INDIANAPOLIS -- IU’s offense was broken.
Trying to cut the deficit late in the second half, the Hoosiers dribbled the ball right into the teeth of the Louisville defense, unable to find their shot. Needing quick points, IU instead was forced to dribble the ball and let precious seconds drain off the shot clock.
It was the story of the game for IU as its poor offense allowed Louisville to control the game and win 77-62 Saturday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
“The biggest thing to me, I don’t see us shooting that way very often, like hardly ever,” IU Coach Tom Crean said. “It was not good for us offensively at all. I’d love to tell you that I think it was was a lot of their length. When we didn’t make the next pass, it was their length. Sometimes when we settled it was their length.”
Against Louisville, IU missed nearly two-thirds of its shots. The main culprit for the shooting woes were the Hoosier guards, who all struggled from the floor. Juniors Rob Johnson, Josh Newkirk and James Blackmon along with freshman Curtis Jones missed a combined 23 shots.
“There’s not too many times where we’re going to shoot as bad as we did tonight, so I don’t think that we should just start focusing on offense more,” Blackmon said.
IU was ice cold from three-point range, shooting 19-percent from beyond the arc, most of them heavily contested looks. It wasn’t that IU was just missing shots it was Louisville not allowing the Hoosiers to get wide-open looks.
“We weren’t cutting off the post,” Crean said. “That’s where we got out of character. Our offense is movement, and it’s not just the ball movement, it’s the body movement.”
When it wasn’t going from deep, IU also repeatedly missed easy layups inside against Louisville’s big men. Louisville was able to block five IU shots.
The Hoosiers were also plagued by turnovers, especially in the first half where 11 came mostly through careless passes.
“Our turnovers at the beginning of the game were ridiculous,” Crean said. “I mean they weren’t even forced. The number one problem, I say this every time, I’m never going to overreact to the hard driving, we’re trying to make a play turnover. It’s the unforced turnovers which are the mental errors that really bother you.”
But even with how bad IU’s offense was for much of the first half, the game was within striking distance until a brutal end of half stretch by the Hoosiers. In the last 5:29 of the first half, IU’s offense went ice cold and did not make a single basket.
Louisville would go into the half up 12 after only leading by five at the under-four minute timeout.
The offense wasn’t any better in the second half.
IU has now lost two straight games where its offense has not played to the level it is capable of. It doesn’t get any easier for the offense as IU faces Wisconsin Tuesday.
“We’ve just got to come together and know what type of team we are, have confidence in each other and just believe,” Blackmon said. “We’ve been here before, so we’ve just got to come together as one group and figure out what works for us.”
