It is unknown who coined the phrase “Patience is a virtue.”

Whoever he or she was must not have been a college sports fan, or if they were, it must have drove their college sports buddies up a wall.

Indiana University’s fan base has been described as several things: passionate, loud, faithful; but one quality is often overlooked: patient.

In this “what have you done for me lately” sports world, that word is rarely heard, especially in the college setting. This is not the pros, where the whole state of Indiana had the Indianapolis Colts’ back heading into the playoffs.

It’s a cutthroat business where coaches and recruits are everything. Indiana alone is divided amongst Division-1 programs like IU, Purdue, Notre Dame and Butler are all fighting for the same blue chips coming out of high school.

Every school wants an edge; nobody is going quietly into the night.

So for Hoosier Nation to watch patiently while the basketball program is defibrillated and essentially brought back to life, needless to say quite a few fingernails have been lost from all the biting.

Indiana University’s main goal is to graduate fine young students who will make an impact in today’s struggling economy, but one intangible it probably did not plan on inserting was the fact all Hoosier basketball fans will make excellent husbands, wives, and parents one day. The amount of patience learned over the course of this whole rebuilding process is uncanny, not to mention the football team is also warming up the AED paddles.

Each student will practically have a minor in Patience by the time they graduate. Marriage and parenting will seem like a walk in the park at that point.

This is not any type of criticism, just an observation. Everybody knows Tom Crean is doing exactly what he said he’d do; anyone doubting it just needs to log on to scout.com and count the number of stars each recruit has next to his name. Five is a pretty common number.

Students, fans, and alums love everything about this university, and like good parents they will be as understanding and as loving as need be.

It’s just our human nature that takes over sometimes. We all want to do well; waiting is nobody’s best quality.

Going into this season, hopes were beginning to grow. The first heralded recruiting class under Crean had already been through its first season. With an entire summer of watching film and building chemistry, everybody held their breath waiting for what the season held.

The first six games brought the sun out from behind the clouds. Games against smaller competition started to raise the confidence level. Double-digit turnovers and uneven play in the first half of games were masked by dominating second halves. IU wasn’t beating the smaller teams, it was blowing them out.

Suddenly a Big Ten/ACC Challenge game against a Boston College team with a loss to Yale and an annual game with a much-less-hyped Kentucky team looked winnable.

However, a sloppy first half and terrific run in the second half weren’t enough to overcome the Golden Eagles in Boston, while a lights-out first half followed by an ice-cold second half left the Hoosiers down by 19 in Lexington. Had the rim been a part of a pinball machine in the second half, the team would have shattered records.

If that wasn’t enough to notice the writing on the wall, losses to Northern Iowa and Colorado in Las Vegas highlighted and underlined it for us.

That writing spelled out YOUTH. Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how young this team really is. The depth only reaches a sophomore level.

Most players walk in as freshmen and are shown how to continue building and structuring the program by their upperclassman teammates. Last year’s freshmen were handed the tools and told to build their own program.

This year’s sophomores are this year’s seniors. Next year’s juniors are next year’s seniors. The team’s fortunes go where they go.

The Big Ten is a stacked league, able to spar with any conference in the country. It’s not full of freshmen jumping to the pro leagues after this year, its experience and depth putting it at the top. After an 0-4 start in Big Ten season, looking at the rest of the schedule without cringing is about as easy as getting accepted to med school.

These players are still young kids learning how to ride a bike. Only they don’t have older brothers showing them how, they are learning to ride it themselves.

And like good parents, the fan base will help them all they can. The team has already experienced its share of bumps, cuts, and bruises; and without question, more bumps and bruises are sure to follow. Like any great mom or dad does, fans will keep helping them up.

Any inner frustration comes from wanting to see our team do well; we want to see their efforts pay off because we see how hard they’re working. Seeing them hold that bike up by themselves will be well worth the wait.

Tom Petty said it best: The waiting is the hardest part. It’s almost a sure thing he wrote that song while his favorite college team was going through a rebuilding process.