He looked down, removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. IU Coach Tom Crean was in the process of explaining how his team allowed 72 points to a team with three wins and no road victories.
Kennesaw State was ranked over 300th both as a team by kenpom.com, and in terms of offensive efficiency.
But in IU’s 99-72 win Tuesday night at Assembly all, Kennesaw State managed to shoot more than 50 percent from the field. Forty of those points came in the paint.
“I know of course I have to get better defensively and so does the whole team,” freshman center Thomas Bryant said.
Bryant had a good game statistically. He scored a career-high 20 points including 10 in the first seven minutes of the game.
He said in many ways Tuesday was just his turn to score. The Owls don’t regularly use a player taller than 6-foot-7, so the 6-foot-11 Bryant didn’t have much trouble working his way down toward the basket.
“My teammates were getting me open and getting me the ball at the right time,” Bryant said. “All the credit goes to them because they’re the ones who set the picks to get me open or ran the plays they knew would be a mismatch for me.”
But, still, the Hoosiers allowed as many points in the paint to the Owls as the Hoosiers scored themselves.
Purely looking at the final score, it seemed as if the Hoosiers coasted to another non-conference win. But they only led by eight at halftime despite shooting 70% from the field in the first half.
The Hoosiers did manage pull away in the second half, improving as the game went on just as they did against Notre Dame, but they recognize this can’t continue to happen.
“One of the main takeaways is learning how to play a full 40 minutes,” junior forward Troy Williams said. “These last two games we came out soft and then in the second half we turned it around. We just can’t depend on that with Big Ten coming up.”
Williams acknowledged the Hoosiers need to improve on its start in games before Big Ten play begins. Crean also had a list of things the Hoosiers did wrong Tuesday, and things that need improving before Dec. 30 when IU plays at Rutgers.
This is what he was talking about just before he removed his glasses. Crean was talking about how Kendrick Ray and Yonel Brown kept the Owls in the game. The two combined for 48 points.
He was talking about how IU’s game plan defense wasn’t good enough, because if there’s one thing you can expect an opponent to do is to execute its game plan offensively. In the Owl’s case this was a motion offense that Crean said created too many open layups and shots at the elbow.
He said there was lots of room to improve. This was the moment he removed his glasses. Crean then confronted a question he knew was coming. He preemptively answered the inevitable question about what had to change before conference play. He said he couldn't answer the question because the list was too long.
“Before anybody asks the list of what we have to improve before Big Ten, it’s too long and I’ve already made you wait long enough,” Crean said. “It’s long. We’ve got a long, long way to go.”
