The last year or so of Indiana basketball has been filled with its bad 24-hour periods. I’m not exactly sure where the last 24 hours falls for the majority of IU fans, but it’s probably in the Top 20 worst from my perspective.

Add it up: another phone call violation (even though it was “minor” and self-reported); my publishing of a regrettable post filled with overreactions and hyperbole that I had to edit later; and, just a little while ago, Indiana being completely non-competitive at home in a double-digit loss to Northwestern — the first IU loss to the Wildcats in Bloomington since 1968.

Damn.

Obviously today does not rival the worst days of Coach Snake’s final season in Bloomington, but the events of the last 24 hours have still been pretty discouraging.

But that is the last negative sentence I am going to write tonight. Instead, I am going to focus on one of the very few positive lights I can see shining through the dense and dreary fog of what is now the twilight of the 2008-09 season.

And that positive light is Indiana senior forward Kyle Taber.

Tonight, during the Hoosiers’ defeat at the hands of Northwestern, Kyle Taber scored a career-high 12 points, grabbed 6 rebounds, and blocked two shots while playing only 18 minutes because of foul trouble. Taber’s contributions tonight were solid, but not the most meaningful of his career; nothing for me tops his performance against Purdue last year when he scored 6 huge points, grabbed 5 rebounds, and had 2 assists plus a steal in an IU victory.

But the fact that Taber scored his single-game career high in the his second-to-last home game seems fitting. Kyle Taber is all about perseverance and improvement.

On Tuesday, March 3, Kyle Taber will take the floor of Assembly Hall as an Indiana basketball for the last time. He will do everything he can to help lead Indiana to an upset victory over the mighty Michigan State Spartans, and then he will participate in one of my all-time favorite Indiana traditions: the Senior Day speech. Kyle seems to be a man of few words, a guy who quietly goes about his business in a hard-working and diligent manner, so I don’t anticipate him talking very long.

However, what I do anticipate lasting very long — what I hope will last very long — is the standing ovation that Kyle Taber will receive from the Indiana faithful. I will not be there in person, but I will be standing and cheering from my spot in front of the TV (or computer, if I have to switch over to a radio feed to hear Kyle’s speech).

Kyle Taber is what Indiana basketball is all about. Check that — Kyle Taber is what Indiana basketball used to be about, and what we all hope that it will be about again under Tom Crean in the very near future.

As mentioned above, Kyle Taber has persevered and improved throughout his Indiana career. He has also achieved in the classroom, shown dedication to his team and school, and set a tremendous example for what a student-athlete should be about.

(By the way, the thought is occurring to me that I’d like to slap myself for wasting so much time last night writing that angry rant about the self-reported minor infraction. Sometimes in the daily to hourly search for story ideas, both bloggers and the mainstream media treat negative stories like bees treat honey, which is why guys like Kyle Taber don’t get more of the press and recognition they deserve.)

Consider the tumult that has enveloped Kyle Taber’s basketball career at Indiana. He walked-on as a Hoosier in 2005 during Mike Davis’ tenure after graduating from Evansville Central High School. Davis was later fired and replaced by the coach to whom I do not refer by name on Midwest Sports Fans. Once said coach was relieved of his duties for showing flippant disregard to the prestige and pride of the Cream & Crimson, Dan Dakick took over to end last season. Then Tom Crean became IU’s head coach before this season, the fourth head coach under whom Kyle Taber has played.

Before I go on, I do want to recognize our former coach who is now employed by the Milwaukee Bucks for one thing. In the Fall semester of last year, he awarded Kyle Taber a well-deserved scholarship. There is not much good that I or anyone can say about Kelvin Sampson, but I suppose he does deserve to at least be acknowledged by name one time for rewarding Kyle Taber for his contributions to IU basketball.

Throughout the five turbulent years that Kyle Taber has proudly donned the Cream & Crimson, he ostensibly has never lost sight of the most important reason why is attending Indiana University: to be a student.

