IU has used a starting lineup featuring three guards twice this season.
The first time came last week in Maui in a win against St. John’s. The second time came Monday night at Assembly Hall in a 112-70 win against Alcorn State, the fourth worst team in college basketball coming into the game according to kenpom.com.
IU Coach Tom Crean said there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to his decision. He just felt like starting three guards to get IU experience with different lineups.
“We want to get better at it,” Crean said. “We just want to do different things, so I made the decision.”
But while IU may have started with three guards, three guards weren’t on the court for the majority of the game Monday. In total, there were three Hoosier guards on the court at the same time for 17:15 of IU’s win.
The longest stretch of time was for 12:46 to start the game, a period that saw IU outrebounded 12-6 and outscored in the paint 14-10.
Those Alcorn State points in the paint came a variety of ways. There were drives to the basket with finishes over an IU defender’s arm trying to block the shot, and there were baskets from point blank range because of offensive rebounds made possible by IU defenders trying to block shots.
In the middle of the first half IU had 10 total rebounds. Alcorn State had 10 offensive rebounds.
“We had too many guys rallying to the ball trying to make a play which is not a bad thing,” Crean said, “but at the same time, when the ball is missed there’s nobody there to grab that rebound.”
The problem went away in the second half, with IU allowing only three more offensive rebounds after Alcorn State had 12 in the first half.
But what the three-guard lineup allowed the Hoosiers to do was increase the pressure, both offensively and defensively. On offense, they could start the offense quickly and had more players on the court who excel at making jump shots.
Sophomore guard James Blackmon Jr. is one of those players, and he finished with 33 points on 11-of-15 shooting, including making six of his nine 3-point attempts. But he credited his increase in production offensively to his defense, a defense that was able to press Alcorn State more with three guards on the floor.
With those three guards come more turnovers for the other team. IU forced 13 of them. Crean said Blackmon Jr. had 15 deflections throughout the game.
But ultimately, the three guard lineup was an experimentation, Crean testing a lineup he might have to use in the future against a better team, and a chance for his guards to improve on an overall disappointing performance in Maui last week.
“We can switch it up many ways,” Blackmon Jr. said. “I feel like when we do have three guards the pressure is high. We also watched film over the Maui trip and were hard on ourselves and wanted to improve.”
