The excuses need to be thrown out the window.
Now.
The inordinate amount of injuries the IU basketball team has suffered as of late has been a crutch for the Hoosiers to fall back on in their recent struggles against Arkansas, University of Texas at Arlington and University of California at Davis.
But after being drubbed 90-69 by No. 3 Duke on Tuesday night, they showed that excuse never had much merit.
Sloppy play and careless passing have been the bane of IU’s existence during this tumultuous stretch and when they ran into an opponent like Duke, who is obviously in a different class than IU is right now, those sins exposed themselves.
These have been problems all season, but they were just too obvious to ignore Tuesday.
IU finished with 20 turnovers, and Duke turned those into 24 points.
This isn’t to say injuries haven’t been a factor at all, but they haven’t been the crux either. It’s tiresome to hear it being labeled as such.
Besides, IU squashed the metaphorical injury bug as the two main sidelined players, senior Zach McRoberts and junior Devonte Green, were back against Duke.
For two players whose availability looked to be a determining factor in whether IU could truly compete with the Blue Devils, neither made much of a difference.
Guys have played effectively while injured before, let alone after sitting out four games.
But that’s enough about injuries. Again, the excuses need to absolutely, 100 percent be kaput by now.
The tentativeness on offense, the baffling decision-making and the inconsistencies on defense are what need to be talked about. That’s been the ugly truth hidden in the shadows the last few games.
Senior Juwan Morgan has come out and been critical of himself and his teammates for those kinds of shortcomings, which is commendable from a leadership standpoint but even for somebody as productive as him, Tuesday’s game was a bad one for him.
Early foul trouble marred his first half yet again and once again showed that, much like last season, the Hoosiers often looked lost without him on the court.
But that wasn’t supposed to be the case this year. Not with exciting freshmen like Romeo Langford and Robert Phinisee and the improvement of sophomores like Justin Smith and Al Durham.
Yet those players’ effort and production at Duke were nowhere close to what was expected of them, especially for such a high-level opponent.
The real burning question that needs to be answered from Tuesday to truly measure where IU is at this juncture in the season is this:
Was Duke just that good, or is IU just that far behind?
It’s probably a little bit of both.
Duke is undeniably an amazing conglomeration of talent put together to take the college basketball scene by storm and steamroll opponents that aren’t ready to handle and compete against their athleticism and depth like IU was.
But the Blue Devils have shown weakness at points this season, and that’s why it’s concerning for IU.
This isn’t meant to be a freak-out session or an overreaction to one game still early in the year, and we’re definitely not going to start questioning Coach Archie Miller’s job just yet.
In fact, we’re thankfully still lightyears away from that. There’s still a lot of season left and plenty of time to improve.
But Tuesday wasn’t about a win. Duke hasn’t lost a home non-conference game in 18 years, so let’s not kid ourselves too much. A victory was never much in the cards.
What makes IU’s performance so disappointing was that this was supposed to be the game they proved themselves. This was where they were supposed to show their potential, exhibit the ability to play with the best teams in the country and they failed to do so.
They failed to even come close.
The honest truth is the only thing they proved is that they are still much farther behind than most of us thought.
