Louisville ran Mike Woodson’s IU basketball team off the court in The Bahamas like a bunch of filthy pirates in the Caribbean.
The scoreboard said 89-61 in favor of the unranked Cardinals, and it wasn’t even that close.
In a hot seat season for Woodson, with one of the most talented rosters in college basketball, and in the program’s most important week of the nonconference schedule, only three words come to mind.
This can’t happen.
It can’t happen because Woodson’s roster building model is the transfer portal, so a lack of early season chemistry is unacceptable. It simply cannot be an excuse. Oh, and his team just got blown away by a cohesive and hungry Louisville team with a new head coach. The Cardinals returned exactly 0% of their scoring, rebounding and minutes played from a season ago.
Woodson has been with his team for six months. There has been plenty of time to establish an identity, and the Hoosiers have one. You might be familiar with it. It’s the same identity they had the three years prior — undisciplined, unimaginative, and uninspiring.
It can’t happen because Woodson himself said this team is deep and talented. He hasn’t made excuses for the talent on his team. He can’t. All five starters have all-conference credentials. There’s talent on the bench too. Many national analysts have called this IU team the Big Ten’s most talented top to bottom. But they haven’t looked that way with any degree of regularity, and on Wednesday they looked like one of the league’s worst.
It can’t happen because the nonconference schedule was custom-made for a good start. Indiana only plays four high majors out of 11 nonconference games. Maybe only three if they end playing Davidson on Friday. If they leave The Bahamas with no impressive wins, they can put themselves in a tough situation vis-a-vis the NCAA Tournament before the Big Ten season even begins. An ugly loss to Louisville, a team the computers said IU should beat, will already put a major dent in that March resume. A couple more body blows here at the Battle 4 Atlantis will have the Hoosiers on the ropes before the calendar hits December.
But it is happening.
And Woodson has no one to blame but himself.
Woodson called his team’s performance embarrassing, and he’s right. He said his team got out-toughed, and he’s right about that too. We’d add unprepared as well.
While those national analysts all believed Indiana had elite talent this year, there was a clear reluctance by those same people to rate these Hoosiers too high. The obvious reason, and some said it, was that they didn’t trust Woodson.
And their restraint is being rewarded. Because the product Woodson has put on the floor looks exactly like last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
Two big men on the floor? Check.
Playing through the post every game and trying to win with brute force? Check.
Same starting lineup every game? Check.
Same rotations every game? Check.
Head scratching blowout losses? Check.
Same issues every game, such as poor 3-point defense, and a lack of movement and low 3-point volume on offense? Check. Check. Check.
Same questions about not consistently playing hard? Check.
So far, it’s meet the new Hoosiers, same as the old Hoosiers. And you feel bad for the fans who spent thousands, probably tens of thousands of dollars to spend their Thanksgiving week in The Bahamas watching this product. They were bamboozled by Woodson’s “No. 14” pirates.
Woodson’s greatest test as the IU head coach comes just 24 hours later. He somehow has to have his most talented team flush what was probably his worst loss. And he’ll have to do what he’s seemingly been reluctant to do — make changes, and inspire a team.
Tournaments like this don’t allow much time for things like that. Oh, and they’ll have to do it against a top-10 team after No. 3 Gonzaga fell to West Virginia. It will be the Zags vs. the Hoosiers at 2:30 p.m. ET (ESPN2) on Thursday at the Atlantis Resort.
If he can flip the script, and leave Atlantis with two wins, what happened Wednesday against Louisville might be at least temporarily forgiven, while certainly not forgotten.
But if the Hoosiers leave here 0-3?
There might not be a seat on the plane for everyone. A mutiny, some might say.
Because by then, that hot seat would be an inferno.
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