dear god
The ugly losses in the 2023-24 season continue to pile up for the Indiana Hoosiers, who dropped their third straight. The team looks broken, through and through, with five games remaining before the Big Ten Tournament, which could start early for Indiana.
The freshman point guard looked like a freshman point guard against one of the most electrifying players in the conference, Keisei Tominaga, who made more 3-pointers than Indiana did as a team.
As we head into the tail end of the season, Indiana looks like a team that lacks confidence, lacks an identity, and lacks answers for anyone on the schedule. More ugly losses may be in store.
At the end of the day, the effort was again admirable, but not enough to beat a Nebraska team that had failed to win on the road in conference play until tonight.
Here are Three Observations:
Mackenzie Mgbako
Starting on a positive note, bet you didn’t expect that.
Seriously though, with how many things have gone wrong for Indiana recently, it would be easy to look just how well Mackenzie Mgbako has played over the last two games. He’s set a career-high in scoring in consecutive games now, going for 22 tonight and 20 against Northwestern.
Alongside the development of Kel’el Ware and Malik Reneau this year, Mgabko’s play has been one of the lone brightspots for Indiana this year. His slow start to the season had him written off as an NBA prospect, but he’s started to look the part of a top 15 recruit.
Two things about his game tonight stood out to me, one being that he found multiple ways to score when his 3-point shot wasn’t falling. More significant to me, though, is that he kept shooting.
With most of Indiana apparently suffering a confidence crisis, it’s refreshing to see Mgbako still taking his open looks and remaining calm at the free throw line, where he went 6-7. He’s shot well enough this season that I trust the threes to start falling again soon.
The Three Guard Lineup
With the way Nebraska was shooting in the first half, Mike Woodson was forced to go to a three guard lineup to try to control the bleeding. It worked on the defensive end, momentarily slowing the Huskers offense, but that’s only half the game.
However badly we want to see it going forward, this roster is not built for that. There are five healthy scholarship guards and only one, Trey Galloway, averages over five points per game.
Things got so out of hand so fast because Nebraska went 9-19 (47.4%) from 3-point range in the first half while Indiana went 1-11 (9.1%). As every opponent has been able to this year, Nebraska packed the paint and dared Indiana’s guards to make shots.
They did not make the shots.
The exception to this was C.J. Gunn’s back-to-back makes in the second half, which immediately brought the Indiana within five points. His six points on those two possessions matched the point total of the entire backcourt in 49 minutes on the court in the first half.
It’s hard to overstate how different this team would look if it could get anything consistent from its guards on offense, it just hasn’t happened yet this year.
A Million Paper Cuts
Indiana lost again today because, again, it made too many mistakes to win against a Big Ten team. Some of these are familiar, some of these are signs of a team quickly losing confidence.
First and foremost, Indiana is better than a 19% 3-point shooting, which is what it turned in tonight. Guys are missing shots they usually make, which extends to the free throw line, where Indiana struggled again.
Some of this can be attributed to roster construction. Trey Galloway and Kel’el Ware look tired because of how much they are being asked to do to keep Indiana competitive.
Galloway is not a point guard, and spending 39 minutes in the game defending the team’s best guards will inevitably lead to lopsided stats like six turnovers. The same goes for Ware’s struggles at the line. He’s not a guy who has seen this many minutes so regularly.
Malik Reneau appeared to return to form, avoiding fouling out and scoring 15 points, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with Nebraska’s 3-point barrage. This is not a team built to comeback from 20 point halftime deficits and its frankly impressive that they even made it interesting for points of the second half.
As a team, Nebraska had more to play for, and it showed. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but that’s going to be the case for a lot of games going forward this year.