The first six weeks of Darian DeVries’ first season coaching Indiana men’s basketball brought plenty of ups and downs.
The Hoosiers, sporting a completely overhauled roster from last season, have had games where they’ve looked unstoppable. Everything on both ends of the court flows so seamlessly on those nights, and opponents struggle to keep up and then stop the bleeding. There have also been some ugly wins, where the final score doesn’t reflect how Indiana actually played, and some cracks showed.
But IU’s games against Louisville and Kentucky always looked like the litmus tests on the non-conference schedule; those two contests would show were this team stands, for better or for worse. The Hoosiers entered that stretch after dropping their Big Ten opener at Minnesota, and they enjoyed a dominant win over Penn State in between the two.
Ultimately, Indiana turned in two disappointing performances against UL and UK. The Cardinals blitzed IU early and rode that advantage to a nine-point win; and on Saturday, at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., the Wildcats dominated the second half en route to a 72-60 win.
“I thought their (Kentucky’s) effort, their physicality in the second half was really good. They certainly cranked it up a notch in that second half, and we needed to respond to it,” DeVries said after the game. “But I thought their aggressiveness defensively, their aggressiveness on the offensive glass was ultimately the factor.”
If the Louisville and Kentucky games revealed anything about the Hoosiers (8-3), it’s that they have work to do to overcome their weaknesses.
Indiana is shooting 36.5 percent from 3-point range as a team this season — a solid mark, inside the top 70 nationally. But the outside shooting hasn’t been consistent. There’s been a lot of fluctuation. On an on-night, the Hoosiers are electric from beyond the arc; but on an off-night, they’re really off.
IU shot 4 for 24 from 3-point range against Kentucky, a season-worst 16.7 percent. But this was already the team’s sixth game this year finishing under 33 percent on threes. And for a team built to live and die by 3-point shooting, that amount of inconsistency is troubling.
That variation allows Indiana’s weaknesses to become bigger factors when shots aren’t falling. Turnover differential proved decisive in Lexington — IU committed a season-high 18, while UK finished with just four — but that hasn’t been a regular issue for DeVries’ group.
But defensive rebounding, fouling, and handling physicality have been recurring concerns, and those all played big roles in the two big non-conference losses. Louisville’s aggressive defense caused clear problems for the Hoosiers, and they struggled with that again when Kentucky got more physical in the second half Saturday.
Indiana has run into foul trouble regularly through the first six weeks. The Hoosiers are averaging 18.9 fouls per game, which would be their worst mark since 2016-17. That played a huge factor against Kentucky: Lamar Wilkerson picked up a fourth foul just over two minutes into the second half, which allowed the Wildcats to flip the game around.
“Foul trouble is foul trouble. You have it every night,” DeVries said. “You gotta figure out a way to deal with it. We just didn’t do a good enough job with it.”
The Wildcats grabbed 14 offensive rebounds — the fifth time this season IU has allowed double-digit offensive boards to its opponent — and they turned those into 18 second-chance points.
Indiana’s roster is undersized; Reed Bailey is listed 6-foot-10, and Sam Alexis is 6-foot-9. They won’t have height advantages in the post against most high-major opponents, and they often don’t play physically enough to make up for the size. The Hoosiers’ question mark has always been rebounding since their roster came together in the offseason, along with whether they’d be able to shoot well enough to make up for any concerns on the glass. And those red flags haven’t gone away.
“The offensive rebounds, they (Kentucky) just went and got them,” DeVries said. “We didn’t do a good enough job of creating space and getting bodies and going and securing the ball.”
Indiana has two non-conference games remaining before diving into the thick of Big Ten play. Its Dec. 22 opponent, Siena, is the highest-ranked mid-major on KenPom (No. 154), while the team faces one of the worst teams in Division I on Dec. 20 in Chicago State (KenPom No. 357).
IU, itself, is ranked No. 26 in KenPom after the Kentucky loss. The Hoosiers’ best non-conference win will be Kansas State, currently KenPom No. 70. The losses to Louisville and Kentucky are missed opportunities for résumé-boosting wins, and those results leave Indiana with less margin for error in the Big Ten.
There’s still three months of season ahead, so the Hoosiers have plenty of time to figure things out. But with most of the non-conference slate behind them, one thing is clear.
Indiana has work to do.
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