IU basketball defensive deficiencies hold Hoosiers back

Mike Woodson gently corrected a reporter after the game when asked about the run that ultimately buried his team in defeat Friday night in the first true road game of the season.

The question referred to a period of about 6½ minutes toward the end of the second half of Nebraska’s 85-68 victory, a run in which the Cornhuskers outscored Indiana 17-1 right up to the final goal. What, according to the question asked, broke late?

Woodson rewound to the beginning.

“It didn’t start late,” the fourth-year IU coach said. “We had no defensive presence at the start of the game. We have to continue to work on this to fix the problem.”

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Indiana fans can be forgiven for their impatience at this point.

Friday night marked the Hoosiers’ third loss of the season. They are now 8-3, 1-1 in Big Ten play and appear no closer to resolving the core issues between them and the still-significant ceiling for a talented roster.

Some of IU’s problems are interchangeable – on different nights they struggled with turnovers, 3-point shots, defensive rebounds and other things.

The only constant that holds these three losses (by a total of 61 points) together is defensive weakness.

Woodson announced after the worst of the aforementioned defeats, a 28-point loss to what turned out to be a sluggish Louisville team, that he thought he had galvanized his team’s defense. He said that that afternoon in the Bahamas he brought the Hoosiers to the island thinking they were where he wanted them on that end of the floor and Louisville tore them apart.

The next day, Gonzaga outscored them with 57 points in the first half. On Friday night, Nebraska (7-2, 1-1) performed similarly, shooting more than 61% from the field and nearly 63% on two-pointers alone.

It was the first time the Cornhuskers broke the 60 percent mark in conference play since 2015, but it’s the latter number that should worry Woodson more.

Over the last four seasons, IU’s 2-point defense has progressively deteriorated, and that trend is expected to continue this season.

Right now, it’s far too easy to drive against Indiana, score against Indiana, and take games away from Indiana, all of which points to something more fundamental than fundamentally poor post defense. The Hoosiers are being torn apart by the paint because the entire defensive structure is failing.

It’s no coincidence that an opponent’s three best 2-point shooting performances in a game were the Hoosiers’ three losses.

Here, too, it’s not about individual errors. There are some and always will be. Basketball is a game with a lot of ball possession. Mistakes are inevitable.

But the correlation between these numbers is not a coincidence, even in a small sample.

Through the first 11 games of this season, IU is ranked 252nd^nd Nationwide in opponents’ assists as a percentage of field goals made, a measure of how often an opposing team’s baskets are assisted.

Woodson said Friday night he can live with the other team taking tough shots — he specifically referenced some of the baskets Nebraska’s Brice Williams made on his way to a game-high 30 points — and that’s fair.

All too often they aren’t tough games because Indiana doesn’t force tough plays. In case you’re wondering, the number of assists on field goals made has also gotten worse over the last four years. From 93^approx 101 nationally in Woodson’s first year^st his second, on 242^nd his third and currently ten points worse. Assisted baskets are often easy, and that’s certainly true for IU’s opponents right now.

Forgive the flood of statistics, analyzes and rankings. But the eye test also tells you what the numbers mean.

Indiana doesn’t defend the ball or ball screens well at all, resulting in too much penetration. This either allows for cheap looks around the rim as it helps defenders give post players free rein for easy dump-and-dunks, or it opens the floor for textbook kickouts for open shooters. Because if the defense fails, help has to come from somewhere, and that means somewhere else there is room for attack.

One final number: In IU’s three losses this season, the Hoosiers have been outscored 130-84 in the league. Unsurprisingly, Louisville — the team least capable of scoring to the basket of the three but most successful at destroying Indiana’s on-ball half-court defense — had the largest lead at 48-20. Nebraska finished 36-24 in the same column Friday night.

Despite the Hoosiers starting two all-conference quality post players and despite a backcourt with multiple guards versed in pick-and-roll situations, IU was routed in key moments.

At times it was a reflection of poor offense. Each time it was a reflection of poor defense.

It’s easy to look at these numbers and decipher them. Silo them, each as its own problem to solve.

That’s not how basketball works. Everything flows together. Offense and defense are an ever-changing life cycle, each feeding off the other, for better or worse.

Indiana is poor around the rim right now because it is weak at the rim. Due to the poor navigation of the ball screens, it misses out on too many layups and dunks. His rim protectors don’t make much of a difference because teams pull them out of position and attack them where they’re uncomfortable.

The defense all too often collapses from the outside in, crashing against the Hoosiers when they need it most.

“They made good shots, but we have to be better defensively,” Woodson said Friday night after the loss at Nebraska. “I’m on these guys all the time. We’re working on defense. I know the defense wins. Especially if you don’t make shots, you stay in the ball game. Tonight they had it both ways. We didn’t make any shots and we weren’t good enough defensively.”

There will be errors.

The road conditions are difficult. Seasons wear players down. Shooters have off nights, like Indiana did on Friday when they went 8 of 35 from 3.

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