For the second consecutive game, Indiana men’s basketball has given its fanbase plenty of questions in spite of a win.
A 73-53 win over Lindenwood looks perfectly fine if you’re just looking at the score. Then you have to consider that Indiana was favored by 30+, Lindenwood is far and away one of the worst teams in the country, it’s a program that recently made the move up to NCAA Division-I and, last but not least, the Lions outrebounded the Hoosiers 48-44.
This would be one thing if it was a weird
one-off, it’s another because Indiana is coming off of the aforementioned 69-61 win over an overmatched Incarnate Word team. That game was close because of 3-point shooting woes, this one was “close” for a few other reasons.
Indiana started the season with three straight performances that gave its restless fanbase whiplash given the sudden shift in style. The Hoosiers had re-embraced the 3-point shot after a decade of offenses stuck in the sport’s stone age and used it to score 98, 100 and 101 points across their first three matchups.
One of those games was against Marquette, a program led by one of the sport’s best defensive coaches in Shaka Smart. That wasn’t nothing. Which is why 69 and 73 points against vastly inferior competition is so head scratching.
I hate to fall back on an old cliche, but some of this performance comes down to playing hard. Indiana looked flat at times, especially in the first half. Effort’s hard to judge from the broadcast camera view, so I wouldn’t bring it up if the players themselves hadn’t said the effort wasn’t there in the postgame press conference.
This too comes back to shots not falling. When Indiana was lighting teams up from deep early, it was a lot easier to keep flying around on defense. When those shots clang off the rim they become transition opportunities that are harder to defend when heads are hung low after a miss.
Indiana has to play through that. The coaches know that and the players are old enough to know as well.
For now, it’s not worth forming any sort of long-term outlook on this team, just as much as it wasn’t when it was shooting out of its collective mind to open the season. It’s probably good, at some level, that shots ran cold now so it can be a learning experience against inferior competition rather than a thorn in the side against a team that’d look great in the win column of a tournament resume.
Let the team grow for now, worry later.
