Indiana men’s basketball is set for a pivotal senior night matchup, welcoming Minnesota to Assembly Hall for the Hoosiers’ final regular season home game.
The Hoosiers find themselves in March with their backs against the wall as their chances at an NCAA Tournament bid have plummeted with four consecutive losses. The Golden Gophers aren’t the metric-killing type of loss they were back in December, but any loss is bad for a team teetering on the very edge of the bubble right now.
Don’t let Minnesota run the clock on defense
There’s three former
Drake head coaches in the league and Darian DeVries is the only one who doesn’t run an absolutely glacial style of basketball. Few teams drag opponents later into the shot clock than Niko Medved’s Gophers, whose opponents average 19 seconds drained before an attempt.
Minnesota is able to beat teams like Indiana, Iowa, Michigan State and UCLA by shortening games and taking advantage of the fewer possessions. Indiana is built to run but hasn’t done so as much with a shorter bench and some mismatched personnel.
Attack passing lanes
The Hoosiers pass the ball a fair amount but the Gophers are at another level. No team in all of Division-I ranks higher in assist rate than Minnesota, with nearly three quarters of its field goals coming off of assists. Point guard Langston Reynolds stands out here with an assist rate of 29.8%, but the rest of the roster chips in.
Indiana doesn’t have the length and athleticism to really limit that but needs to stay disciplined because any amount of space can and will be exploited by the Gophers. The Hoosiers also lack a strong bench to stay fresh with all that movement in the halfcourt, so they can’t afford to let up any easy buckets.
Limit Cade Tyson
Tyson is the focal point of Minnesota’s offense and will be even more valuable with Jaylen Crocker-Johnson out. The Gophers have learned how to win without Crocker-Johnson, beating all of Oregon, Rutgers and UCLA without him.
Tyson was held under 20 points just once during that stretch and it was during the win over Oregon where his scoring wasn’t needed in a blowout. He scored 21 points in the win over UCLA, the Gophers’ last game.
It’ll likely be up to Tucker DeVries and Nick Dorn to handle Tyson, who played against some smaller lineups when Minnesota beat Indiana at home.
