Trayce Jackson-Davis hides when IU needs him most? 'I'm trying to change that narrative.'

DAYTON, Ohio – Trayce Jackson-Davis had a confession to make.

He’d just been asked to cast his mind back to the first moments when he, as a young basketball player, imagined himself playing in the NCAA tournament. Jackson-Davis remembered dreaming of being in a tight game, with a championship on the line, knocking down crucial free throws to clinch a title. There was, for IU’s all-conference forward, only one hitch.

“I won’t say what team it was,” he said, smiling sheepishly, “because it wasn’t Indiana.”

What I'm Watching: How will Hoosiers handle dangerous Wyoming in First Four?

'Some disrespect': Indiana irked at NCAA draw, but it's in, and that's all that matters.

IU fans can forgive his younger self. The Jackson-Davis that will lead the Hoosiers on the floor Tuesday night against Wyoming here, in the NCAA tournament’s First Four, has come to embody what those fans hope is the beginning of a bright new future under their program-legend head coach.

It’s been a validating week for Jackson-Davis.

By his own admission he had one foot and four toes out the door before a one-on-one meeting with Woodson last spring prompted him to stay. Jackson-Davis talked then about wanting to leave a legacy as a player remembered for helping restore Indiana to prominence, both in the Big Ten and nationally. That always had to start with this, a return to the NCAA tournament for the first time in six years.

At very least, Jackson-Davis has done that.

“When I took the job and Trayce allowed me to coach him, I told him in front of his parents that I’m not an easy coach, and I’m gonna challenge you and push you,” Woodson said Monday. “If you’ll allow me to do that, I think you’ll grow as a player. He’s done that.

“I know there’s days he walks out of that gym pissed at me, but at the end of the day, it’s just coaching. As long as he knows I love him and I’m in his corner, that means more to me than anything.”

Insider Q&A: How Can Wyoming hurt IU? Why does Big Ten struggle in March Madness?

Doyel: Mike Woodson has returned belief to IU. That's a great place to start.

That does not mean there haven’t been rocky moments. Growth rarely comes without growing pains.

Jackson-Davis began the season excellently, improving his scoring efficiency and growing his impact as a rebounder and rim protector.

He has played a central role in the Hoosiers’ improvement at that end of the floor. After they finished last season allowing 1.058 points per possession in Big Ten play, the Hoosiers have cut that number to 1.008 PPP this winter. That’s an improvement of five points per 100 possessions, and the best number in the conference in league games alone this season.

But it hasn’t promised success, either for Jackson-Davis or his team. The same game — Illinois at home — that began a five-game February losing streak that nearly derailed this season also put Jackson-Davis into a self-confessed funk.

Jackson-Davis did not disappear on his team. There were still superlative performances against Wisconsin and Rutgers. But by his own admission, he was not his dominant self, and it showed when his team needed him.

“There's been a lot of talk, especially the last two years of me not showing up at the end of the season,” Jackson-Davis said after IU’s win against Illinois on Friday. “I'm trying to change that narrative.”

He has.

Across three games in last week’s Big Ten tournament, Jackson-Davis set single-tournament program records in the event with 76 points and 25 rebounds. He was the driving force behind Thursday’s comeback win over Michigan, before playing Illinois All-American Kofi Cockburn to a standstill in the Hoosiers’ upset victory Friday.

Jackson-Davis’ 31 points and 10 rebounds weren’t quite enough to dispatch of Iowa in the Big Ten semifinal. But given the Hoosiers’ (20-13) inclusion in the First Four this week, it’s likely they needed every ounce of their good work in Indianapolis to bring them here.

“It's been a roller coaster ride for him,” Woodson said. “I've watched him. Really, as of a month ago it was so intense, you could see it in his face. I mean, if these guys would stay the hell away from social media, life might be a little bit better. …

“There's a lot of things that are at stake. And I get it. It's a part of playing this game. My whole thing to him is, ‘Hey, you can't wear it. You've got to cherish the moment and still grind and work. You can't run from it.’ And I thought he stepped up big time, man, in the Big Ten tournament. I mean he took it to another level.”

Jackson-Davis’ improved performances have coincided with improvement from an Indiana team that’s 4-4 in its past eight but has impressed even in some of those losses. That growth has been prompted both by Jackson-Davis’ expanded impact and his pick-and-roll partnership with point guard Xavier Johnson, himself surging into the business end of March.

Across the past four weeks, the pair have found a new level of success in Woodson’s ball screen offense.

“We tried to run a lot of pick-and-rolls (earlier in the season),” Woodson said, “but X wasn’t there yet. X has grown so much that it’s allowed me to play what I came here to play on offense.”

Johnson’s improved performances have been the result. But the cause traces back in part to a meeting Jackson-Davis initiated with his coach weeks ago. Woodson maintains an open-door policy with his players, and when Jackson-Davis came to him asking for a renewed emphasis on the pick-and-roll offense, heavily featuring him alongside Johnson, Woodson listened.

“We struggled with the pick-and-roll early on in the season,” Woodson said. “I just kept piecing it in here and there, here and there. And now X, he’s grown. He’s figured it out. … He knows when he’s got it, he knows when he doesn’t have it, and he knows when the lob or the pocket pass is there, the throwback.

“All of that takes time.”

Time is the one thing running short now.

It almost ran out over the weekend. The Hoosiers waited until the last region was revealed to find out they were among the last teams selected into the first NCAA tournament any of these players have experienced firsthand.

They are here now, though. There’s talk of a chip on their shoulder, at not being selected straight into the full field, and lots of gratitude at the collective achievement of what everyone saw as the most basic, important outcome of this season — ending that drought, and reaching the tournament.

If the Hoosiers win Tuesday night, they’ll grab a charter flight in Dayton and chase the moon across the sky to Portland, Ore., where they’ll be expected to play roughly 36 hours after they land. To a man, they’re tremendously appreciative of the opportunity to play for the chance to board that flight.

Indiana faces Wyoming on the one-year anniversary of Archie Miller’s firing. In the uncertain days between Miller’s dismissal and Woodson’s hiring, more than a half-dozen Hoosiers entered the transfer portal, the rumor mill spun in circles and the question was asked more than once whether Indiana had just paid $10 million to make itself worse.

The journey back to stability, then on to success, began with a meeting between the program legend hired to restore its greatness and a player who wants to become one in his own right.

When Jackson-Davis envisions that postseason glory now, there’s no questioning what uniform he’s wearing. It’s the one he hopes he’ll wear out in the next three weeks, starting Tuesday night.

“Even just what happened in the Big Ten tournament solidified me coming back, and how it was such a great decision, just the joy that that brought me and doing that with my teammates,” Jackson-Davis said. “Experiencing that was just huge.

“But, again, you can't get too high. You can't get too high on yourself, because we still have a lot of work to do. And we're playing here tomorrow. We're ready to get up and go.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU basketball: Trayce Jackson-Davis finally gets March Madness chance