A lot of questions regarding the state of IU basketball, including which postseason tournament the Hoosiers will play in, will be answered in the upcoming weeks.
As of now, IU is a lock to go to the NIT, a 32-team tournament that is a clear step down from the NCAA Tournament.
As losers of five of their last six, the defending Big Ten champions have dug themselves into a big hole and are currently tied for 10th place in the conference. IU’s path doesn’t get any easier.
Starting at Minnesota on Wednesday, IU will play four of its last five games on the road. While IU has only won one true road game all season at Penn State, it may have to win out and make a run in the Big Ten tournament to be considered by the NCAA Tournament committee as a team that is worthy for the field of 68.
“The maturity issue for us, which we’ve fought all year, has really discombobulated us a bit,” IU Coach Tom Crean said on his weekly radio show. “When we’re not making shots, you’ve gotta have the mental toughness to come back down and string multiple stops together. You can’t lose your focus and energy because you’re not seeing the ball go through the basket.”
In late September, IU’s lone senior, forward Collin Hartman, went down with a knee injury in practice that required surgery. Hartman has been out ever since.
From that moment, Crean turned to his junior guards, James Blackmon Jr., Robert Johnson and Josh Newkirk to become leaders on the team. Now, as the number of remaining games become fewer and mistakes loom larger, Crean is still looking for a leader.
After the loss to Michigan, Crean said the juniors have no ability to look past themselves.
The foundation of IU basketball is planted on leadership and when leadership lacks, it affects all facets of the game. What it affects the most is turnovers — when there are no leaders on a team, decision making is often compromised.
Due to the lack of leadership, Crean said his team is still working on things in practice it shouldn’t be doing in the middle of February.
“In all honesty, what really bothers me the most is I think we’ve done a pretty good job over a period of time of really teaching basketball IQ,” Crean said. “There’s times it looks like we haven’t done it at all. That I take very personally. I take it hard, and that’s why we just come back every day.”
Minnesota is 6-6 in conference play with junior guard Nate Mason and freshman guard Amir Coffey leading the way with a combined 26.7 points per game. The Gophers started the season 15-2 and 3-1 in the Big Ten until they hit a five-game losing skid in the middle of the Big Ten schedule.
Since their losing streak, the Gophers have won three in a row.
Minnesota shuts down teams on defense. The Gophers boast the second best field goal percentage defense and the best 3-point percentage defense in the Big Ten. Three-point shooting has been reliable for IU all year, but in the past two games, the shooting has been an issue.
IU was 12 of 43 from beyond the arc in its last two games against Purdue and Michigan, and its top two 3-point threats, Blackmon Jr. and Johnson, are a combined five of 23 from downtown.
“At the end of the day, the thing that you put at the top of the umbrella, and I should say it’s defense, but we’re not making open shots,” Crean said. “We’re shooting too many pull-ups because we’re not getting enough separation from the defense. Some of it is in our set-ups, some of it is in not waiting for the screen, rushing, those types of things, rather than doing our work early.”
If the Hoosiers are to make the NCAA Tournament they’ll have to start the trek with a road win in a place where Crean has only won twice as IU’s head coach.
Last season’s Big Ten championship team pulled out a win at Minnesota but needed help from senior leaders Yogi Ferrell and Nick Zeisloft. That Minnesota team ended with two wins in conference play.
Given the leadership and shooting issues the Hoosiers are having, it will be exponentially more difficult for them to pull out a win on the road Wednesday against the stout Gopher defense.
The game against the Gophers will go a long way toward answering the question of where IU will be playing its postseason basketball, but it might take the next five contests to answer an even larger question — who will be IU’s head coach next season?
