The Hoosiers are set to take on the Gamecocks in Assembly Hall.
Indiana men’s basketball is set to welcome South Carolina to Assembly Hall for a 3:00 p.m. showdown on Saturday.
It’s the biggest nonconference home game for Indiana this season and curiously comes without a return trip to Columbia. For an arena that’s spent the past two years hosting the likes of North Carolina and Kansas, it’s definitely a different flavor.
This game is also a decently important one. Indiana has plenty to prove this season with Mike Woodson looking for a bounce back performance after last season’s disappointment and Lamont Paris trying to show that South Carolina is more like the team that contended for the SEC last year rather than the one that fell to North Florida to open the season.
Here’s three things to know about the matchup:
Tempo
The Gamecocks are slowwwww.
South Carolina uses up just about all the time it can on both ends of the floor, a staple of Paris’ tenure. They come in at 313th nationally in adjusted tempo with 68.4 and have an average offensive possession length 17.2 seconds.
Indiana, on the other hand, tries to score pretty quickly. The Hoosiers rank in the top half of the country in adjusted tempo with 71.6 and tend to keep their offensive possessions around just 14.5 seconds, which comes in at 14th nationally.
This is nothing Indiana hasn’t seen before. The Big Ten is one of if not the slowest conference in college basketball. Teams like Purdue, Northwestern, Wisconsin and Michigan State have generally been slow. Some not quite at South Carolina’s rate, but still.
The only wrinkle is that Indiana, like South Carolina, also tends to take teams pretty deep into the shot clock. That’s been the case for Woodson’s defenses in all three of his full seasons at the helm of the program and hasn’t changed this year.
Controlling the game will be absolutely key for Indiana. It cannot let South Carolina get comfortable slowing things down. Play sound defensive possessions and let Myles Rice and Trey Galloway push the pace to knock the Gamecocks off balance.
Regarding that loss to North Florida
The stakes for this game took a fairly early tumble when South Carolina fell to North Florida at home to open the season.
It was a close loss, but sent the Gamecocks tumbling from 67th to 83rd in KenPom. Now they sit at 62nd after convincing wins over South Carolina State and Towson.
And well, maybe North Florida is… fine? Not necessarily saying that’s an acceptable loss for a high major to sustain, but the Ospreys have jumped from 253rd to 138th in KenPom after knocking off Georgia Tech as well. That loss isn’t aging terribly. Still bad! Just not horribly awful.
South Carolina is a defensive team and has limited its last two opponents to 64 and 54 points. Nothing jumps off the scouting report stats-wise, but it’s a solid unit all around.
Meanwhile, Indiana has scored 80 and 90 points through two games. The offense has definitely been there and the defense is coming along. These Hoosiers are still pretty dependent on 2s, hitting 65.9% of their attempts from inside the arc.
If the Gamecocks pack the paint, there’s gotta be an answer on the outside. Mackenzie Mgbako, Luke Goode, Kanaan Carlyle and others are gonna have to knock down their 3s if the Gamecocks limit Indiana’s frontcourt.
Who to watch
Indiana’s going to need an answer for Collin Murray-Boyles.
The sophomore forward has been South Carolina’s go-to option on offense so far, using up 29.4% of the Gamecocks’ possessions and he’s only scoring more as the season goes on with 17 points against North Florida, 19 against South Carolina State and 27 against Towson.
Indiana’s gonna have better defenders than any of those teams, but Murray-Boyles was solid in the SEC last year. He was typically good for a double-digit outing in the box score, but had a few games where he’d disappear offensively.
He does his work in the paint, either posting up or in the pick and roll. Oumar Ballo, Malik Reneau, Mgbako and Langdon Hatton are going to need to be ready and careful to defend him without fouling. He’s shooting 73.9 from the charity stripe but Ballo, Reneau and Mgbako are too valuable offensively to spend time on the bench in foul trouble.