IU Talking Points: Hoosiers' path to NCAA tournament has almost no margin for error.
BLOOMINGTON – As happens every few years, the end of January provides a clean halfway point in the Big Ten season.
The Hoosiers reach the turn 5-5 in league play, in a four-way tie for fifth in the conference. The back half of their Big Ten slate is probably ever so slightly easier than the front, if for no reason other than because it avoids anything like the Purdue, at Wisconsin, at Illinois stretch IU just weathered.
After the Hoosiers steadied themselves with Tuesday’s toughed-out win against Iowa — but with a long road still to travel to NCAA tournament contention — is there enough runway for Indiana still to build an adequate postseason resume?
Short answer: Maybe, but not much.
Long answer: Let’s dig in.
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As things stand today, IU is comfortably outside the NCAA tournament discussion. The Hoosiers are No. 93 in the NET, No. 88 in KenPom and No. 77 in Torvik (at time of writing). They’re 3-8 against Quads 1 and 2 but, crucially, 0-7 in Quad 1 games. They also have just one win, a Quad 2 against cratering Michigan, on the road.
As has been widely discussed this winter, this year’s Big Ten isn’t the most robust in recent history. Quality wins are harder to come by because there are fewer quality teams to beat — which is, of course, a product of a difficult cycle, teams not being able to prove themselves against quality to establish their quality, and so on.
Of IU’s 10 remaining regular-season games, seven are against teams ranked No. 66 or better on KenPom. Only four of those are top-50 at present, though, and while three (Northwestern, Wisconsin, Michigan State) are at home, that means there aren’t many reasonable road opportunities left.
Ohio State next week could be one, but the slumping Buckeyes opened Wednesday No. 73 in the NET, so Indiana could be in a situation where beating Ohio State in Columbus actually downgrades the win from Quad 1 to Quad 2, whereas losing would keep the opponent in the Quad 1 column. The same could potentially be said of Maryland in early March, the Terrapins playing well enough lately to climb out of the cellar but still outside the NET top-75 needed to make that road game a Quad 1 opportunity.
IU also has some potential banana skins left, like a pair of games it probably cannot afford to lose to Penn State. The Nittany Lions visit this weekend, ranked NET No. 127. Indiana needs to maintain its perfect record against Quads 3 and 4, one of the few plusses on its current resume.
Unsurprisingly, Bart Torvik’s Similar Resumes tool turns up only comparison teams that didn’t make the tournament for IU today. Using his Teamcast feature, an optimistic scenario would see Indiana finish these next 10 games 7-3, losing at Purdue, splitting road trips to Maryland and Minnesota, and dropping at least one game at home.
Coupled to a fairly nondescript Big Ten tournament stay, it would improve IU’s projected wins-above-bracket ranking from No. 70 to top-30, and bring the Hoosiers’ resume ranking on Torvik up from the 80s to something approaching top-50. A dramatic improvement in the NET ranking acting as a drag on IU’s resume right now would need to follow.
Even then, we’d probably be talking about a team with a poor Quad 1 record and few if any road wins against tournament teams. And while Indiana’s nonconference schedule was strong enough on paper, the Hoosiers got next to nothing out of it, so that would provide little help.
Returning to the short-answer approach to finish, there is probably still a path to at-large contention for Indiana. But is painfully narrow, and leaves the Hoosiers almost no margin for error.
Carrying with defense
What will get them on that path?
If you toggle to the conference-only columns on Indiana’s KenPom page, there’s an awful lot of red on the offensive side of the ledger. The Hoosiers are 12th in the league in Big Ten play adjusted efficiency and in turnover rate, ninth in offensive rebounding percentage and last in both free-throw accuracy and steal rate. It’s not red because Pomeroy doesn’t necessarily make stylistic judgments, but IU is also dead last in percentage of field goal attempts that are 3s, and percentage of points scored via 3s.
Point is, even given the occasional outlier, Indiana remains at the end of January much the same team we saw through November and December offensively.
The other side makes for more interesting reading.
It isn’t all rosy. IU puts opponents at the free-throw line too often, doesn’t turn teams over enough and remains vulnerable on the offensive glass (though it’s worth saying that number has improved recently).
But through 10 games — including that swing through the teeth of the conference title race — IU has the best effective field goal defense in the conference. The main reason why? The Hoosiers also have the best 3-point defense in the league.
