IU Coach Tom Crean said the most disappointing thing from Saturday night’s Crossroad Classic matchup against Butler was IU’s defensive shot challenges.
Butler leading scorer Kelan Martin didn’t attempt a field goal for nearly the first 10 minutes of the game, but when he drained his first one, they just kept coming for the 6-foot-7 junior sharp shooter. IU went down 14 at the break and didn’t make a shot in eight attempts from beyond the arc in the first 20 minutes.
The defensive intensity picked up a little in the second half and the Hoosiers started to knock down a couple of long-range buckets. But when it was all over, the Hoosiers had allowed 1.19 points per possession, the highest amount for them all year, and No. 18 Butler handed No. 9 IU its second loss of the season 83-78.
“It’s the second time this year where we let our lack of offense affect us on the other end, especially in the first half,” Crean said. “We’re right in the game, I wasn’t even fearful at all and I knew we would make shots in the second half and 14 didn’t seem like a big margin to me. I never liked our spirit defending, and it’s disappointing.”
Martin finished the night with 28 points and didn’t attempt a shot in the final 12 minutes of the game. Crean said it wasn’t until the end of the game when a player wanted to match up against Butler’s big-time scorer.
“We never got him off,” Crean said about Martin. “He’s a straight-line driver. We wanted him to change direction. We didn’t get that. We wanted to bring him into some traps. We didn’t get that. I think I’m going to be really, really, really, disappointed when I look at the film and see the fact that having a hand up is not good enough at this level.”
Coming into Saturday’s contest, the Hoosiers had the advantage in the rebounding category while the Bulldogs had the upper hand when it came to turnovers. During the game IU won the rebounding contest by 16 but lost the turnover margin by seven.
Butler cashed 13 IU turnovers into 17 points on the other end while Martin committed five of six turnovers for Butler throughout the course of the game.
Crean elected to go with junior guard Robert Johnson to defend Martin at the beginning of the game. When it got down to the late stages, junior guard Josh Newkirk was the man to try and stop Martin.
Aside from a poor night offensively, just nine points on three-of-11 shooting for Newkirk, Crean had praise for junior guard’s defensive abilities.
“He wasn’t very good,” Crean said about Newkirk. “But he did the best job on Martin at the end of the game. In retrospect I probably should have done it earlier. Rob did a decent job to start the game, but we didn’t keep that up.”
IU was hampered with injuries but Crean made sure that that was no excuse for the way they played Saturday night. Sophomore forward OG Anunoby made his return from an ankle injury after sitting out three games and fellow sophomore forward Juwan Morgan was cleared hours before the game after suffering an injury in practice earlier in the week.
Morgan started for the fourth straight game and picked up a career high with four blocks while Anunoby came off the bench in his return, but it took him a little bit to get into his groove on both ends of the ball.
Crean’s biggest takeaway from this game is that his team didn’t guard well enough and with as hot as Martin was from the field, it takes more than just putting a hand up.
“We gave them rhythm shots,” junior guard James Blackmon Jr. said. “We didn’t have our hands up all the time. He got high and we had our hands down, and we just gave him rhythm, open shots, and that’s what scorers need.”
