With 52 seconds remaining in Indiana men’s basketball’s 66-55 loss to Maryland on Tuesday night, the crowd at the Xfinity Center in College Park, Maryland, began chanting “Hey, you suck!”
It was a mostly unfair indictment of an Indiana team that had previously won five straight Big Ten games by an average of 13.2 points. However, as an assessment of the Hoosiers on Tuesday night specifically?
Yeah, the chant wasn’t too far off.
Be it shot making, offensive discipline or transition defense, it felt like Indiana couldn’t do anything correctly for large stretches of the game. The result was a performance so uncharacteristically ugly that you have to wonder how much you can even conclude from it.
The first real test of the night was of the linguistic variety, as I had to watch the first five minutes of the game via Spanish simulcast on ESPN3 while ESPN2 finished broadcasting a previous event.
While I´ve admittedly gotten a little rusty since HISP-S 427 sophomore year, I can tell you the commentators had a lot of praise for the screens each team was setting and that the word Hoosiers is not particularly friendly to non-English speakers. ¿Qué divertido, no?
Even after the broadcast reverted to my native language, I can’t say I became much less confused. After looking extremely sharp for two weeks, the Hoosiers appeared completely lost on the court.
On one possession late in the first half, Indiana junior guard Trey Galloway heaved an overhead pass 30 feet to the corner, where graduate forward Miller Kopp had to leap in the air to save it from going out of bounds. Kopp flung the ball directly to a Maryland defender, who sprinted to the opposite basket, where Indiana graduate forward Race Thompson emphatically denied his dunk attempt.
Then, freshman guard Jalen Hood-Schifino grabbed the rebound and took off for the other end of the court, only to be called for a double dribble, a penalty you rarely see outside elementary school Saturday basketball games.
It was mayhem. A rigmarole. An absolute ballyhoo. It was as if you could hear Boots Randolph’s “Yakety Sax” playing over the chaos.
That sloppiness characterized a first half in which the Hoosiers committed seven turnovers and 11 personal fouls and frequently had to scramble to defend the Terrapins’ transition 3-pointers. It also permeated the second half, when the Terrapins began committing head-scratching turnovers themselves and both teams added technical fouls to their robust repertoire of penalties.
While the Hoosiers continued to flounder, the Terrapins found a semblance of stability and established a 10-point lead from which Indiana could never recover.
Chants of “overrated” rained down on Indiana senior forward Jackson-Davis early in the second half, an interesting choice of words for a player who had a double-double with more than 16 minutes left to play.
To be fair, it certainly wasn’t Jackson-Davis’ best outing. His 18 points and 20 rebounds were a bright spot for Indiana, but Maryland’s frequent double- and triple-teaming hindered Jackson-Davis significantly and completely hamstrung the Hoosiers’ otherwise impotent offense. Indiana shot just 38% from the floor and 27% from beyond the arc, but both percentages felt lower.
It was sports entertainment television in name only, the visual equivalent of a cluster headache. Midway through the second half Kopp sustained a blow to the face that left his eye bleeding, no doubt putting him in close company with the viewers at home.
Yet despite all that, I don’t think Indiana fans have any reason to panic. Winning road games in the Big Ten is extremely difficult, especially against Maryland, which is now 12-1 at home. It’s highly unlikely the Hoosiers will replicate their abysmal offensive performance anytime soon.
I don’t think you should just completely forget about this game — it’s probably too deeply etched into your brain anyway — but try to understand nights like these happen in college basketball. They don’t define teams, and they certainly don’t define seasons.
In the meantime, I suggest unwinding with a more calming viewing experience.
I think I’ll opt for the endoscope camera footage from a root canal or maybe the stampede scene from “The Lion King.” I just think they’ll be a bit easier on the eyes, you know?
