IU’s offense is at its best when it plays fast — but if the Hoosiers are forced into a half-court game, they score much less efficiently. Without a true post presence, IU has no anchor, no player who can control an offense from the block.
To compensate, IU runs. And shoots. For much of the season, teams haven’t been able to stop that.
In Thursday’s 67-63 loss to Purdue, IU slowed itself.
“I think we slowed it down, unfortunately,” IU Coach Tom Crean said. “I don’t know if it was them as much as we did.”
The slowdown stifled IU’s offensive efficiency. The Hoosiers shot just 44 percent from the field and connected on 5-of-16 3-point attempts. Both figures are well below IU’s season average.
IU’s offensive struggles were exaggerated by its inability to stop Purdue’s pair of 7-footers on the defensive end. Junior A.J. Hammons and freshman Isaac Haas combined for 32 points, but it was the way in which they scored — traditional ?post-ups — that killed IU’s chances at fast breaks.
Short shots create short rebounds, which aren’t ideal for teams looking to run immediately after defensive ?rebounds.
IU scored just 13 fast-break points, unable to leak out and pick up easy baskets in transition that it normally thrives off of.
That put even more pressure on IU’s offense to perform in an uncomfortable situation. Forced to adjust to a half-court style on the fly, IU stopped swinging the ball around as quickly as ?Crean likes.
“We weren’t moving the ball as much as we needed to,” Crean said.
That led to overdribbling and, by consequence, forced shots. Crean said his team spent too much time focusing on the defense and not enough on its own ?performance.
“No question we were trying to dribble, we were trying to create some contact,” he said. “We were trying to get the moving rather than just do what we do.”
The Hoosiers’ scoring woes reached their peak midway through the first half. After scoring 23 points in the game’s first 14 minutes, IU went on a four-minute scoreless drought.
Sophomore forward Troy Williams said that period was costly for IU. After a strong opening 10 minutes, IU got away from its game plan and struggled, he said.
“That was more of us stopping ourselves,” Williams said. “The first eight to 10 minutes, we were playing at our own pace. We had things going our way. We slowed down and there was a stretch that we ?didn’t score.
“We just took ourselves out of that pace.”
