'That’s promising.' IU might finally have given itself a chance. Can Hoosiers seize it?
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Amid the deep sighs and downward glances accompanying a 70-62 loss at No. 11 Illinois on Saturday that lengthened their losing streak to three games, these Hoosiers may yet have found something to build upon.
Malik Reneau’s stabilizing post production. Mackenzie Mgbako’s burgeoning defensive impact. Xavier Johnson’s best game in three weeks and maybe — maybe — enough runway left to land the plane this season in ways meaningful enough to make March matter.
If they have found that something, then the arrival of February should offer at least some hope the curve is bending upward for this young, flawed, talented team. If not, then it will confirm IU fans’ worst fears, and there won’t be much to worry about come Selection Sunday. In either event, this feels like the Hoosiers’ (12-8, 4-5) last stand.
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“Listen, I’m about winning, man,” Woodson said postgame. “I want to win at all costs. But when you go through a Purdue game like we played, and Wisconsin, where we played in spurts, I thought we were solid (Saturday) all the way through. We just didn’t make the plays coming down the stretch.
“That’s promising.”
Plenty of those flaws were on display Saturday — a 12-of-22 performance from the free-throw line, disadvantages in offensive rebounds and second-chance points, a complete zero (0-of-9) behind the arc across an entire game for the first time in almost 13 years.
No one is arguing Indiana will excise every wart between now and season’s end. There are plenty of reasons to keep expectations around this team low for the time being. Fixing intangible problems won’t automatically solve tangible ones.
But as Woodson spoke those words Saturday, he knew his team had just spent eight days (in his own words) soul searching its way through a badly needed bye week. Purdue and Wisconsin were not just ugly losses. They were capitulations that questioned this group’s toughness and togetherness, players’ willingness to fight for one another, and fight back against the weight of those weaknesses dragging Indiana under the water line when things got hard.
Their response: Take a top-15 conference title contender to the wire, holding Illinois under 38% from the floor and keeping both Terrence Shannon and Coleman Hawkins quiet relative to their usual excellence.
Saturday suggested IU might — again, might — have found some of that collective toughness when it was needed most.
“I just feel like we were together as a team today,” Mgbako said. “We played more together, we brought a lot more effort and there was more readiness. Readiness on the ball, on defense and on offense.”
Few Hoosiers acquitted themselves better in this team’s only meeting with Illinois this regular season. Even respecting Reneau’s game-high 21 points before fouling out, Mgbako delivered what might have been the best two-way performance on the floor, and what was almost certainly the best such game of his career.
He finished just 4-of-12 from the floor but made all four free throws (on an afternoon when too many teammates did not). He looked more comfortable on the ball than he has maybe all season. And knowing IU needed to manage one of the best offensive-rebounding teams in the conference and the country, Mgbako finished with a game-best 12 boards, his 12 points to accompany them completing his first career double-double.
“He’s been solid, man,” Woodson said. “When you think back to where he was … when we started with him, he struggled. A lot of young players come into this game, into the college game from high school, and it’s not as easy as you think. And the Big Ten surely is not that easy.
“I think Mack has come a long way in terms of where he started and where he is today. He’s just trying to do the right things on the floor. He’s still learning.”
Give Reneau credit as well. Fouls ultimately took him off the floor, and he will want his 5-of-9 performance from the free-throw line back. But he more than got the better of Hawkins, one of the Big Ten’s most versatile defenders and the player Illinois (15-5, 6-3) hoped would neutralize Indiana’s best post threat.
Even without running mate Kel’el Ware — who Woodson suggested could return to more intensive activity as soon as Sunday — Reneau ran the post for long stretches, keeping the Hoosiers in tight despite their obvious shortcomings elsewhere.
Still, it fell short of enough.
“That was the difference,” Woodson said. “Close games on the road, anywhere, you’ve got to make free throws. We were 12-of-22. That was not good for our ballclub, and we missed them at critical times, when we needed them. …
“There’s a fine line to winning on the road, like make your free throws, don’t go 0-for-9 from behind the 3-point line. We got good looks. We just didn’t make them.”
There will be a temptation to say IU should not make more of Saturday than what it was. Even Woodson himself said results are what matter, and for a team now guaranteed no Quad 1 wins before at least February that is intensely true.
“It’s just tough,” Mgbako said. “A lot of effort, but we just learn from it and move on to the next game.”
What’s more accurate, perhaps, is to suggest Saturday will be what IU makes of it. If these Hoosiers have finally found their line in the sand, if the uncomfortable truths confronted last week have hardened this team, rather than pulled it further apart, then there may yet be time to make something of all this.
So often in a college basketball season, a game is contextualized and defined by what comes after it. Never this winter has that been more true for Indiana. And with two winnable games at home next week (Iowa, Penn State) it may never be more true again.
The Hoosiers might finally have given themselves some sort of platform to drive upward. Now we find out if they can.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU loss at Illinois offers signs of hope... if Hoosiers can take it