Through the season as a whole, IU is allowing opponents to shoot 33.3% from behind the arc. That’s No. 162 nationally, or relatively close to the national mean. In Big Ten play, that number falls sharply, to 28.8%. At a point in the calendar when those averages usually trend upward, Indiana has actually gotten better defending the 3-point line.
That’s not at the expense of the rim — the Hoosiers are fourth in the Big Ten in league play in 2-point defense. And these things don’t always track perfectly. Only two of the top five teams in the league in adjusted defensive efficiency (Illinois and Purdue) are currently above .500 in conference play.
Two of the other three, though, are trying to defend their way through their struggles. After a 4-4 start, Maryland has won nine of its last 13, grabbing quality wins at Illinois and Iowa. If Indiana wants to follow suit in the coming weeks, the Hoosiers will need their improved defense to carry them.
Small-ball going forward
Indiana’s small-ball lineups, a talking point these past two games, might be here to stay a while. Even if Xavier Johnson’s arm/wrist issue rules him out for a period, Mike Woodson will probably have to persist with the three-guard setups he leaned into first without Kel’el Ware at Illinois and then without Malik Reneau against Iowa.
They’re worth more exploration, because there are ways in which they’re working.
For example, IU hasn’t posted a turnover rate higher than 16.7% in its past five games. The Hoosiers have consistently shot 2s well, and the 0-for-9 at Illinois aside, they’re mixing more 3s into their offense as well.
Mackenzie Mgbako’s 12 rebounds at Illinois, coupled to Ware’s return, mitigated some issues with size and rebounding. And Anthony Leal’s 13-point, seven-rebound performance Tuesday was the latest in a series of moments when bench players have risen to meet their coach’s needs.
For example, per EvanMiya.com, Indiana’s best five-man lineup in terms of net adjusted efficiency plays Anthony Walker at the four, Mgbako at the three and Ware at the five, which allows for maximum possible defensive switching. The adjusted efficiency margin of that group (albeit across just 64 possessions, with Gabe Cupps and Trey Galloway in the backcourt): 0.612 points per possession.
Point is, smaller lineups have worked in some meaningful ways. They haven’t always been perfect. In particular, this may seem obvious but remains worth stating, they can’t survive on the road if 3s don’t fall.
But if Reneau is out for any meaningful length of time, Indiana’s lean into small ball will only become more pronounced. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
New Big Ten tournament format
In lieu of Odds & Ends this week, we’ll finish with a fourth bullet point.
The Big Ten announced on Tuesday its planned format for managing the coming 18-team league. The conference schedule will remain at 20 games for the men and 18 for the women.
On the men’s side, that means each team will play the other 17 once and three of those 17 a second time. The women’s format would seem to require just one single-play.
Per the league announcement, “single-play home/away locations will rotate annually, and two-play opponents will be determined with consideration for competition balance, geography and rivalries.”
That would seem to nod toward a pair of priorities:
First, rivalries like IU-Purdue and Michigan-Michigan State will probably remain protected. Second, use of the word geography suggests the West Coast schools inbound from the Pac-12 may still see a fair bit of each other in two-play scenarios, to limit cross-country travel where possible. It will also be interesting to see whether the league tries to schedule road swings for those teams that could feasibly be done all in one hit — i.e. a Thursday night at Wisconsin and a Sunday afternoon at Minnesota, for example — for the same reasons.
The more potentially controversial move affects the Big Ten tournament. Even as the league expands to 18 teams, it will only grow its conference tournaments (men’s and women’s) to 15 apiece. The bottom three teams in the conference will not make the field.
Each field will still award double byes to the top four seeds, as is custom now. Finishers 5-9 will receive single byes and begin play Thursday, while Wednesday will add a game and now including 10-15, 11-14 and 12-13 matchups.
From Wednesday, the tournament will pare down toward the weekend as normal.
It’s obviously a bit odd. From a pure bracketing perspective, it wouldn’t be difficult to take all 18 teams, schedule two play-ins and then essentially bracket 1-16 the way you would an NCAA regional.
But from a scheduling perspective, it would require an extra day in the arena, would give some teams a day off between games and possibly reward lower-seeded teams with byes in the event of upsets. Or it would require a second gym altogether. Neither solution is hugely practice.
The new format will fit like an unbroken-in pair of shoes next season. Whether the Big Ten has reason to pivot from there, we’ll see.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU basketball needs to go on a run to improve March Madness resume
