After his team bounced back from its recent slump, Indiana head men’s basketball coach Mike Woodson wouldn’t comment on the outside noise surrounding his program during the week.
The Hoosiers endured back-to-back 25-point losses against Iowa and Illinois, which turned up the volume on Woodson’s critics and the program’s cynics. Fans relentlessly booed him and his players during the home loss to the Fighting Illini, creating a particularly ugly atmosphere at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. But IU got the job done on Friday, coming back for a 77-76 overtime win at Ohio State.
Woodson lauded his team, while rebuking the loud criticism lobbed his direction all week.
“It was a total team effort, man. And we needed it after the two games we just had,” Woodson said after the game. “It just shows you a little bit about the character of our team. But I don’t even want to comment on the outside noise. It’s ridiculous.”
IU (14-5, 5-3 Big Ten) trailed for nearly the entire first half in Columbus. The Hoosiers once again started a game with cold shooting, and Myles Rice played just five minutes in the half after picking up two quick fouls. The only thing IU had going in the opening half, which also carried over after halftime, was that Ohio State couldn’t match up against Oumar Ballo.
The Arizona transfer didn’t receive a suspension after his late-game ejection against Illinois, and he played more effective defense on Friday than he did against the Illini. Ballo was a constant force inside, scoring 21 points on 8-for-14 shooting, along with 15 rebounds, four assists, three turnovers, two blocks, and a steal.
“What Ballo does for our team is unmatchable,” Luke Goode said. “He’s one of a kind in what he can do on the offensive end and the defensive end. Tonight, he brought it on the offensive end and made great passes, found me a couple times weak side, really finished the ball well, and then guarded me while rebounding well. So when we have him playing at an elite level like he did tonight, it’s tough for any big in the country to guard him.”
Goode had a huge night as well.
Indiana desperately needed one of their shooters to get hot, in both of the ugly losses and in Friday’s first half. Mackenzie Mgbako’s rough stretch continued, with his shooting clip falling to 3 for 29 over the last four games. Trey Galloway played better than he did on Tuesday, overall, but still wasn’t shooting especially well.
But the Illinois transfer stepped up in the second half with 13 points, aided by a 3-for-4 mark from 3-point range. He finished the game with a career-high 23 points on 7-for-14 shooting from the field.
“Once you see one go down as a shooter, you get pretty confident. And I got two or three or four,” Goode said. “Shoutout to my teammates for getting me the ball.”
Kanaan Carlyle’s nine points in the second half provided a big spark off the bench, as well. Woodson kept Carlyle on the floor for a career-high 36 minutes, sticking with the Stanford transfer in crunch time over the struggling Mgbako.
But as Woodson said, it was a collective effort in the second half to turn things around. The Hoosiers shot 33 percent from the floor as a team in the first half; that figure rose to an even 50 percent in the second half and overtime combined. IU took smarter shots, which led to a real offensive rhythm for the first time in several games. After trailing by six at halftime, the Hoosiers regained the lead just under five minutes into the second half.
And even when Ohio State made its run and closed the gap, Indiana didn’t panic. Even when Goode and Ballo missed three makable shots inside that could’ve put IU ahead in the closing seconds of regulation, the Hoosiers didn’t collapse in overtime. When they needed a defensive stop most, Anthony Leal made a crucial block on Ohio State’s final possession of overtime, which forced Bruce Thornton to rush a 3-point attempt at the buzzer that ultimately missed.
This was Indiana’s second Quad I win this season. The Hoosiers still have a long way to go for that to mean anything. With eight consecutive Quad I games still ahead, there may still be time for them to get their résumé on track.
But while it’s too early to know if this is the start of something for this team or whether it’s a mere blip on its downward trajectory, Indiana’s comeback at least serves as a reminder that this team is capable enough to make necessary things happen on the court.
“We can learn a lot (from the bounce-back win). We can learn that we do it,” Goode said. “One of the biggest trends of our losses this season is we get down two, three, four possessions and we essentially quit, and we end up being down 30 like that. Tonight, we were down (seven), I think late in the first half. And we came together and said, ‘You know what, let’s change the script, let’s flip the script, and go out and get a win.'”
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