Well,
Indiana men’s basketball wrapped up its non-conference schedule today with a sleepy Sunday afternoon tip against Winthrop in Assembly Hall.
With such an inferior opponent in town, Indiana didn’t have much to prove, and unfortunately played like it. With under four minutes to play in the game, Indiana led by just one point after failing to put the Eagles away for the first 35 minutes of the game.
The Hoosiers were without Oumar Ballo, but his absence doesn’t fully explain why Indiana let Winthrop stick around for way too long on Sunday. Missed shots, foul trouble, and an overall lack of offensive identity have plagued Indiana even with Ballo in the lineup.
Hosting Winthrop didn’t give Indiana much of an opportunity to impress anyone, and the team still managed to underperform expectations. Not what you’d want to see in the last game before 18 straight Big Ten contests.
Here are Three things we learned:
Shooting
Indiana going 1 of 20 from deep, statistical anomaly that it is, almost singlehandedly explains why Indiana wasn’t able to win by the margin that Kenpom or Vegas had them favored by.
Had they hit even 30% of those shots – the team’s new season average after this abysmal performance – the Hoosiers would have won by 26 points.
While it’s far from Indiana’s first poor shooting performance on the season, I’m still not concerned that this will be a longterm issue. As opposed to the last time the Hoosiers had a bad shooting night from deep, I liked who was taking the shots and the shot selection.
Going forward, I’d like to see at least five attempts from Mackenzie Mgbako and Luke Goode. As long as the shots are as open as they were tonight, they’ll start to fall.
Myles Rice
One of the reasons Mgbako and Goode had so many open looks was Myles Rice’s ability to get Winthrop’s defense on its heels with his speed and penetration ability. With 18 points and three assists, he looked like the guard that Indiana thought it was getting from the portal.
Indiana still played two bigs for portions of the game with 26 minutes from Langdon Hatton, but Rice appeared to benefit from the space left by Ballo’s absence today. With the post open more frequently, Rice was able to go straight to the basket for easy layups.
Ballo has been one of Indiana’s most reliable offensive weapons this year, but it may be worth considering how keeping him off the floor for stretches could help open things up for Rice, who has struggled to score with the consistency Indiana needs this year.
Expectations
A few weeks back, I wondered what the expectations would be for Indiana after falling out of the AP Top 25 on the heels of two losses in The Bahamas. Now I can confidently state that they are much lower.
Blowout wins against Miami Ohio and Minnesota temporarily eased fears, but a loss in Lincoln and two underwhelming wins in the last two non-con games have lowered Indiana’s Kenpom ranking in three consecutive games.
This is not a team that is entering Big Ten play with any momentum or discernible offensive identity. Kanaan Carlyle’s role remains pretty unclear and guys like Rice, Mgbako, Goode and Bryson Tucker have struggled with consistency over these first 13 games.
As a whole, I can’t say I’m excited for what the next 18 plus games hold. If things don’t turn around fast, there may not be more than 19 or 20 games left in the season.