PARADISE ISLAND, The Bahamas – Indiana backed up its loss to Louisville with another limp display Thursday, falling 89-73 to No. 4 Gonzaga on Thursday in the Hoosiers’ second game in the Battle 4 Atlantis.
What dug the hole so deep for No. 15 IU this time? Three reasons:
Another ugly defensive display
Indiana (4-2) needed an 8-0 deficit to spark itself to life Thursday, but when the Hoosiers got their engine running they showed focus and fight not really seen against Louisville. They played with activity and energy, taking their cues from Oumar Ballo’s assertiveness.
For roughly 11 minutes, in a half chopped up by foul trouble going both ways, IU battled Gonzaga to a standstill. Ballo was excellent. Players like Trey Galloway and Kanaan Carlyle looked hell bent on atoning for Indiana’s failings a day earlier. The ample IU crowd inside the Imperial Ballroom responded accordingly.
And then, slowly and yet somehow also all at once, the Hoosiers’ resistance evaporated. Empty possessions led to runout scores. Turnovers were converted into points. Indiana was almost nonexistent on the glass compared to Gonzaga.
A 9-2 run turned into a 15-2 run, then a 17-2 run. Before IU could collect its breath and go again, Gonzaga (6-1) was over the hill and far away, and the Hoosiers were staring at another opportunity in The Bahamas squandered disastrously.
Pounded in the paint
Rebounding has never been a particular strength of Woodson’s teams. But it has rarely been a weakness like this.
Gonzaga doubled up the Hoosiers on the glass in the first half, 26-13. The Bulldogs turned 10 offensive boards into 17 second-chance points, and much of their 18-point halftime lead could be accounted for in the gap in second-chance points (17-3).
Couple that to a collapsing post defense — Gonzaga scored 36 points in the paint in the first half, a shocking number unless you watched just how disconnected Indiana looked defensively — and it’s easy to understand how Thursday’s game got so dramatically out of hand so quickly.
Effort and focus should never be optional for a team of IU’s ambitions. They were far too inconsistent in the Hoosiers’ first two games here.
Where this leaves Indiana
That’s a complicated question.
In the immediate term, the Hoosiers aren’t likely to get anything but a battered analytics profile out of their trip to The Bahamas. Nothing about these past two games is going to do IU many favors in the eyes of the selection committee.
And yet, that pales in comparison to more existential concerns. How can this team look so disorganized and disconnected? How can an offseason spent reinforcing its roster with talent lead to consecutive disastrous defensive displays? And what does it say about the direction of this program that these sorts of performances are still so commonplace more than three years into Mike Woodson’s tenure?
There are no comfortable answers to those questions. Seasons don’t end in November. They can be saved in the dark winter months ahead. But for this group that’s going to require some real soul searching, and some bottom-up reassessment of what everyone in IU’s locker room is willing to fight for, because right now, there’s not much evidence of that fight when and where it matters.
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