Saving IU's season will require Mike Woodson’s best coaching job since return to alma mater

Mike Woodson ended Wednesday night looking backward, not just to the ugliness of his team’s performance in an 86-70 loss at Nebraska, but much further.

On a night when his team’s most fundamental weaknesses were badly exposed by Keisei Tominaga (game-high 28 points) and the Cornhuskers, Woodson openly acknowledged a frustrating truth.

This Indiana team does not look like the ones he took to the NCAA tournament in each of the past two seasons, because it can’t do well enough the things Woodson needs to be non-negotiables for his methods to succeed.

IU player ratings: 'Our starting two guards were awful tonight.'

If that’s going to change, it will require Woodson’s best coaching job across these past three seasons.

“This team is not as good as we were defensively the last two years,” Woodson told reporters in Lincoln in the aftermath of a humbling Big Ten restart. “A lot of it is because we do have new faces, but we’ve got to overcome that. I’ve got to get them over the hump.”

That’s the best place to start, both Wednesday and more broadly.

The Hoosiers (10-4, 2-1) lost their first game of the new year emphatically, Nebraska rolling up 86 points on close to 1.25 points per possession. Nebraska (12-2, 2-1) scored 41 in the first half and yet managed to be more efficient in the second, the Huskers sinking eight 3s and riding Tominaga’s center-of-the-flame-hot hand to their first victory over Indiana in nearly four years.

All the warning signs of too-close-for-comfort nonconference wins — and ugly defeats to UConn and Auburn — manifested on a night when IU stranded its starting front court (34 points, 16 rebounds, seven assists) with virtually no help from anywhere else.

“When I look at the stat sheet,” Woodson said, “the perimeter play, they outplayed our starting two guards, who were awful tonight.”

One of those was Xavier Johnson, who can at least be relieved some of his culpability given he just returned from a long injury layoff. Yet that return did little to auger noticeable improvement at either end — Johnson finished with no points, three assists and four turnovers across 15 minutes, finishing minus-15 for the evening.

He was hardly alone. Only three Hoosiers scored in double figures. Just one starter, Malik Reneau, finished above water in the plus-minus. The Hoosiers committed 19 turnovers that led directly, per the box score, to 27 points, the stat perhaps most perplexing for Woodson postgame.

“I thought that was the difference in the game,” he said.

Throw in Nebraska’s 10-1 edge in fastbreak points and you’ve pretty much got it. The Cornhuskers led for more than 33 minutes Wednesday, in handing Indiana its first conference loss of the season.

Road wins are hard to come by, even in a Big Ten probably below its recent standard. There’s no shame in getting your paint scratched away from home.

But Wednesday’s loss only deepened concerns that have existed for this team virtually since the season began.

Some fans point to 3-point numbers, but Woodson’s teams won without taking a high volume of 3-pointers in the past two seasons. And yes, the loss of Trayce Jackson-Davis was always going to be difficult to absorb, but the post is the only place IU gets consistent production at the moment. And not just in scoring or rebounding — Kel’el Ware and Malik Reneau are two of Indiana’s best creative threats, and two of its most dangerous 3-point shooters right now as well.

What separates Indiana from the immediate previous versions of itself are more fundamental and, therefore, on Jan. 4, near the season’s halfway point, more concerning.

After finishing in the top 50 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency across Woodson’s first two seasons, IU is outside the top 100 as of Wednesday night, per KenPom. The Hoosiers are particularly poor defending the 3-point line, they don’t turn opponents over enough to make up for it and frankly, for a team that plays such a large, long, athletic front line, they don’t rebound the ball well enough defensively either.

Meanwhile, this season’s turnover rate (18.1%) is almost a full percentage point higher than IU’s previous worst under Woodson. In Big Ten play alone — admittedly a small sample size — that number leaps to 23%, worst in the league.

“You’ve got to defend, you’ve got to rebound and you can’t turn it over,” Woodson said.

Trouble is, those are either things Indiana can’t do effectively, or does do too often.

Even through their limitations, Woodson’s teams in his first two years in Bloomington could generally compensate for enough of those shortcomings because when they needed them they could lean on Woodson’s core pillars: dig in for key stops, be strong with the ball, give away nothing cheap. The Hoosiers could get outmatched but, by the business end of Woodson’s second season with that group, rarely outworked.

This one’s grasp on those core values is tenuous at best. Woodson acknowledged Wednesday night his team is still growing through a fair bit of turnover. But he also knows the conference won’t wait for the Hoosiers to get comfortable.

If this team gets where it wants to go — and that’s not just a casual “if” right now — it will require Woodson’s best coaching job since coming back to his alma mater.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball, Mike Woodson have work to do after Nebraska loss