The Hoosiers have more issues than youth.
Indiana’s 2023-24 season is all but over. The conversation around the current team has given way to one about the program as a whole and its future.
Because right now, it’s heading nowhere fast.
One of the reasons for optimism, or at the very least intrigue, for this season was a comment Woodson made over the summer. He’d never run an offense through the post before Trayce Jackson-Davis and was looking to run a different style this year.
Instead, fans have seen more of the same: relying on one of two bigs to get position in the post and get the ball to the rim with size or length. Indiana doesn’t run much action to get shooters open or opportunities from the perimeter, instead relying on kickouts (that don’t fall).
Then, on the other end, the Hoosiers leave shooters open one pass away due to overhelping and get burned from deep. Those shots are going to fall eventually, Indiana only got by against Ohio State at home thanks to a ton of wide-open misses.
Worse of all, given the circumstances? This looks familiar:
A decent amount of Indiana’s issues on both ends of the court resemble the ones that put an end to Mike Woodson’s time with the Knicks. He’s still running some of the same things that lost him a head coaching job in the NBA a decade later.
Here are a few key stats from that final season in New York:
Offensive rating: 108.3 (11th) | Defensive rating: 109.1 (24th)
Rebounds/game: 40.3 (27th) | Defensive rebounds/game: 29.7 (27th)
Now, let’s go through Indiana’s issues.
3-point shooting
Indiana isn’t just one of the worst shooting teams in the Big Ten, it’s one of the worst in the entire country.
That made more sense during Woodson’s first two years when he inherited much of a bad shooting roster. Now the problem has been baked in without reliable shotmakers in the backcourt and a lack of action to get what few shooters have been rostered open.
Here’s where the Hoosiers’ 3PA/FGA ranks in each of his three seasons:
- 2021-22: 321st
- 2022-23: 354th
- 2023-24: 348th
For reference, Indiana finished at 291st during Archie Miller’s final season. The ranking went down after adding Miller Kopp (36.1%), and starting Parker Stewart (39.3%), so the starting lineup had two reliable options from deep.
Those two had “limited roles” per KenPom, each being used in about 13% of Indiana’s possessions on the year.
Of the 12 scholarship players on Indiana’s 2023-24 roster, 10 were added by Woodson either through the transfer portal or high school ranks. Just Trey Galloway and Anthony Leal are holdovers from the Miller era with an asterisk around C.J. Gunn, who committed under Miller but signed under Woodson.
Indiana simply hasn’t added enough shooting or gotten open shots for the shooters it has had. Kopp, Woodson’s most reliable shooter thus far, was used on just 10.9% of Indiana’s possessions last year.
It’s not modern basketball and is part of the reason Indiana is getting blown out on a consistent basis. The Hoosiers just don’t have the shooting to counter the clip of their opponents.
Speaking of which…
3-point defense
Indiana’s issues defending the arc look exactly like Woodson’s Knicks teams. Like, identical.
Both the Hoosiers and those Knicks have been guilty of helping in the paint, leaving a shooter open just a pass away. This nearly lost multiple buy games for Indiana as mid-majors realized all they needed to do was that to get hot from deep.
Ten years apart. Same defensive breakdown that is easy enough to exploit regardless of a team’s personnel. Any team that has shooters (which, it’s 2024, most do) can and will leverage this.
Now combine this with low 3-point volume and low percentage and you have a recipe for a blowout loss. And the past three years have seen plenty of those for Indiana.
Two bigs on the floor
Indiana has stuck with the two big approach despite the departures of Trayce Jackson-Davis and Race Thompson. It’s a fine personnel package like fifteen years ago, but it’s a bit dated now with an emphasis on space and 3s.
And the benefit of being that tall is rebounding… right? Not for Indiana.
The Hoosiers haven’t been a particularly good rebounding team the past three years, but this year’s squad has been worse. Their offensive rebounding percentage of 27.4% comes in at 238th overall nationally.
You can sacrifice shooting for size, but that has to make sense and make up for that deficit. For Indiana, it doesn’t.
It clogs up the lane and keeps Indiana’s ballhandlers, at this point just Trey Galloway, from being able to drive to the rim because he has to get through so many bodies in the lane. And then the shooting woes become a bigger problem when teams just blitz a post-up and force a kickout.
It’s a vicious snowball effect that stacks the odds against Indiana. Everything has to be going right to pull out a win, including things out of the Hoosiers’ control.
So what?
Again, concerns about this year’s team have been turned into questions about the direction of the program as a whole. These were and continue to be preventable issues, but here we are.
And, as stated above, much of them are simply the same old issues that have been around for at minimum ten years in Woodson’s case. If Indiana runs out this kind of system again next year, even with better talent through the portal, all of the weaknesses of the previous years will still be present.
In order to secure a longer future in Bloomington, Mike Woodson is going to have to make some changes. These issues can’t stick.