagging us by trotting out Mosquera-Perea for warmups, but Hoosiers fans should hope to see the Colombian transplant back in the starting lineup come tournament time.

Good Stops, Not Good Defense

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

Indiana is not going to play good defense. That much we know.

Ranked by KenPom.com the 216th-best squad in the nation at stopping other teams, the Hoosiers are a defensive barn fire—a gaping sieve capable of making guys like Jon Octeus look like Russell Westbrook on a nightly basis.

This team doesn’t do “defense.” Got it. Accepted. Good. 

What Indiana can do, however, is string together less than terrible moments—known colloquially as "stops."

The Hoosiers didn’t play astounding defense during its 71-56 win over Northwestern in the Big Ten tournament, but it limited the hemorrhaging by erecting a "Great Wall of Stops." Ferrell and company got back on defense with the same intensity as its offensive possessions, and ended up stringing together 11 stops through sheer effort and poor Northwestern shooting.

Hoping for a defensive renaissance in the tournament is futile. The Hoosiers are who we thought they were, and at this juncture, a stout defense is one that refuses to give up a basket every possession. Stopping teams isn't the goal—handing over fewer than 70 points is.

In any case, Indiana did just enough to dance this year, and as tough an out as Wichita State will be for the Hoosiers, rest assured Greg Marshall’s troops aren’t sabering champagne to see Ferrell and a spontaneously combustive Tom Crean team sliding into that No. 10 seed.

Dan is on Twitter. Once or twice a week for several months in the winter and spring, he turns into an irrational monster that yells at men wearing candy-striped pants.