NASSAU, Bahamas – There were a lot of things we didn’t like about the Indiana basketball season last year, but the one thing that was hardest to digest was the constant failures by 20 or more points.

It was embarrassing, the escape. And it was hard to take, because as Tom Crean always said, “This is Indiana.”

The Hoosiers lost five of their 14 games by 20 or more points a year ago. They weren’t competitive and it stank. The final straw was a 93-66 loss to Nebraska in the Big Ten Tournament in mid-March, and the Hoosiers folded. They surrendered and turned down an NIT postseason bid, hoping to recruit a whole new team so that something like this would never happen again.

And they did. Indiana brought in seven new players, many with fantastic resumes, thanks to great recruiting persistence and a huge bucket of zero money. These 2024-25 Hoosiers should be different, Big Ten title chasers, nationally ranked and supposedly entertaining to watch.

The glitches should be over.

But after four easy wins earlier this season, the Hoosiers finally played someone decent on Wednesday, opening the Battle 4 Atlantis against a Louisville team that was also regrouping in the portal. We were all looking forward to the first big test in Indiana, even if it was on a Wednesday at lunchtime.

And it took all of two hours to completely deflate an entire fan base after the Hoosiers were defeated 89-61. And this score doesn’t even do it justice. It was MUCH WORSE than that. They trailed by 38 points at one point in the second half, and it looked like they didn’t care at all.

You can put all the worst adjectives together and they would apply to this loss. Because as embarrassing and disgusting as all those bankruptcy losses were a year ago, this was far worse for one simple reason:

It shouldn’t happen anymore.

It was embarrassing. Our first five adjectives also include “disgusting,” “disheartening,” “disturbing,” and “concerning.”

Right now the seizures are the most worrying because we thought all these fresh bodies would make a big difference. We really thought two high-profile guard transfers – Myles Rice and Kanaan Carlyle – would make Indiana competitive. They should be the difference-makers for an Indiana team that had the worst guard play in the Big Ten a year ago.

But the performance of Indiana’s guards on Wednesday was far worse than at any outing a year ago. Rice was 1 of 11 from the field and missed his first 10 shots. His last shot didn’t go in until it bounced off the rim and backboard about four times.

Carlyle didn’t score at all and had four turnovers in 14 minutes. He was so bad that Woodson had to bench him.

But Trey Galloway, a fifth-grader, didn’t do anything either. He played 20 minutes and didn’t score a single point. Rice, Carlyle, Galloway and freshman Bryson Tucker combined to go 0-for-13 in the first half. Tucker had a couple of baskets in the second half and that was it.

It’s one thing to struggle to score in games. We don’t have to like it, but it happens. But that wasn’t nearly as bad as the attempt to defend the three, which wasn’t there. Louisville made 10 three-pointers.

And overall sales, which shouldn’t have been a problem this year, were immensely troubling. Indiana had 23 turnovers and a lot of them were really ugly. The overtaking was so bad that it looked like they had never been on the same floor together before. Sure, there are a lot of new faces in this squad and they’re trying to get used to each other – but that can’t be used as an excuse anymore.

And do you know why? Because Louisville, which has even more new faces than Indiana, looked like a smoothly running machine. They looked great. Indiana looked terrible. Two teams in the same situation, one gets it right. And another does it very wrong.

Woodson has a real problem right now. Many of the fans in Hoosier Nation began to turn against him last year when double-digit losses began to pile up. Many wanted him fired.

And for good reason, in their eyes.

The brief, however, was to finalize that roster, and to be fair, Woodson and his staff did just that. Their transfer portal haul was ranked No. 2 in the country by 247 Sports, just behind John Calipari’s stint at Arkansas when he took many of his Kentucky players with him.

No. 2 in the country. Let that sink in.

The Hoosiers were ranked 17th in the country in the preseason Associated Press poll and climbed to No. 14 this week. They were considered a Big Ten contender and a strong team capable of postseason perseverance .

And it all went up in smoke in the Bahamas in about two hours.

Sure, it’s just a defeat, but it seems to be much more than that, doesn’t it? I mean, South Carolina’s home win by 16 points a few Saturdays ago was nice because they’re at least a middle-of-the-pack SEC team.

Louisville is primed for a quick turnaround with new coach Pat Kelsey, but they are a mediocre ACC team themselves and were ranked No. 9 in the 18-team league’s preseason polls. It should have been a fun, entertaining and exciting game. Indiana was a 2.5-point favorite.

It was nothing like that. It was a real shock

Here’s how bad it is. With 4:36 left in the first half, Louisville’s lead was just four points (31-27). But over the next 17 minutes of play, the Cardinals outscored Indiana 47-13.

47-13!

This is absolutely embarrassing.

Indiana has one of the easiest non-conference schedules in the country this season, and outside of the South Carolina game, their only real test should come in the Bahamas.

But it shouldn’t work that way.

Indiana should beat Louisville in the first round, then show its mettle as a national power against No. 3 Gonzaga in the second round and perhaps against Arizona, a preseason top-10 team, in the finale.

That’s not happening now.

And that makes things worse. Indiana now has to play Gonzaga on Thursday after the Bulldogs were stunned just hours after Indiana’s overtime loss at West Virginia.

What happens if the Hoosiers lose by 30 or more points again on Thursday? Seriously, Gonzaga is very good and it could happen. Could Indiana’s season completely implode in about 30 hours?

It’s amazing to think that this could be true. We think Mike Woodson will have a hard time sleeping tonight.

Thursday can’t come soon enough. But that might not be good. We feel like we learned a lot about the Hoosiers from the loss in Louisville. Maybe by this time Thursday we’ll know everything we need to know.