IU is flawed, tired, talented, capable
BLOOMINGTON, Ind.— What was so jarring about the Iowa no-show Feb. 28 was what Indiana deserved greatest credit for in its next game.
A team and a program so prone to collapsing in the previous five years learned how not to this winter. On one hand, you could count the number of times these Hoosiers have gone down and stayed down. But Iowa was among that number, a raging obliteration of a loss just days after the kind of win so impressive it lent the suggestion IU might finally be seizing control of its destiny and steering it in the direction it chose.
If it matters how a team falls down, then it matters how a team gets back up again.
These Hoosiers are flawed and tired and talented and capable. As the postseason arrives, they might be the best standard bearer for a Big Ten that’s much the same. Do they have one last push? We’re about to find out.
They needed more than 40 minutes to knock off Michigan, finally, off the bubble March 5, a 75-73 overtime win for the hosts that was Indiana’s first senior-day victory in four years. But it was nonetheless a win, one that required both steel and skill. As we wonder what the No. 17 Hoosiers (21-10, 12-8) might be capable of this month, and whether the demands of a taxing conference season have exacted too great a toll, it’s worth remembering they turned up with enough of each March 5 to ensure themselves a season sweep of Michigan, a double bye and likely a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
“They’ve got a lot of fight in them,” IU coach Mike Woodson said.
What else is a fair question, but this was the exact way to buttress the defeat against Iowa that would seem the disproving evidence to Woodson’s claim.
The Hoosiers began the game locking up Hunter Dickinson, Kobe Bufkin and Jett Howard, squeezing Michigan’s offense like a python constricts its prey. Michigan scored just 13 points in the game’s first 151⁄2 minutes, Indiana opening a 14-point lead.
Then that squeeze subsided. Bufkin hit tough shots. Dickinson rose to meet Trayce Jackson-Davis’ considerable level. Foul trouble put the Hoosiers on their heels and let Howard loose for 3 after 3.
Across a stretch of roughly 12 minutes either side of halftime, Michigan (17-14, 11-9) burst past its host, outscoring IU 4115 to flip the Hoosiers’ lead into a 54-42 Wolverine advantage.
“You know,” Woodson said, “I didn’t know how we would respond after the Iowa game, and I thought we came out, defensively, we were as good as we’ve been all year and then right before the half, they made I think a 10-0 run that cut our lead to two, and you know, kind of knocked us for a loop a little bit.
“We came back the second half and they were clicking on all cylinders, man. We just kept grinding.”
This has been one of the Hoosiers’ defining characteristics this season. For better or worse, with the exception of Kansas and possibly Penn State, until last week we’d seen Indiana play poorly but never genuinely collapse. Never just run out of ideas and roll over.
Then Iowa happened, and we were left to question not just IU’s physical
standing – the league should reconsider its 20-game schedule for competitive reasons but won’t for television reasons — but the Hoosiers’ mental state.
Was this team ready for the business end of the season? Had the getting here, with injury issues and a shrinking bench, exacted too great a toll?
The injuries. Fans don’t like to talk about them most of the time. Opposing fans certainly don’t. The reality is that Indiana’s top four players coming into this season were Xavier Johnson, Race Thompson, Jalen Hood-Schifino and Trayce Jackson-Davis. Those four players have not completed a game together, all available and at strength, since November. They have not played one Big Ten game together, and yet Indiana will (against what KenPom rates the fourthtoughest Big Ten schedule) finish third in the league.
That finish, again, speaks to a certain mettle this team claims that other recent versions flatly have not.
Woodson was right: The Hoosiers do have a lot of fight in them.
But the manner and means of the Michigan win raises the question of how much.
Jackson-Davis was once again excellent. He scored a game-high 27 points, pulled in nine rebounds and handed out six assists. He will finish this season an unfair second in the Big Ten player-ofthe-year vote, not because Zach Edey isn’t deserving of first but because it’s been a long time since the conference has seen two such dominant players exerting that dominance to this level in the same season.
He also played 44 minutes, and whether he will admit it or not IU’s outgoing senior looks tired. So do teammates who are holding the line on what is now essentially a seven-man rotation, IU’s bench thinned considerably.
The Hoosiers head to the Big Ten Tournament this week knowing every game is among their last together. Two more losses will see the end of JacksonDavis’ legendary career, of Thompson’s six-year run, possibly of Hood-Schifino’s only season in college and certainly of the last of the best team Indiana has put on the floor in at least seven years.
Woodson and his players both talked pointedly about their focus on the postseason. They acknowledged what a Big Ten Tournament championship would mean for their program, much less a deep run in the competition that comes after that.
Jackson-Davis finished his senior night speech by pointing at the non-national championship banners at the south end of Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, then turning around and pointing at the north end. The one reserved solely for the Hoosiers’ five national titles.
“We’ve gotta go win one of those,” he said, pointing south, “and then we’ve got to go win No. 6.”
Their results this season have suggested the Hoosiers are capable of such lofty goals. They’ve also suggested the Hoosiers weak enough to fall well short.
They picked themselves up from Iowa — and in real time — to their credit. They put themselves in position to need to, to their weakness.
So much of this season has felt like preamble to the journey that, for Indiana, begins now. It may be short. It might be long. Mostly, after everything, it will be fascinating.