Indiana looking to carry over improvement shown at Illinois to this week’s homestand
Just under 90 seconds remained when a tough jumper from Mackenzie Mgbako tied Indiana and Illinois at 62 on Saturday afternoon in Champaign.
The game was firmly in the balance as the Hoosiers were in the mix for their second Big Ten road win. But costly mistakes, including two missed free throws by Xavier Johnson with under a minute to play, foiled Indiana’s chance to pull off the upset.
It was a third straight loss for Indiana, but the team could hold its head up slightly higher this time. The two previous games against Purdue and Wisconsin weren’t pretty. The back-to-back losses were demoralizing enough that Mike Woodson and his team had to do some “soul-searching” in the aftermath.
But against Illinois, the intent on the court was different. The team showed a fight and the solid effort was a step back in the right direction despite the loss.
“Listen, I’m about winning, man. I want to win at all costs,” Woodson said in a hallway of the State Farm Center. “But again, when you go through a Purdue game like we played and Wisconsin when we played in spurts, I thought we were solid all the way through. We just didn’t make the plays down the stretch, and that’s promising.”
Although Saturday’s game ended in a 70-62 loss, Indiana’s effort was much improved. After the Hoosiers got embarrassed against Purdue and then on the road against Wisconsin, the week-long break gave Indiana an opportunity for a reset and improvement.
Indiana put on a competitive performance on the road and, at the same time, showed a sense of urgency. Indiana was coming off a tough couple of games, but against Illinois, it was clear the Hoosiers were hungry for a win.
“We had a week to prepare,” Woodson explained. “I thought they followed the game plan. You know, our switches, we didn’t get burned as much. When we switched, we switched up, and we made the correct defensive effort and plays that we needed to make. Again, there’s a fine for winning on the road. You gotta do almost everything right, like make your free throws, don’t go 0-9 from shooting the three-point ball. We had good looks we just didn’t make them.”
The Hoosiers looked a lot better, but the missed shots from the free-throw line and the perimeter cost them in the end.
At times, Johnson was leading the floor like he has in the past, while Mackenzie Mgbako and Malik Reneau continued to show their progression. But the Hoosiers couldn’t overcome their ten missed free throws and the absence of a perimeter game. Indiana could have been better in those aspects, but at the same time, the performance was much improved from the Purdue and Wisconsin games.
“I just felt like we were together as a team today,” Mgbako said. “We played more together with a lot more effort, and there was more readiness, readiness on the ball on defense and on offense.”
Heading into a new week, Indiana is looking to end its three-game losing streak and also show the spirit and fight it exhibited on Saturday afternoon.
The Hoosiers fell a game below .500 in conference play after the Illinois loss but now will go up against two teams in the bottom half of the Big Ten in Iowa and Penn State.
Purdue and Wisconsin were examples of what a completely disconnected Hoosier team looks like, but the Illinois performance showed that this team is still capable of putting up a fight.
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