Indiana travels to Lincoln to take on Nebraska as the first Big Ten team to play the same opponent twice in the 2019-20 season.

Don't miss out on any of our exclusive football, basketball and recruiting coverage. Get a 60-Day FREE trial to TheHoosier.com with promo code IU60

Indiana is the first team in the Big Ten to play a conference foe for the second time this season, as the Hoosiers travel to Lincoln to play Nebraska after beating the Cornhuskers, 96-90, in overtime in Bloomington on Dec. 13.

Since that loss to Indiana, Nebraska has gone 3-4. Even though it’s stayed under .500 since the loss in Bloomington, there were signs that maybe Nebraska was finding its identity in wins over Purdue and Iowa. It has the ability to defeat competitive teams in the conference, despite having just a 7-10 overall record to Indiana’s Big Ten-best 13-4. But unlike many Big Ten teams, Nebraska has lost a home conference game – to Rutgers by 19 on Jan. 3.

“They have our attention. They have our ultimate respect,” Indiana head coach Archie Miller said Friday. “They are very, very dangerous.”

This game is, by far, the best chance Indiana has at winning a game on the road in Big Ten play. Indiana is given a 70-percent probability to win Saturday by KenPom.com, and its next-highest probabilities are at Penn State, Minnesota and Illinois, when the Hoosiers are given a 35-percent chance.

Keeping it close in Piscataway, despite the offensive struggles, was further evidence of the defensive growth Indiana has made in recent games. That’s the area that Archie Miller said the Hooseirs struggled with against Nebraska the first time, and since then, Indiana has allowed teams to score just 63.5 points per game.

With the way every game can be a grind at this point in the season, Miller said, in the context of freshman forward Trayce Jackson-Davis, it can be challenging to see the growth a team has made throughout the season.

“We're in the midst of a grueling league, and in 17 games, there's a lot of information,” Miller said. “If you just kind of go from day one to where you're at right now and you think back to where you started, man, have you done a lot of good things. There's a lot of players who’ve done a lot of good things.”

For Indiana, primarily on the floor, it’s made strides defensively from “day one,” and those strides will need to come into play in Lincoln.

In three of his last four games, Trayce Jackson-Davis has scored fewer than 10 points. He remains Indiana’s scoring leader, averaging 14 points per game, but the presence he forced inside hasn’t been felt as strongly, as teams have intentionally separated him from the game.

Archie Miller said that’s a part of a freshman’s journey, learning how to react to coaches gameplanning to taking him out of the game after he’s become a deep part of a team’s identity.

“You're a player now,” Miller said, as if speaking to Jackson-Davis. “Not only are you a player for our team, but you're a player on the other coach's mind – ‘What do you do to stop him, and what do you do to keep him from doing this, and what do you do to keep Jackson-Davis from doing this?’ – because he's so impactful for our team.”

The emphasis on Jackson-Davis on the inside has been evident in the way Rutgers and Ohio State played Indiana, forcing Joey Brunk to do more in the post. Brunk has, for the most part, followed through, but the physicality brought by Rutgers and Ohio State can’t be matched by most teams in the conference or the nation. Taking Jackson-Davis out of games won’t be a reality for some teams, and it wasn’t for Nebraska, when Jackson-Davis recorded for 25 points and 15 rebounds.

“If you watch our first time we played against Nebraska, his effort level, his activity level, what he was able to do in that game, it didn't come from me,” Miller said. “It came from his ability to play hard and run and play to win and be aggressive and not worry about, ‘I missed a shot’ or ‘are they double-teaming me?’ It doesn't matter.”

Sophomore guard Cam Mack exploded onto the scene against Indiana, with 15 points and 10 assists, and he hasn’t looked back since. He followed up that game with a triple-double against Purdue and has recorded two more double-doubles since. He also hasn’t scored fewer than 10 points since November.

“Mack is one of the more unsung point guards in college basketball, in terms of what he does for his team,” Archie Miller said Friday. “He is a blur off the bounce, and he's a fantastic passer. When they are successful, he pretty much dominates the game with his production, in terms of not only creating shots for others but also his own offense.”

In wins this season, Mack has averaged 13 points, 4.4 rebounds and 7.4 assists. In a season where wins haven’t come easy for Nebraska, the Cornhuskers have needed to go through Mack.

Archie Miller noted defense wasn’t where it needed to be to put away Nebraska as easily as it could have in December, but with the growth Indiana has shown on defense, there are a number of ways those improvements can be put on display in Lincoln.

First, limiting Cam Mack must be a priority, and that will require a good day from sophomore guard Rob Phinisee defensively. Phinisee has seen his minutes increase as Miller has leaned on him throughout the continued inconsistency from various backcourt contributors. Phinisee has clearly played through some pain, as his 29 minutes against Ohio State required immediate therapy after the game, and the game Saturday will be indicative of where he’s at, both physically and rhythmically as the season goes.

Three-point shooting was a vulnerability for Indiana early in the season, and Nebraska is one of the better three-point shooting teams in the Big Ten. For a team that shoots as well as Nebraska does, it only cleared its 37.5 three-point percentage against Indiana two times since that game. In the same vein, Indiana has only allowed two teams to shoot better than 30 percent from three since beating Nebraska.

Coming off a 41-percent three-point shooting game against Ohio State, Nebraska will get off a lot of threes Saturday.

----

• Talk about it inside The Hoops Forum or The Football Forum

• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes

• Follow us on Twitter: @IndianaRivals

• Like us on Facebook.