BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — It's 3½ hours before tipoff on a windy, freezing day in Bloomington and the student-ticket line is already winding around Indiana's Assembly Hall.

Some come dressed in the basketball team's trademark candy-striped pants. Others wear their favorite T-shirt, "Crean and crimson." The early birds started arriving at 7 a.m. and are trying to stay warm drinking coffee, cuddling underneath warm blankets or wearing heavy jackets. Athletic director Fred Glass even hands out hot chocolate to the students, some of whom are skipping classes to get a front-row seat for the game.

No doubt about it, Hoosiers basketball is back. It even says so on another popular T-shirt around town.

"We're all about banners and we're gonna get one this year, our sixth," Indiana senior Drew Clayton shouts excitedly, referring to the five national championship banners hanging at the arena's south end.

Nobody close to the program is willing to make such a bold prediction yet.

But after enduring three straight losing seasons for only the third time in school history, the program's revival has certainly re-energized the campus.

This season, Indiana started 11-0 for the first time since Bob Knight's undefeated national champions did so in 1975-76. In December, the Hoosiers became the first Big Ten team in nearly six decades to upset the nation's top two teams, No. 1 Kentucky and No. 2 Ohio State. A 71-66 victory over Northwestern on Wednesday night gave the Hoosiers their first 20-win season since 2007-08 and, at the moment, Indiana looks like a lock to end its NCAA tournament drought, too.

Yes, the Hoosiers have come a long way since Kelvin Sampson's embarrassing phone-call scandal gutted the program and left it in tatters.

Indiana insists the tough lessons of rebuilding have made them not just better but also stronger.

The freshmen who started on Tom Crean's first two Indiana teams have matured into 1,000-point scorers and embraced their custom-made roles. They're playing like they have something to prove after going 6-25 and 10-21, and the fans who longed for a suitable heir to Knight for more than a decade now think they have found their man in the exuberant Crean.

"It's hard to put into words how far we've come," 3-point specialist Matt Roth said. "I think it's something we all knew we'd have to do when we came in, but it's been great to know we've been a part of something special here."

Roth and his fellow seniors never could have imagined how difficult this climb would be when they chose Indiana. Crean certainly didn't.

When he was hired as Indiana's coach on April 1, 2008, he knew the academic scores were low and the program was facing its first major NCAA scandal in half a century.

What he didn't realize was that he would be taking over a program that essentially was starting from scratch.

On the day he was hired, interim coach Dan Dakich booted two players — starting guards Jamarcus Ellis and Armon Bassett — off the team for skipping a team meeting and then not showing up to fulfill their punishments. Less than a week later, freshman Eric Gordon, the Hoosiers' top player, declared for the NBA draft.

By the time month his first month in Bloomington had ended, Crean had lost two prized recruits, Devin Ebanks to West Virginia and Terrell Holloway to Xavier; all but two of his returning players, both walk-ons; and had the campus police called to his new office because one of the players threw a tantrum.

So when the Hoosiers started winning this season, it made everything that much sweeter.

"I think the fact that we've had to live through the 20-plus losses the last couple of years and we owned them, make no mistake about it, we owned them," Crean said after beating Northwestern. "We've read about it, we heard about it, we heard about it from recruits who heard about it from other recruiters. So to get that (20 wins), it's a good benchmark for us and we're proud of it."

The fans have played their part, too.

When the national attention subsided and the losses started piling up in 2008, Hoosiers loyalists stuck around.

Despite winning only 28 games and going only 8-46 in Big Ten play over the previous three seasons, the Hoosiers never averaged fewer than 14,000 per game, enough to crack the nation's top 20 in attendance every year. The student section of 7,600 has been and remains the nation's largest.

This season's rapid rise has changed the whole atmosphere in Bloomington.

Following the upset of Kentucky, students rushed the floor — something unheard of during the Knight Era. Some Indiana players were hoisted into the air by fans, while others jumped on top of the scorer's table or rushed into the stands to find family and friends. Even athletic director Glass joined the festivities, and Crean and the players later called the celebration cool. There have been white-outs and striped sections, and Crean has lobbied for loud-outs, too.

And Glass acknowledges success has brought more money, through donations, into the athletic department, too.

Around campus, students are so excited they periodically break into chants of "Hoo, Hoo, Hoosiers" while walking from class to class, and of course with the student seating limited, fans are showing up early for every game with many wearing T-shirts that now read "We're Back."

"I think we need to be real careful about how we define being back because we have banners here," Glass said. "But when we beat Kentucky, and in very dramatic fashion, that was a big step toward being back."

The Hoosiers understand the distinction.

At Indiana, success is measured in Big Ten championships, Final Four appearances and national titles — not 20-win seasons, which were once the norm here and probably will become the norm soon.

It's a welcome change.

"There weren't a lot of people talking to us," senior Tom Pritchard said, reflecting on his freshman year. "We still worked hard and one of our big things was trying to get everyone back to IU. I know everyone's kind of jumped on the bandwagon a little bit, but hopefully they'll all come back to Indiana."

If the Hoosiers keep playing like this, there's not much need to worry.

"There was a student that came to a game three years ago, and they had a sign that said 'The greatest story ever told will be the return of Indiana basketball,'" Glass said. "I asked someone to take a picture of that. I had it framed and it hangs in my office and I had another one framed and it hangs in Tom's office. I'll tell you what, they're going to be right."