Indiana basketball keeps escaping, but if this is all Hoosiers are, it's a problem.

BLOOMINGTON – This will surely stop being sustainable soon. But it’s worth saying, it hasn’t yet.

Indiana basketball began this season like a rubber band, stretching, straining, testing the outer limits of how much it could fail before that became too much. Before the Hoosiers flaws and inadequacies and shortcomings overpowered their admirable collective will, every game further pushing that envelope.

Even through a 2-0 Big Ten start, this team has allowed itself to be driven too close to the brink, which looked surely in sight sometime during Tuesday night’s 69-68 win against Morehead State. A win which at one point ESPN’s probability formulas figured 96.4% likely to be a loss. A win that saw the Hoosiers rally from down 11 at halftime, and from down 15 with nine minutes to go.

Anthony Walker saves day: 'By far his best game since he's been wearing an Indiana uniform'

To win only when Jordan Lathon, scorer of a game-high 30 points, attempted his first field goal in 9 ½ minutes, in the game’s final five seconds. That’s when Malik Reneau, plagued by foul trouble all night, blocked Lathon’s shot and allow Indiana (8-3) to escape yet another one of these flights far too close to the sun.

“I thought at the start of the game we were flat, and like we didn't even want to be out there,” IU coach Mike Woodson said. “But, finally, we picked it up.”

Even as the Hoosiers should be commended for their fightback Tuesday, and even as they may be allowed to say that in the end, they ask how many much more than how (though metrics like KenPom and the NCAA’s NET rankings would disagree), at some point this team’s wings will melt. That rubber band will snap.

“We have to create our own energy, especially coming out the gate in the game, and this won't be a problem all year, trust me,” Miami transfer Anthony Walker, IU’s leading scorer Tuesday, said. “We will pick our energy up. This was definitely a lesson. There is no lesser opponent in college basketball, so this is definitely a lesson.

“We'll be the boss of our own energy for the rest of the year.”

That needs to happen. If Indiana cannot put itself together into something better than what it very clearly is now — in its ability to shoot, to score, to rebound consistently, to defend pick-and-roll actions, to take bad teams as desperately seriously as good ones — this will catch up. These great escapes were a curiosity in mid-November, perhaps just a team finding its new center after so much offseason turnover.

But it’s nearly Christmas now. The Hoosiers, for better or worse, are about to exit their nonconference season claiming either Louisville (KenPom No. 174) in New York or Harvard (KenPom No. 157) in Indianapolis as their best win outside the league. They’re about to reenter a Big Ten well below its recent standard. They’re going to carry NCAA tournament ambitions, despite too often looking well short of NCAA tournament quality any time they have played an NCAA tournament-quality team through this season’s first six weeks.

Mike Woodson said Tuesday night IU was at its best when its back was against the wall. But at some point, if you allow yourself to be pushed so hard up against it, again and again and again, that wall may start to crumble. And if it does, and it comes down on top of you, then it may simply reveal an unsettling truth: The reason why Indiana keeps getting pushed is because Indiana’s not strong enough, not tough enough — not good enough — to push back.

There were some encouraging moments.

Mackenzie Mgbako, albeit inefficiently, posted his sixth-straight double-figure scoring (13) game. He added seven rebounds, his percentages in that area creeping up. If he can find his 3-point shot, he changes the dimensions of this team demonstrably.

Walker continues to be a surprise package off the bench. The Miami transfer arrived to less fanfare than any other major addition this offseason, yet he’s emerged as Woodson’s best bench scoring option. Tuesday night marked his finest work in an Indiana uniform to date — 18 points, nine rebounds — those season highs coupled to excellent, crucial second-half defense.

And if the discussion circles back to defense, it must include Trey Galloway. He followed his career performance against Kansas (28 points) with 14 more, including a pair of notable 3s. But it was his work at the other end of the floor that mattered most. Lathon shredded IU for 30 minutes Tuesday night, scoring just as many points. Then he lost a contact, found Trey Galloway and didn’t score again.

Morehead State (8-4) faded with him.

“I thought Gallo started to really take the ball away from him some,” Woodson said. “When he got rid of it, I told Gallo not to let him get it back if he could so he was trying in that area to keep the ball out of his hands because he was basically the hottest player on the floor.”

For all these pockets of individual success and improvement, and for whatever credit IU deserves in constantly flirting with but never realizing disaster against the likes of Florida Gulf Coast, Army and Morehead State, reality is, the more Indiana shows us this side of itself, the more we’re forced to come to the conclusion that this may just be what Indiana is. And this is nowhere near the level expected or required of this program, not least from its coach and its players.

But — and this is important and fair — the Hoosiers aren’t done yet. They have managed all these escapes. They have won all these games.

“At the end of the day,” Woodson said, “the guys made the plays that they needed to make to secure the win, and that's what counts.”

The rubber band can snap eventually. But it hasn’t yet. And there’s an alternate path forward where it doesn’t. The raw talent exists here to carve that path.

It just needs to get to work. Soon.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU basketball's flaws clear to see in near upset vs. Morehead State