BLOOMINGTON - Welcome to today's hot topic amongst Cream and Crimson circles, which is how many Big Ten games will Indiana win this season?

That is quickly followed by the question, has a team ever gone winless in the Big Ten?

The short answer to the second question is, yes. The last winless Big Ten team was Northwestern, which went 0-16 in 2000. A cynic might point out that there are now 18 conference games, so has a team gone 0-18? Yes, Northwestern did it in 1991. The Wildcats earned those losses as opposed to Wisconsin in 1983 and 1984 and Minnesota in 1977, which forfeited all their league games because of NCAA issues.

Why the negativity, you ask. Because IU (5-7) opens Big Ten action Saturday at Iowa (10-4) with a three-game losing streak, the last two at home against mid-major lightweights, and the feeling is, if the Hoosiers can't beat Northeastern and Lipscomb at home, which Big Ten team can they beat? The Big Ten, after all, rivals the ACC for toughest-in-the-nation status. Indiana is one of the least experienced teams in the country.

Iowa, the next-least-experienced Big Ten team after IU, nearly upset Ohio State in Columbus on Wednesday, losing 68-65.

The worry is that IU faces its first last-place finish since 1970, when it went 3-11. Its worst-ever conference record is 0-10 in 1913.

In fact, with the exception of Indiana, all the other Big Ten teams are likely postseason tourney participants.

So how do the Hoosiers respond?

“We look forward to it,” freshman guard Verdell Jones says. “Our mind-set is to fear no one.”

Perhaps Jones is too young to fear, especially because he has yet to play in a Big Ten road game, although the disastrous trip to Kentucky was a pretty good indicator. Plus, he and the rest of the Hoosiers did plenty of winning at the high school and AAU levels.

“As a competitor, you don't expect to lose any games, and we're all competitors,” he said. “We lost some tough ones. Hopefully we can rebound.”

In fact, Jones said, playing such ranked teams as Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Gonzaga was great preparation for the Big Ten.

“For us to play, as young as we are, those tough games will help us down the road.”

Of course, winning those tough games would have helped more, but that was asking too much from this group. Growth, as coach Tom Crean has said, comes from adversity and experience and playing games.

It also comes from practicing so hard that blood is spilled. That happened Wednesday.

“You can talk about confidence,” Crean said. “We can talk and have team meetings and bring in Oprah and Dr. Phil, but we have to go through it. That's what the season is. Veteran teams can have a couple of bad practices and find a way. We don't have a team that can play its way through it.”

So the Hoosiers will try to play their way through Iowa, which is 8-0 at home and which holds opponents to just 55.6 points, second best in the Big Ten. They also play at Illinois (13-1) and at No. 24 Ohio State (10-1) in the next two weeks, a brutal conference-opening stretch in what looms for everyone as a brutal conference season.

“I thought before the season that this conference would have seven NCAA tourney teams,” Crean said. “This is great for college basketball and great for our area, but it will take us a lot of lessons to get there.”

Does this team have the maturity to overcome the adversity such lessons will require?

“If we start waiving where we are as coaches, if I'm not consistent, I give them license to do that,” Crean said. “They have no idea what that means at collegiate level. We're asking a lot of certain people. We have to help them get through this. Every experience has got to bring us something down the road.

“We have to make sure nobody gets discouraged. I'm not. I'll look for people who match the energy we put forth as coaches.”