DURHAM, NC. — On Tuesday morning I did a Hot Joint entitled “Reality Check” that said “What IU does against Duke will tell us how far they are from getting back to elite status.” Well playas…we found out within the first 3 minutes of the game as the Duke Blue Devils got out of the ride and beat the brakes off of the Hoosiers. They took all sneakers and jewelry off of the kids from Bloomington in a 90-69 route and went to the crib. No sweat at all.
It wasn’t even close, Duke was miles ahead of IU on the talent level and big dog ego department. The Hoosiers played with absolutely no attitude and they literally looked scared for 40 minutes. There’s a huge difference between being good and being an elite program with elite players that know it.
Romeo Langford led the Hoosiers with 13 points as he struggled to find his rhythm finishing 3 of 15 from the floor and 0 for 4 from three-point range. My only knock on him as a high school player was that he never played with any dog in him. And guess what playa, it’s followed him to college as well. He’s got crazy skills but he doesn’t play with an edge at all and when you’re competing against dogs you’ve got to be willing to bite back.
You don’t ever know whether he’s up 20 or down 20. His sense of urgency doesn’t change and at this level and especially the next, it has to. I’ve been saying it since the first time I saw him play at New Albany. That’s cool when you aren’t playing anybody but when the big dogs come out to play you’ve got to be ready to run with them and bite back.
Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish and RJ Barrett are straight up dogs and they compete hard. Romeo just allows the game to happen and that’s exactly what the world saw on Tuesday night. Sure, anybody in their right minds knew that Duke was going to jump all over these cats in Cameron Indoor Stadium but we at least wanted to see if the dog would came out of Romeo and it didn’t. IU didn’t have a chance at winning that game when it was scheduled but folks wanted to see them compete HARD and they didn’t from the top down.
When you’re the man and you look shook the rest of the team is going to be shook. No other starter finished in double figures as Edward Fitzner came off of the bench with 12 as well as De’Ron Davis with 10.
It was at least good for Hoosiers fans to know where IU is in terms of elite status now. They won’t go through the remainder of the season confused on what that looks like. At least Archie Miller is putting in the necessary work to get them back to the elite level. Hopefully in a couple of years they’ll be ready to compete at that level. He’s recruiting his butt off in the state of Indiana right now and hopefully Romeo with somehow pull that dog out of himself before the season is over because he’s crazy talented. Stop me when I start lyin’!