With an opportunity to kick off another significant stretch of the schedule with a win, Indiana welcomes in No. 21 Iowa to Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Thursday, needing something to hold onto before it closes out four of its last seven games on the road.
Iowa has emerged as one of the contenders in the Big Ten, particularly after a five-game win streak that featured wins over Michigan, Maryland, Rutgers and Wisconsin, but, like most other Big Ten programs this season, winning on the road in conference play has proven to be a difficult task. The Hawkeyes only Big Ten road win came against Northwestern, and their most recent road loss came at the hands of 19 three-point shots from Purdue in Mackey Arena.
While Iowa isn’t the most talented team on a player-by-player basis, it does what a typical Big Ten team is expected to do – efficient on offense, disruptive on defense and rebound the ball. But in some aspects, Iowa goes above and beyond.
In Big Ten games, no team has averaged more points per game than Iowa (77.8), and the Hawkeyes are No. 6 in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio. And the way Iowa scores its points pulls its offense away from the paint, as it ranks No. 220 in the country in percentage of points scored off two-point shots.
Indiana might need to play smaller against Iowa, or it might find an advantage in remaining big, but either way, there’s no mistaking that Indiana needs to come away with a home win Thursday, as the Hoosiers have dropped to a projected No. 11 seed in the Big Ten Tournament while the Hawkeyes have a first-round bye.
What It Means
Indiana cannot allow Iowa to pair a road win in Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall with a road win at Northwestern. The home loss against Purdue was the worst of its kind this season, with games against Arkansas and Maryland having been won at points during both of those games, but Indiana cannot afford a second home loss in a row while 1.) finding a path toward 19 wins, and 2.) appearing favorable to the Selection Committee.
What was a once-definitive line between itself and the bottom of the Big Ten is beginning to blur, and, while a win against Iowa wouldn’t be an immediate fix, it would brighten the future of the rest of a schedule that will include four road games and three home games – two of those home games against teams Indiana has already lost to.
None of these games are getting any easier for Indiana, so a win in the arena it has won all but three of its games within is a good place to start an upward trend during the most crucial part of the schedule.
Luka Garza
At 6-foot-11, 260 pounds, Luka Garza is one of the best offensive weapons in the Big Ten. He currently leads the Big Ten in scoring, with 23.1 points per game, and while he can affect the game in ways that have hurt Indiana in the past – i.e. Jalen Smith, Nate Reuvers, Kaleb Wesson – the way he is used within Iowa’s offense lends itself toward being driven by good guard play opening opportunities for Garza down low.
There is plenty of sharing in the Iowa offense, but a large part of the Hawkeye assist total is driven by feeds to Garza and spacing of the floor that is centered around Garza. He runs the floor well and is likely the best in the conference at sealing off lanes and scoring opportunities in the paint, and the attention he demands from opposing defenses, combined with his teammates’ abilities to pass the ball cause plenty of headaches.
“He does it in such a unique way that he's very difficult to say, ‘Hey, we are going to take the ball out of his hands with traps’ or, ‘Hey, we are going to double him, we're going to do this.’” Archie Miller said Wednesday. “He scores every which way, form or fashion, whether it's transition, deep-post catches, offensive rebounding. If you move him 12-to-15 feet, he's probably as good of a face-up jump shooter as you're going to see, and he also has great savvy to use his body and play off the different ways that people play him, so he's drawing fouls. You mix in the three-point line, shoots in the high-30s. He's shooting an unbelievable percentage from three off some pick-and-pops and off transition and whatnot.”
In exact terms, Garza is averaging 23-and-10 and hitting 55.3 percent of his shots (38.2 percent from three). He is used on more than 28 percent of Iowa’s possessions (the highest bracket used to measure a player’s contributions by KenPom.com), and, within that bracket of players nationally, he rates No. 22 in percentage of shots taken, No. 28 in fouls drawn per 40 minutes, No. 64 in offensive rebounding and No. 117 in offensive rebounding.
For Indiana to stop him, it would be the first of the Big Ten schedule. The only team in the Big Ten to limit Garza below 20 points this season was Nebraska, when he recorded 16 points and 18 rebounds. Getting him into foul trouble doesn’t necessarily aid in the limiting him, either, as Maryland and Northwestern both limited him to 24 minutes on the court but he still scored 27 and 21 points respectively.
So the question becomes whether throwing a larger lineup at Garza is worth sacrificing opportunities at the three-point line or could limiting the players around Garza could, in turn, limit Garza second-handedly.
Finding leadership
During the four-game losing streak, Archie Miller has repeated that his team needs stronger leadership, that there isn’t enough communication on the floor and that he is looking for life from different players on the floor. That stretches back to the beginning of the season and has come up for air a few more times before then and now.
Miller is still searching for certain guys to take hold of the leadership role.
“This team, in general, has had an identity from the beginning of the year of who is going to lead, who are your leaders,” Miller said. “There's no better time to emerge. There's no better time to grab it. We don't have to be an old guy right now to open their mouth and to speak, and our team has to find some guys that are willing to step outside themselves, grab more people, care more about what the other guy is going through, not just yourself.”
Miller had mentioned something similar to this after the loss at Wisconsin on Dec. 7, noting that he wanted his players to grab each other by the jersey and alert each other of the situations at hand.
Al Durham and Armaan Franklin were both asked about leadership Wednesday, and Durham said he takes responsibility for any lack of leadership on the floor. Franklin said it can be “hard” to be a freshman and speak up to his teammates, but he also said, it’s something he must do.
It’s clear, though, that it needs to come from other areas of the team, not just Durham and Franklin. Miller said at this point in the season, any positive voice in a locker room is a blessing, even if it’s from a first-year player.
And, as much as Indiana needs that win to springboard itself into the most significant parts of its schedule down the stretch, it also needs to find some leadership as soon as possible as well.
“When you fracture and things don't go well, it's easy to sit back in the shadows,” Miller said. “Sometimes you need some guys to really grab a hold of the jerseys and the reins and say, ‘Who am I bringing with me? I'm not going to be part of the problem. I'm going to be part of the solution. Come with me.’”
----
• 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.
