WEST LAFAYETTE — The secret on how to stop the IU men’s basketball team is out.
The last two times the Hoosiers have stepped out on the court, they’ve been taken advantage of with a two-level attack. Here’s how you beat IU.
First, when on offense against IU, pound the ball inside. Punish the undersized IU forwards with whatever bigs you have. Even better if you are Purdue and have two seven-footers on the roster.
The Hoosiers will front you, send extra defenders behind you and try to prevent the pass inside. They know it’s their weakness, but once you get the ball in there, you might as well put two points up on the scoreboard.
Second, switch every ball screen. IU can shoot and everyone knows it by now. Do whatever you have to do to prevent open shots. Put your center on junior guard Yogi Ferrell if you must. Just don’t give up the open three.
Purdue junior guard Rapheal Davis said the team knew this going in. IU’s reputation as a shooting team precedes itself.
“They shoot the ball very well so we limited their open looks,” Davis said. “We were physical early.”
That was the essence of Purdue’s game plan tonight and it worked perfectly. The Boilermakers strangled the Hoosier shooters to the tune of 4-of-13 shooting from deep.
That’s the second straight game IU’s opponent has dominated it inside. Ohio State scored 42 points in the paint and Purdue scored 46. Those are unacceptable numbers and everyone in the Big Ten will take notice of them.
The problem is, there isn’t really much IU can do about it. IU isn’t going to get any bigger until junior forward Hanner Mosquera-Perea returns. That won’t be until the middle of February.
IU sophomore forward Collin Hartman originally looked good after Mosquera-Perea went down, and, until tonight, still provided an offensive spark. I’ve been waving Hartman’s banner since after the Penn State game. He provides a completely different look to the offense that few teams can match up with.
But he struggled tonight. He was visibly exhausted from being matched up with junior and freshman centers A.J. Hammons and Isaac Haas. He didn’t have anything left to give on offense and eventually fouled out.
The thing about IU is, they’re rarely out of a game because you never know when the shooting is going to heat up and spark a comeback.
But the threes never came.
IU Coach Tom Crean said that instead of persistently attacking Hammons inside on the drive, the Hoosiers should have moved the ball more and found those open looks outside.
“We don’t need to be complicated,” Crean said. “We don’t have guys that are good enough to play a complicated game. So the hole we built for ourselves was not moving the ball the way we needed to offensively.”
Crean said IU should have dribbled through the lane at Hammons and then made the pass to the perimeter where shooters were waiting. Instead, Hammons finished the game with a career-high eight blocks.
Even if IU did hit some threes against Purdue, they still didn’t stand a chance of coming back. They simply couldn’t stop the Boilermakers.
That’s a fundamental rule of basketball. If you can’t make stops, you can’t win games. And right now, this IU team simply can’t make stops.
