Sometimes, when things hit rock bottom, you just want to get away.  Fly to Hawaii and just forget about your troubles.  This is a timeless strategy - the escape to paradise when your real world is crumbling down around you - although if you are in a comical theatrical release, the very thing you're escaping will be in the same resort on the same tropical isle!  Irony!  In the case of Irish fans, we're trying to get away not from the incredibly beautiful and talented Kristen Bell, but instead, our old flame, Heartbreaking Disappointment.  Granted, the Irish can go 0-3 over the next three days and still easily be in contention for a spot in the tournament, but with an in-state rival and two top ten teams to measure themselves against, all Notre Dame fans are looking to Forget Greg Robinson and move onto something a little more happy (Mila Kunis, if you will.)  Throw in Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Kenneth The Page and a vampire puppet musical and you, my friend, have yourself an entertaining winter comedy and a potential cure for what ails Notre Dame fans.

The first challenge for Notre Dame in the Maui Invitational, where they could eventually face off against teams that went to the Elite Eight and Final Four last season, is the Indiana Hoosiers.  Everyone you know from the Hoosiers is gone (D.J. White and Eric Gordon's gorgeous jumper have moved onto the NBA), and their new head coach is an old friend, Marquette's Tom Crean.  No coach sulks and struts his way up and down the sideline like Crean, so it will be nice to get some good ol' fashioned hate built up toward an opposing coach this early.

Crean's team is very, very young and not expected to do much this year.  In the preseason Big Ten polls, the coaches put Indiana eighth, the media seventh.  They're 2-0 on the young season, knocking off Northwestern State and surviving a couple of late three attempts from IUPUI.  Freshman forward Tom Pritchard appears to have assumed the mantle of leadership early on, averaging sixteen, ten and a block and a half, while Devan Dumes adds fifteen points per game scoring from the outside.  Looking at the statistical leaders from last season versus this season is jarring after graduation, transfer and dismissals from the team; they are completely different teams, Crean trying to mold a totally new group of players into Big Ten champs of the future. 

The early line on this game is Notre Dame by seventeen, but I've watched enough Maui Invitationals to know that once you get crammed inside that tiny gym, with the humidity cranked up and the crowd ready to get behind an underdog, anything can happen.  Let's hope that Mike Brey's custom-designed floral print mock turtleneck came in so he's at least comfortable roaming the sidelines.

Choose wisely, Coach Brey.

Tip-off is 5:30ish on ESPN2.  There'll be an open thread up here to follow the action.