EVANSTON, Ill. — After Indiana men’s basketball closed Wednesday’s first half on an 18-2 run, Northwestern head coach Chris Collins laid out the stakes for his team.
Northwestern, coming off a disappointing overtime loss at Michigan, couldn’t afford to let a game like this slip away in a relentless Big Ten schedule. Collins knew that’s how this contest was trending, and he made that clear to his Wildcats. And in the locker room at halftime, he challenged them.
“I said, ‘Guys, it’s not panic time, but it’s extreme sense of urgency time,'” Collins said after the game. “I just told them, ‘This is a season-defining half coming up. We can choose to have this thing go either way.'”
The message resonated. Northwestern came out with much more urgency in the second half than Indiana. And the end result was a familiarly ugly feeling for the Hoosiers: a 79-70 loss at Welsh-Ryan Arena.
IU (14-6, 5-4 Big Ten) has now dropped five straight games to Northwestern ((12-7, 3-5). And the Wildcats — aside from the newly added west coast programs the Hoosiers have not yet faced this season — are the lone Big Ten team Mike Woodson has yet to beat in his fourth season in Bloomington.
“I can’t go back in the past,” Woodson said about the losing streak against Northwestern. “Bottom line is we were playing well enough to win a game today, and we just didn’t answer the bell the second half.”
After Indiana played a solid first half, particularly on the defensive end, everything just fell apart in the second half.
The Hoosiers allowed Northwestern to score just 0.833 points per possession in the first half. But that figure skyrocketed to 1.688 in the second half, a number that would lead to defeat in any conference game.
The Wildcats shot 62.5 percent from the field after halftime, with only four turnovers. They went 9 for 14 from 3-point range in the second half, and their 13 threes on the night are the most IU has allowed in any game so far this season. Four Northwestern players scored in double-figures — in the second half alone.
Simply put, Wednesday’s second half was one of the more disastrous defensive halves the Hoosiers have played all season.
“I feel like the communication was a little bit lost towards the second half,” sophomore Mackenzie Mgbako said. “We weren’t getting to our spots. And when they picked up the ball and spread it out, we’re supposed to be with our man. I fell victim to that. So it’s just being able to stay locked in and stay focused for a full 40 minutes, and not let the game get away from us.”
Northwestern regained the lead less than four minutes into the second half. IU did fight back with a 10-0 surge in the middle of the period to briefly go back ahead, but that only set the table for the big Wildcat rally: a 21-4 run that all but put the game away.
The defensive collapse put Indiana’s offense in a difficult position to keep up. Mgbako finally put up the half he’s desperately needed amidst his 4 for 29 slump over the last four games, with 14 points on 5-for-8 shooting including a 3-for-5 mark from 3-point range. He finished the game with 20 points. Illinois transfer Luke Goode added 11 points in the half. IU scored 1.147 points per possession in the second half, a tangible improvement from its 0.969 in the first half.
But with the way the Hoosiers defended on the other end, their offense was swimming against a powerful current. Add in 17 turnovers on the night — the team’s second-most in any game this year, trailing only the Louisville loss — and it was too much for Indiana to overcome.
“We have a hell of a defensive (first) half, and then we come out and we give up 54 points and we pile on the turnovers. I mean, it’s just a bad combination. We just didn’t play well the second half,” Woodson said. “We played a good game on the road and beat Ohio State, and then come here and got an opportunity to win a game and we let it get away the second half. You have to give them credit, they played their butts of in the second half and we didn’t.”
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