Oh, Indiana — what are we going to do with you?
The thing about being almost good enough is that it sometimes sucks more than just being bad. At least when you’re flatly terrible, you can reconcile that (insert activity here) isn’t up your alley, and there are new trails to tepidly blaze.
We’ll go with golf for the sake of hoping most people reading this have golfed a time or two. It’s like being 150 out and hitting a nice approach shot into the green, so good it hits the pin … before taking a hard shot off it and shooting off the green into the water.
Almost good enough can be pretty damned frustrating.
Which brings us to Indiana football, which has been living on Almost Good Enough Island for most of Kevin Wilson’s tenure.
Let’s be honest here. “Almost good enough” plays out differently at Indiana than “almost good enough” at Ohio State. The Hoosiers have won only six Big Ten games in Wilson’s five years (including this one) at the helm. That’s decidedly not only not good enough, but terrible.
The Hoosiers have been almost good enough to get to a bowl game, which is what’s going to preserve your job at Indiana, the last three years. Wilson inherited a disjointed program with severe hemorrhaging off the field as much as on it.
He cleaned up the mess by stripping it down, Luke Bryan song-style, and rebuilding with fresh lumber after tossing out the rotting boards. Indiana and athletic director Fred Glass have been patient with him, which is how you ideally do these things.
Where most programs are content to take a wrecking ball before the coach has completed a recruiting cycle, Indiana has improved football facilities, poured money into the program, and allowed Wilson to struggle and build his way on his timeline.
One has to wonder, though: When will almost being good enough not be good enough?
The Hoosiers were supposed to break through last year, and it looked all the more reasonable after they shocked Missouri of the SEC (which would end up being the East’s champ) early in the season. Then, quarterback Nate Sudfeld was lost for the season and all hell broke loose, culminating in 5-7.
Adding to the indignity of it all was that the Hoosiers looked stacked at the position in the spring, with Tre Roberson set to be back before transferring to Illinois State and, in the end, leading ISU within three points of an FCS championship.
This year’s version of almost good enough has been a little more eye-turning. The Hoosiers hung with a sloppy (to IU’s credit, forced in some part by its own efforts) Ohio State down to the bitter end. Saturday against the other Big Ten heavyweight, Michigan State, IU was within one possession heading into the fourth quarter.
The Spartans eventually closed out the game, 24-0, to make yet another lopsided score, and yet another 50-point surrender for the IU defense. This marked the second such episode in a row after blowing a 25-point lead to Rutgers at home. A win there almost certainly would have meant the end of the Hoosiers’ bowl drought.
(IU last went to a bowl in 2007, the Insight version.)
Saturday’s loss to Michigan State marked the 11th time under Wilson that the Hoosiers have given up 50-plus points, showing the continued struggle on defense which has marked his tenure.
The silver lining is that Indiana will likely be favored in its final two games of the season. Maryland is in flux and Purdue continues to have its own set of problems a few hours up I-65.
If IU’s patience and Wilson’s build are to be rewarded, they’ll find their two wins (their other two games are home tilts against unbeaten Iowa and top-20 Michigan) that will get them into the bowl party.
However, one cannot help wondering if they’ll be able to get there. Gritty as it was to hang with OSU and MSU (for awhile), the Rutgers loss was equally as soul-sucking. Certain things have not been fixed in five years, and quite frankly, haven’t even been band-aided.
Things like the defense and the inability to finish on the road, along with being mostly non-competitive in the overall scope of the Big Ten (6-30), should be closer to being fixed.
Almost good enough will have to do, but for the restless IU faithful, almost good enough means two of the last four, or it’s no longer good enough, at all.