Kyle was named Academic All-Big Ten as a freshman, as a sophomore, and as a junior; and I don’t doubt that he will make it a four-year sweep and be named Academic All-Big Ten yet against this year. For a program that became defined by academic problems in the aftermath of last season’s collapse, Kyle Taber stood tall as a 6’8, 220 pound vestige of what once was special about basketball players at Indiana Unversity but had become just a distant memory.

At the end of last season, Kyle Taber was named Indiana’s Most Improved Player. The honor was well deserved as Taber went from playing 14 combined minutes as a freshman and sophomore to playing 247 minutes for a team that many people thought at one point could challenge for a Final Four berth before collapsing. He started 4 games last season, shot almost 78% from the field (11-14) and grabbed 2.5 rebounds per game.

This season, Kyle Taber deserves to be named Indiana’s Most Improved Player again — and not just because he is one of only two returning players from last year. Taber has started all 27 games, and heading into tonight’s contest was averaging a career-high 4.2 points and 5.1 rebounds per game while playing 23.8 minutes per contest and shooting 50% from the field. All of those averages will receive a little bit of a bump when tonight’s stats are added in.

But in my opinion, Kyle Taber deserves more than to just be named Indiana’s Most Improved Player. Kyle Taber deserves to be named Indiana’s Most Valuable Player.

We all know that Kyle Taber is not the best player on this year’s team, and he certainly is nowhere near the most talented. He does not have the best stats, has not played the most minutes, and very well might lose to every other Hoosier but Tijan Jobe in a game of one-on-one. However, I cannot fathom an argument that could dissuade me from the thought that Kyle Taber is the Hoosier most deserving of being called the 2008-09 Most Valuable Player for IU.

Winning the Team MVP award would be a culmination of Kyle’s perseverence through five of the strangest and most trying seasons in Indiana basketball history. A Taber MVP would be a proclamation that Indiana basketball truly still does stand for character, integrity, hard work, improvement, dedication, academic achievement, and the perpetual placement of team above self.

Kyle should be named Indiana’s 2008-09 MVP not just because of a dearth of worthy candidates, but precisely because Taber is a worthy candidate in the truest sense of the phrase “most valuable.”

Tom Crean said from the beginning of this season that his goals were to build a foundation of accountability, heart, and work ethic. He knew, and we knew, that wins would be few and very far between. Unless we can walk away from this season knowing that we began laying the bricks for a return to Indiana’s foundation of excellence in each of these areas, then the 2008-09 season was a complete and utter failure.

I do not think this season was a failure by any metric other than the scoreboard. This team may not have won many games, but they have helped to develop the foundation of a program that will win again and win the right way. And there is no player who did more to help further the development of that foundation this season than Kyle Taber.

And all he did was continue doing what he’s done for his entire IU career.

Kyle Taber went from being a bench warming walk-on under Mike Davis, to the team’s most improved player under Coach What’s His Name, and now has become a legitimate Team MVP candidate under Tom Crean. Kyle Taber won’t show up in any IU record books, his number will not be retired, and he will never be considered among even the top 200 players to wear an Indiana uniform.

But if anybody ever asks for the personification of Indiana basketball, in my mind you can give them one name and sum up what it means to be a Hoosier: Kyle Taber.

Kyle helped us bridge the gap from a forgettable era of upheavel and destruction to the new era being fostered by Tom Crean that is aimed at delivering a return to a greatness. We may have begun this season with less experience than almost any other team in basketball history, but at least the experience we had provided a link in the form of Kyle Taber that allowed us to harken back to the good old days, while looking forward to the good new days that are forthcoming.

Presence and quiet leadership by example can absolutely provide significant value. Kyle Taber’s quiet leadership by example, in my opinion, was the most important presence on this year’s team. That’s why he deserves to be named IU’s Team MVP for 2008-09, and why he will forever go down as one of the truest Hoosiers in the great and proud history of IU basketball.