IOWA CITY, Iowa — Why Indiana basketball Does a five-game winning streak end Saturday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena?
Starting point guard Myles Rice blamed the team’s discouraging 85-60 loss to Iowa on an “avalanche” of mistakes.
The problems started right out of the gate as the Hoosiers acted like they were allergic to basketball. They gave up six of their first nine possessions and the sloppy play set the tone for the rest of the night.
Indiana’s starters were primarily to blame — they accounted for 13 of the team’s 16 turnovers, a number that tied the team’s season record on Nov. 10 against Eastern Illinois.
“It puts it in your head that you have to get those plays back and it’s pretty hard to do that and be in the same flow,” Rice said.
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Why effort isn’t to blame for Indiana basketball’s loss to Iowa
It wasn’t the first slow start for IU this season, but coach Mike Woodson didn’t feel his team’s effort (or lack thereof) was a problem Saturday night.
He outlined three areas where IU has fallen short — “when you go on the road in the Big Ten, you can’t turn it over, you have to rebound with your opponent and you have to make shots” — and he spent much of his brief postgame press conference bemoaning his team’s sloppy play.
“I thought we got off to a slow start, but I thought our second unit came in and got us back in the game,” Woodson said. “But when you give them 17 points based on just hand delivery of the basketball, you’re not going to beat a lot of teams in the Big Ten doing that.
“I thought we played pretty solid in half-court defense, but we gave up 26 points but they scored 43 and 17 of them came on our turnovers. Good teams like Iowa, you’re not going to get away with that.
Indiana’s reserves brought the team back from a 23-13 deficit midway through the first half. The Hoosiers even took a brief lead after Bryson Tucker threw down a quick dunk with 8:03 left in the half that punctuated a 13-0 run.
Iowa responded with a 16-0 run and never trailed after regaining the lead. Woodson tried to blunt some of their momentum with a timeout after three straight IU turnovers, but nothing clicked for the Hoosiers.
Indiana shot 40.7% from the field (32.4% in the second half) and was 4 of 16 from 3-point range. The Hoosiers’ only 3-pointer in the second half came with 39 seconds left in the game.
It was the first time the Hoosiers were overwhelmed (37-31) since a loss to Gonzaga.
“Our last road game was against Penn State and I thought we were competitive from the very beginning to the end,” Woodson said. “Tonight we looked totally different, and we can’t have games like that when we go on the road. I mean, you always have to put yourself in a position where you have a chance to win a basketball game and we didn’t give ourselves a chance tonight.
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Indiana basketball hopes Iowa loss is an outlier
Woodson was remarkably calm during his postgame speech as he explained to reporters his team’s struggles. It might have been different if Indiana hadn’t just won five games in a row, including four in the Big Ten.
“We played some good basketball,” Woodson said. “I can’t stay here and complain. Our last five games have been very competitive against some teams, we had to go back and regroup.
Rice followed his coach’s lead.
“I think we played unusually tonight,” he said. “Throughout five games we played really good basketball and hung in there. I think tonight we just came out of ourselves a little bit.”
Was this a bump in the road? Or the start of a downward spiral? Indiana won’t have to wait very long to figure out which version of itself is the real deal.
The Hoosiers’ loss to Iowa was the first of 11 straight games against Quad 1 opponents. Five of their opponents during that stretch are currently ranked in the top 25 in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll.
“We need to go back and regroup,” Woodson said. “The Big Ten is not going anywhere. We have Illinois here soon. We have a few days to prepare and it starts tomorrow at 5 p.m. in training. »
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana reporter for the Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on @michaelniziolek and read all of its coverage by clicking here.
This article was originally published in the Herald-Times: What went wrong for IU basketball in the loss to Iowa? It was an “avalanche” of errors
