Mike Woodson can't fix this IU basketball mess alone. His seniors need to lead the way.
Mike Woodson’s mind was on his seniors, in the aftermath of a 66-57 defeat at Rutgers on Tuesday night that lengthened the Hoosiers’ problems with good performance in the Big Ten’s easternmost outpost for at least one more season.
Not Anthony Leal, he said. Leal, his one-time Mr. Basketball and Bloomington South alum, “has been great.”
“No complaints there,” Woodson said. “I expect our seniors, (Anthony) Walker, X(avier Johnson) and (Trey) Gallo(way). … Those three guys are seniors. They’ve got to help lead.”
The specificity in Woodson’s complain spoke volumes, following what for him might rank among Indiana’s most frustrating performances of a season now past the halfway pole.
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The Hoosiers (11-5, 3-2) handed Rutgers its first Big Ten win Tuesday to the tune of 19 missed 3-pointers, 11 missed free throws in 15 tries, another 18 turnovers and, in general, the kind of road performance that suggests this team is not particularly connected to itself at the moment.
Woodson called them afterward on his postgame radio appearance “things that we said we weren’t going to do.” Which is how his team punted a chance to start conference play 4-1, pick up another useful road win and, mostly, lend itself the sense it was building — through growing pains — toward something.
“We’ve just got to be more solid,” Woodson said. “Like we play at home, that’s how we’ve got to play on the road. I’ve got to get us to that.”
Rutgers (9-6, 1-3) does this to teams. The Hoosiers’ lowest adjusted single-game points-per-possession average in Woodson’s tenure came inside the Rutgers Athletic Center — now contractually obliged to be called Jersey Mike’s Arena — last season.
That afternoon, Indiana averaged just 0.72 PPP. On Tuesday night, against a Rutgers team with offensive challenges but established defensive bonafides, a younger, more disjointed collection of Hoosiers managed 0.76.
Tuesday marked IU’s fifth-straight loss in Piscataway.
“I’m two of those five, I know that,” Woodson said. “We haven’t played well here.”
Tuesday night brought out the old calling cards.
The Hoosiers aren’t careful or sharp enough with the ball, their turnover rate in Big Ten play second-worst among 14 conference teams. They allowed yet another team to punish them on the boards, the final rebounding margin mirroring that of Rutgers’ advantage on the offensive glass (plus-11), and the Scarlet Knights’ 11 extra second-chance points accounting for more than the final points gap.
And on top of everything else, one of those three seniors Woodson singled out — Johnson — was ejected for a flagrant-two foul in the second half.
“X has his little fiasco where he got kicked out,” Woodson said. “That changed the game a little bit.”
Collectively, Woodson’s four fourth-year-or-older players combined for 10 points, six rebounds, eight assists and nine turnovers across 66 combined minutes Tuesday.
Why was Woodson so hard postgame on his most experienced players? Simple. His team can’t afford to be forced to win without them.
It’s not the most popular thing in Bloomington right now to point out this is a young team, but it is. KenPom ranks the Hoosiers 221st nationally in Division I experience, an average of just 1.67 years per player. By comparison, those numbers were 67th and 2.51 last season.
Moreover, Indiana is young not just in years, but years together. Half this roster turned over from last season. The Hoosiers start a freshman and two sophomores, and the only reason they technically returned two starters this year is because a season-ending injury to one handed the same job to the other last winter.
Never does this team need those players Woodson referenced more than on nights like this one. As steadying presences. As calming influences. As the old heads who limit mistakes, maintain poise and in so doing, bleed those qualities off onto teammates with as much or more talent, but less experience in crunch situations.
Woodson will have known coming into this season his team would not be readymade for the kinds of grinding, demanding hurdles Big Ten road games become. Those games are here now. The Hoosiers have won one of them close and lost two ugly.
And Woodson knows if this team is to reach its ambitions, results need to improve.
“We’ve got to go back home and go to work and see if we can fix (road woes),” Woodson said, adding, “Continue to work. That’s all you can do. You’ve got to continue to work. You go home and go to practice tomorrow, and get ready for Minnesota.
“We have to continue to work and get better. I’ve got to figure them out.”
He needs help, foremost from the experienced players leading an inexperienced team. There’s a lot of road left for this team, even allowing for the customary panic after a frustrating league loss. But nobody’s potential gets realized unless everybody’s does, and that has to start at the top of Woodson’s roster.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball a mess in Rutgers loss as seniors let Hoosiers down
