Defense tends to allow for a more predictable outcome which I think IU fans are now showing they enjoy more. To this point this year, IU has been chaotic at times and my hope is that its wrangled in. I've seen Crean teams eliminate mistakes as the season goes on but without a decent defense, those mistakes stick out like sore thumb.
If our positive is offense and we are giving away possessions, it would be no different than a good defensive team giving up a large FT advantage to the other team. That tends to hurt them. One could even say, if you're turnover prone then how good of an offense are you truly? I think once the team discovers how much they need to value each possession they could do better but so far it's not been good since UNC. Essentially, we are just a good shooting team. With our rebounding capabilities, it takes being atrocious at defense and turning over the ball like we do on offense to have the results we've been providing.