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Woodson challenged his team. And it responded with biggest win of year.
BLOOMINGTON – A little bit of a lot led to Indiana’s most important win of the season to date Saturday night. If Mike Woodson’s message gets through, the Hoosiers can make more from this, very soon.
Despite an ugly rebounding disparity and the damaging gap in second-chance points that resulted, IU finished a 71-65 win over Ohio State on Saturday that marked more than just a badly needed win. Malik Reneau’s 23 points, Xavier Johnson’s 18, CJ Gunn’s 10 — each told a separate story about a team still pulling itself together, one stacking a few precious bricks into that wall in defeating the Buckeyes (12-3, 2-2).
Because it wasn’t any one thing Indiana (11-4, 3-1) did to win this game that mattered. If anything, the most glaring number in the box score should probably have spelled defeat for the hosts. What IU did to log its first win over a likely NCAA tournament team this season was straightforward enough to be repeatable.
For a team that’s young in years and younger in years together, Saturday night was full of valuable building blocks.
Start with Gunn. The sophomore from Lawrence North looked like turning a corner with his performance off the bench in a December win at Michigan. He played 20 minutes that night and then just 64 across the next six games, including a scant six in the midweek loss in Lincoln.
Woodson was hard on his team at the end of the week in practice. He worked them like a coach who’d just seen his team allow 86 points while committing 19 turnovers in a non-competitive conference loss.
Gunn showed up in those practices. He worked hard. He met Woodson’s challenge. Woodson woke up Saturday intending to play Gunn more minutes as a result. The return he got — 24 minutes, 10 points, some crucial shots down the stretch — repaid that faith.
“His last few days of practice has been tremendous. I’m telling all these guys, you know, it’s how you practice, man, that carries over into a real basketball
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game,” Woodson said. “He deserved to play. I thought he responded.”
The performance mattered Saturday. The lesson should resonate across the course of the season.
So should Xavier Johnson’s words postgame.
“I’ve got to grow up,” he said, “and I grew up tonight. And I’ve got to keep growing up.”
A sixth-year senior captain said that. He was one of those players Woodson challenged after Nebraska. He criticized Johnson for a zero-point, four-turnover performance in his return from injury, the implicit suggestion being Woodson delivered Johnson some tough love in the days between Nebraska and Ohio State.
“Shoot,” Johnson said postgame Saturday, smiling, “that’s every day.”
Woodson’s point guard responded with 18 points, three rebounds, three assists and zero turnovers Saturday. He missed three of his 11 free throws — including one air ball Johnson was allowed by the result to playfully tweet about postgame — but his ability to force his way to the free-throw line is often a sign Johnson is playing with the energy, aggression and swagger that mark the best of his game.
Postgame Saturday, Woodson shouldered some of the blame for Johnson’s Nebraska performance. He was too careful with Johnson in practice, building him back slowly from a lower-leg injury and leaving Johnson rusty ahead of his return at Nebraska.
At shootaround before Ohio State, Woodson pulled Johnson aside and told him he was going to take the handcuffs off. In the locker room afterward, Woodson handed out two game balls — one to Gunn, and one to Johnson.
“I thought he was huge tonight,” Woodson said of Johnson, who played 34 minutes.
And both players did their work in the shadow of the one Hoosier who might have deserved just as much distinction, if not more.
Malik Reneau has emerged as more than just his team’s leading scorer. Striding confidently into the minutes and the role left by Trayce Jackson-Davis’ departure, he has become a similar sort of anchor for his team. Through his passing, his burgeoning 3-point threat, his expanding arsenal of post moves and his in-traffic toughness, Reneau has become the cornerstone of this team at precisely the right time.
No player controlled or affected the game Saturday like the sophomore forward who finished with a game-high 23 points. Woodson complimented Ohio State’s bigs for the Buckeyes’ offensiverebounding advantage postgame, but they will have been too worn out by Woodson’s star post player for the kind words to land.
“This summer, you know, he put a lot of work in,” Woodson said. “Never really left campus. Got his weight down. The baby fat that he had last year has trimmed down. You’ve just got to tip your hat to him.”
Chris Holtmann should have. This was the third time in his past four games Reneau broke 20 points scoring. He still enjoys the highest assist rate on the team, and he’s the Hoosiers’ most dangerous 3-point shooter as well.
Reneau has become the sun around which Indiana orbits. He looks capable of shouldering that considerable load through the balance of Big Ten play.
So, that’s how Indiana won. Ohio State showed up with shooters and shot terribly. It rolled out scorers and stopped scoring.
Woodson even pivoted to smaller lineups in the second half, playing Anthony Walker more minutes at the four and shifting between Reneau and Kel’el Ware at the five. It worked wonders, Ohio State scoring just 0.77 points per possession in the second half, as opposed to 1.15 in the first.
Indiana should hold onto that lineup. It should try to deepen the impact of that rotation. It should look at the way it played Saturday night — from start to finish, when it went down nine early in the second half, when it went up 10 late, when Ohio State pulled it back to two and IU closed — and consider the truth that there was nothing remarkable or gimmicky about the way the Hoosiers won this game.
They made some mistakes. Not all their flaws were absent, nor are they all going to disappear between now and March.
But when Indiana needed a win and a response in the same performance on the same night, the Hoosiers delivered together. Their coach challenged them in practice, and they rose to meet his demand. In so doing, they logged the biggest win of their season to date.
Nothing about what IU managed Saturday was remarkable, which makes it all the more important. This is repeatable. For the first time, for this team, this season, we saw what winning basketball looks like.
The Hoosiers would do well to hang onto that.