Indiana men’s basketball’s final trip up the court was its slowest.
As the final seconds ticked away on the Hoosiers’ 85-68 loss to Nebraska (7-2, 1-1 Big Ten) on Friday night at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska, reality set in.
Indiana (8-3, 1-1 Big Ten) trailed by just 1 point with six and a half minutes to play. The Hoosiers didn’t make a field goal thereafter. Their lone point came on junior forward Malik Reneau’s free throw. Nebraska finished the game on a 17-1 run.
Poised to compete for a hard-to-find Big Ten road win, Indiana fell silently. And, as head coach Mike Woodson said postgame, let the opportunity “slip away.”
“We just couldn’t make shots,” Woodson said.
The Hoosiers missed their last 12 shots. After drawing even at 64 with just under 10 minutes remaining, Indiana went 1-for-18 shooting from the field.
Redshirt sophomore guard Myles Rice, the team’s leading scorer with 20 points, had his own 13-0 run over a three-minute, 40-second span in the second half. Apart from Rice, the Hoosiers were 5-for-29 shooting over the final 20 minutes.
Coupled with its shooting struggles, Indiana faltered defensively. Nebraska shot 57.7% from the floor in the second half, over two-times better than the Hoosiers’ miniscule 27.8% mark.
The result? Indiana’s fourth consecutive loss to Nebraska — all by at least 15 points.
“We kind of took a couple of shots that probably (were) out of rhythm, and we didn't defend how we should have down the stretch,” Rice said postgame. “And that's a recipe for disaster, when you put both those together. So, we’ve just got to be better going down the stretch, continue playing as a team and just be better.”
The Hoosiers struggled mightily from distance. They entered Friday ranked No. 352 out of 364 Division I teams in 3-point attempts, taking only 17 per game. Attempts weren’t problematic against Nebraska — makes were.
Indiana shot 35 triples, the most it’s taken during Woodson’s four-year tenure, but made only eight of them. After starting 5 for 8, the Hoosiers finished 3 for 27 from beyond the arc.
Woodson, as he’s said several times throughout the past two seasons, reiterated it doesn’t matter how many 3-pointers Indiana takes, it just has to step up and make shots when prompted.
Nebraska doubled the Hoosiers’ big men, forcing Indiana, which plays an inside-to-outside offense predicated on the success of Reneau and sixth-year senior center Oumar Ballo, to pass the ball to its perimeter players.
The Hoosiers weren’t gun-shy Friday. They just didn’t make their shots.
“I was very proud of the looks we got,” Woodson said. “If you make those shots, then it's probably a different ball game. You can't go 8 for 35 and have the looks we had tonight. We had some good looks.”
Woodson added he thought Indiana succeeded in its pick and roll offense, as evidenced by the volume of 3-pointers it took. When Indiana let Rice operate downhill with screens from Ballo and Reneau, it created defensive friction, Woodson said, because Nebraska ran out of bodies in its rotation.
As a result, the Hoosiers had a plethora of open shots. They merely failed to connect.
Senior forward Luke Goode was 3-for-10 shooting from distance, while fifth-year senior guard Trey Galloway went just 3 for 12 from the field and 3 for 9 on triples. Sophomore guard Kanaan Carlyle shot 1 of 7 from the floor and missed each of his five 3-pointers. Freshman forward Bryson Tucker made just one of his nine field goals.
Indiana’s bench consisted of Goode, Carlyle, Tucker and fifth-year senior guard Anthony Leal, who didn’t attempt a shot in 10 minutes. Woodson said the team’s reserves have played well this season, but the Hoosiers will need more production moving forward.
That goes for more than just Indiana’s second-team players.
Apart from Rice, no other Hoosier scored more than 12 points. Rice went 8-for-13 shooting from the field. His teammates were 15 of 52 (28.8%) on field goals.
Indiana entered Friday ranked 60th in the nation in scoring, averaging 80.4 points per game. The Hoosiers scored at least 73 points in each of their past five games, and they shot 53% or better from the floor in their last four contests.
For the first 33 minutes, Indiana’s offense looked like itself. Then, it crumbled. Now, the Hoosiers face an eight-day gap between games, as they’ll host the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga at noon Dec. 21 inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington.
The break offers Indiana a chance to regroup, recover and correct flaws that ultimately led to a dismal closing stretch in Lincoln — one which the Hoosiers may have no choice but to prove they’ve learned from as the season progresses.
“We let it get away,” Woodson said. “And that's just something we got to work on, because I think if we keep putting ourselves in that position, we'll have an opportunity to break through and win.”
Follow reporters Daniel Flick (@ByDanielFlick) and Quinn Richards (@Quinn_richa) and columnist Mateo Fuentes-Rohwer (@mateo_frohwer) for updates throughout the Indiana men’s basketball season.
