Photo courtesy of IU Athletics

Indiana took the Assembly Hall floor on Sunday night for the most important game of the season, and one of the more meaningful games of the Tom Crean era.

This year’s Butler team is not the squad that has reached back-to-back National Title games – Gordon Hayward, Shelvin Mack and Matt Howard are all gone, and the Bulldogs are now trying to raise a young stable of talent in their place.

Regardless, Butler has clearly been the best team in the state the past two years, something that irks hopeful Hoosier fans to no end.

The Bulldogs’ young coach Brad Stevens has been widely speculated to be a prospective candidate for the Indiana coaching job if Crean’s great rebuild fails.

In a less macro sense, Butler was the first perceived test for the Hoosiers. A home setback against a team that failed to beat Evansville and struggled to beat teams that IU blew out would have been a major holdup for both fan perception and team confidence.

For all reasons mentioned above, there was plenty of pressure on the team to perform well on Sunday night and for a while, it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

Indiana’s offense was dismal in the first half, as IU shot 32% from the floor – making only three shots inside the arc – turned the ball over eight times and didn’t have a single player reach double figures.

But during that first half, there were positives to glean as well.

The Hoosiers held Butler to nearly as poor of a percentage from the floor, a worse percentage from beyond the arc (37% and 20% to 50% respectively) and also forced the Bulldogs to commit 10 turnovers of their own.

Indiana continued that defensive effort in the second half, forcing 21 total turnovers and limiting Butler to 38% shooting and 59 total points.

Crean mentioned the defensive intensity after the game and pointed to it as a primary reason the Hoosiers were successful.

“I was blown away by our defensive effort,” he said. “I’ve never been a part of a team that has had 74 deflections as a head coach or an assistant… the effort and intensity, to never lose the lead even when they were making shots (was big).”

The deflection stat that Crean and his staff keeps is made up of any ball that’s not a rebound, including a tipped pass a blocked shot, a charge or any other hustle play that’s not a shot off of the rim. It’s indicative of effort and hard work more than some other kept stats and, according to Crean, really told the story of the game.

“To go ten minutes or so without a field goal and to never relinquish the lead says a lot about the way our guys are playing,” said Crean. “There are good moments to look at as maturity moments because we never lost the lead and maybe that wouldn’t have happened in the past. I told them ‘I think you got better in the game, but I know you got tougher in the game’ and that’s a big deal.”

The defensive toughness and tenacity was even more impressive considering that it wasn’t always commonplace last year particularly during the Big Ten season.

Struggling on offense the way IU did early would have been a harbinger of lackluster defensive effort a year ago, and that wasn’t the case against Butler. If anything, Indiana’s defensive intensity increased as a result of its offensive woes, which was a positive sign and wasn’t something that I saw at any point last season.

The offense did find its way eventually though, thanks largely to the play of Cody Zeller, Will Sheehey and Victor Oladipo.

[Related: Sheehey shines in win over Butler by Cody Sharrett]

Those three helped mitigate the team’s shooting struggles by combining for 26 trips to the free-throw line and 21 made free throws. After leading by only three at the half, Indiana managed to pull away – first by creating offense with their defense, and then by leaning on Will Sheehey, who set a new career high with 21 of Indiana’s 75 points.

Cody Zeller contributed 16 points and eight rebounds, Jordan Hulls put in 14 points of his own and Oladipo chipped in 10 points and seven boards.

With their production, it mattered a lot less that Christian Watford and Verdell Jones III were largely ineffective.

A year ago, this team could not have gotten by without production from one or both of them, and that they are now is a sure sign of burgeoning maturity and an increase in the talent level.

We still haven’t seen this Indiana team fire on all cylinders yet this season, but with strong defensive play and a balanced scoring attack, they’ve been good enough to beat all comers and beat them handily.

On Sunday night, they played ‘Butler basketball’ and beat the Bulldogs at their own game. That can’t be anything but promising.

We won’t know for sure how this team will respond to the test that North Carolina State represents until they play (and I remain cautious due to lack of successful experience on the road) but the Hoosiers have answered all of my questions and then some up to this point.

If they keep up what looks to be a positive trend – hard-nosed defense and a balanced offensive attack – IU basketball could very well continue to exceed expectations.

[Related: Sounds of Assembly Hall by Joshua Bowles]