Is this IU men’s basketball team good? Great? Maybe it’s even bad?
After the Hoosiers’ too-close victory over Penn State, who is now 0-4 in the Big Ten, nobody really knows what the deal is with this team. Tuesday’s poor performance came just three days after an impressive victory over then-No. 22 Ohio State.
The fact of the matter is this IU team plays to the level of competition it faces. The Hoosiers will stay competitive against better teams, but eek out victories against worse teams like we saw against the Nittany Lions.
After we accept that fact, we can look at this game as simply another win and move forward.
The next AP Top 25 Poll will come out on Jan. 19. The Hoosiers will square off against Illinois the night before. If the Hoosiers come out victorious against the Fighting Illini, does that warrant IU’s first top 25 berth of the season?
The Hoosiers have been hovering in the “Others receiving votes” category of the poll since the Dec. 22. Every time they have crept close to breaking into the top 25, a loss has sent them back down.
But if IU can win this weekend, it will sport a 4-1 conference record. That would be at worst a half game back in the Big Ten. They would also have an impressive 14-4 overall record and three wins over ranked opponents.
Cracking the top 25 would be a big confidence booster for this young team.
Illinois is a winnable game, despite being on the road, where IU has struggled so far this season. The Hoosiers are just 2-3 away from Assembly Hall.
IU will now have to figure out a way to rebound without starting junior forward Hanner Mosquera-Perea. The Hoosiers were outrebounded 37-30 against Penn State.
After the game, IU coach Tom Crean alluded to the issues Mosquera-Perea’s absence leaves, and how the Hoosiers need to adjust without him.
“We’ve got to be a matchup problem for other teams,” Crean said. “Because right now, we’ve got a few matchup problems.”
It seems that IU has a lot of good-not-great players. There are at least five Hoosiers who are capable of scoring 20 points on a given night. That becomes valuable when a star like junior guard Yogi Ferrell or freshman guard James Blackmon Jr. have a cold night shooting.
And those nights seem to be distressingly often.
Coming into Tuesday’s game, the Hoosiers were last in the conference in three-point shooting percentage in Big Ten play. It’s a small sample size, but still a surprising fact considering the sharpshooters on IU’s roster.
However, when someone like sophomore guard Stanford Robinson can step in when Blackmon and Ferrell are struggling, that creates those matchup problems Crean alluded to.
Against bad teams like Penn State, IU can skate by with that type of performance from Ferrell and Blackmon. But that might not cut it against Illinois now that Mosquera-Perea is out.
Crean will need to figure out how to create more matchup issues for the Fighting Illini than he did against Penn State. The center-by-committee approach won’t work for long.
