IU men’s basketball entered Saturday’s contest with No. 3 Michigan following a pair of rough losses to very beatable Michigan State and Rutgers squads. In order to salvage hopes of reaching the NCAA Tournament and silence head coach Archie Miller’s myriad doubters, the Hoosiers basically needed to play a perfect 40 minutes.
They did not.
IU’s 73-57 defeat to Michigan was neither its most embarrassing nor its most heartbreaking of the season, but rather the mathematical product of multiplying half of a team’s full potential by itself over and over.
The Hoosiers were playing behind the eight ball from tipoff due to the absence of sophomore guard Armaan Franklin, who was sidelined with a foot injury. Despite not having had two healthy legs to play on since the New Year, Franklin has been IU’s most reliable shooter this season, starving a Hoosier offense already famished for scoring threats.
To the Hoosiers’ credit, they managed to navigate the majority of the first half without suffering a particularly abhorrent scoring drought. However, it felt like IU gave up two buckets for each one it made.
Related: [Outmatched: IU men’s basketball’s loss shows remaining gap between it and top of Big Ten]
This game’s box score looks like a never-ending Big Mac, with the Hoosiers’ sparse baskets being the soggy buns sandwiched between stacks upon beefy stacks of points by the Wolverines.
Sophomore forward Trayce Jackson-Davis was capped at 10 points and four rebounds, cutting his season averages in half for both.
IU turned to its backcourt for answers but came up with 4-of-15 shooting from beyond the arc. Fortunately, senior Al Durham contributed a desperately needed 15 points as the Hoosiers’ leading scorer in his final performance at Assembly Hall.
Durham has been one of the more solid, consistent players on the undistilled ooze that often is IU’s offense. A helter-skelter assortment of different lineups including freshman guard Khristian Lander and sophomore forward Jerome Hunter rallied around Durham to patch together a passable scheme in Franklin’s absence.
Throughout this season, an average of 24 attempted free throws per game has inflated the Hoosiers’ point totals like housing prices in 2006. Michigan popped that bubble by committing just 15 personal fouls and giving IU a measly 17 shots at the charity stripe.
Anyone who has watched the Hoosiers regularly throughout the season knows how crucial extra opportunities are for IU. Miller treats offense like a chess match, which is to say it takes over half a minute to set up and only one of his players moves at a time.
Perhaps the Hoosiers’ best play of the afternoon was a slick cut through the paint by junior forward Race Thompson, who received a perfect bounce pass before being promptly rejected by Wolverines sophomore guard Franz Wagner.
I’m not convinced Michigan is 16 points more talented than IU, but it is definitely 10 times better at being in the right position. The Wolverines were the sole proprietors of seemingly every passing lane, critical rebound and wide-open shot while keeping the Hoosiers perpetually one step behind the rapidly moving ball.
IU almost certainly isn’t a March Madness-caliber unit, and today’s blunder didn’t necessarily make that any clearer than it already was. Hoosier fans already have enough reasons to pull their hair out, so I suggest taking this as a chance to celebrate Durham’s career in Bloomington or, you know, the fact that any college basketball is happening whatsoever.
Harshly criticizing a depleted IU for losing to one of the best Michigan teams in program history is unfair, but that defeat came after two entirely winnable outings against Michigan State and Rutgers.
Like the apocryphal Albert Einstein quote suggests, you wouldn’t judge a fish’s intelligence by its ability to climb a tree. That being said, a fish that beaches itself in the middle of a forest might just be a dumb fish.
