Hoosiers square off with Wildcats

When the Hoosiers aren’t playing well defensively, they usually aren’t winning.
It’s a fact of life IU coach Tom Crean has preached since game one and a harsh reality that reared its ugly head again last Saturday at Michigan.

In their 73-69 loss to the Wolverines, the Hoosiers allowed a 53 percent shooting effort from the field and a lead as large as 22 points.

It wasn’t IU’s first subpar defensive effort, nor was it the worst. That title arguably belongs to the Hoosiers’ Jan. 9 matchup at Northwestern, a game in which IU gave up a season-high 93 points.

As his team prepares for its rematch with the Wildcats at 7 p.m. Saturday in Assembly Hall, Crean reiterated that dialing up the defensive intensity will be key.

“To be a good team, you’ve got to have a mindset of playing hard all the time. To be an even better team, you’ve got to have a mindset of really stringing stops together,” he said in his Big Ten teleconference Monday. “A term I used with my team and a term I used in the press conference (at Michigan) was to be combative.

“When you have a combative mindset on the defensive end, it’s amazing what happens on the offensive end.”

The Hoosiers haven’t won a Big Ten game this year when giving up more than 61 points, and they were 1-4 in the non-conference games in that
scenario.

Part of that, as Crean referred to, is because the Hoosiers’ struggles on defense perpetuate a subsequent struggle on offense.

“Our defense is back to a point where we’re only playing as good as the shots we’re making. And that’s the maturity level that we’ve got to get over,” he said.

In the loss to Michigan, IU shot only 39 percent before going on a 25-7 run to trim the insurmountably large lead down to a four-point final deficit.

The Hoosiers also shot just 35 percent Feb. 8 at Purdue and 41 percent against Iowa nearly two weeks ago, which kicked off their current three-game losing streak. By contrast, IU is ranked second in the Big Ten in season field goal percentage at 47 percent.

Crean said the Hoosiers are in need of consistency, and it’s been a difficult thing to accomplish during the last month. With sophomore forward Christian Watford and junior guard Verdell Jones both playing last Saturday, the Hoosiers were the healthiest they’d been since Jan. 20.

“With the injuries that we’ve had, with the discombobulated lineups and things of that nature, we’re just not clicking on the cylinders that we need to,” Crean said. “Defensively, we’ve just got to have a better, tougher mindset.”