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Indiana's NCAA Tournament begins on Tuesday night against Wyoming and it will bring about a different style of play on both ends of the floor.

Wyoming finished 25-8 in the regular season but limped across the finish line losing five of its last nine. The same could be said about Indiana with its late season struggles, but a run in the Big Ten Tournament seemed to turn a lot of heads.

One thing is for certain, pace of play and point guard play will be a huge part of the game on Tuesday and could ultimately determine which team makes it out of Dayton.

"Very, very well-coached. Big team. Start a 6'7", 6'6", 6'7" guard, that should tell you a lot," IU head coach Mike Woodson said on Monday. "Hunter (Maldonado) is as good as they come at the point guard spot. They've got a big presence inside with Ike. And they've got perimeter guys in Xavier and Drake and Oden, guys that can make shots.

'They're well-balanced, and you don't win 25 games not being well-balanced. So we've got to commit for 40 minutes. It's how I look at it on both ends of the floor, compete, man, in order to come out here with a win."

Wyoming is led by 6-foot-7 point forward Hunter Maldonado who controls the game with the ball in his hands. He is sixth in the country with 6.3 assists per game while also averaging 18.4 points per game. He is more of an old fashioned, back you down type, powerful guard who likes to keep the game in a half court setting.

On the other hand, Indiana's Xavier Johnson likes to pressure defensively, get out in transition and make some of the highlight plays using his athleticism.

The two have very contrasting styles but both control the game when they are on the floor.

"I think it's something we've kind of seen in our conference with teams pushing the pace and then having some three or four teams that do slow it down," Maldonado said. "So it's not the first time we've seen it. Just be a team effort and try to play to our style and stick to our habits.

"All the preparation of guys crawling into us, this non-con and the past couple of games into the conference tournament people trying to speed us up and crawl up under us. At the end of the day if we stick to what we know and our habits I think we can do a good job of being who we are."

Wyoming ranks 238th in adjusted tempo -- slightly below Wisconsin -- and its possessions drop even more in conference only games. Indiana, while not extremely up tempo, just 184th in tempo, is best when the athleticism of Johnson and All-Big Ten forward Trayce Jackson-Davis are on display.

Part of that is getting them involved together every possession. It it's not in transition, it's getting downhill using more pick and roll sets.

"Me going off a ball screen, getting down hill -- and I see Trayce running off the screen and jumping, jumping as high as he can to get the ball," Xavier Johnson said. "It's amazing to me how athletic this dude is, because when I first came here I was actually shellshocked, shellshocked how high he can jump.

"In the last few weeks, we've talked with Coach Woodson, especially with a lot of bigger guys we're playing against -- bigger, slower guys -- I think the pick and roll is working a lot better."

That has led to both Xavier Johnson and Trayce Jackson-Davis playing at another level for Indiana. Johnson is averaging 16.9 points and 6.2 assist in the last nine games. For Jackson-Davis, he is averaging 19.7 points on 64.2 percent shooting and adding 7.8 rebounds and 2.3 assists over that span.

"If you go back and look at the beginning of our season and probably midway through our season, we try to run a lot of pick-and-rolls, but X wasn't there yet at the time. And X has grown so much that it's allowed me to play what I came here as a coach to play offense is play some good pick-and-roll along with post-up," Woodson said. "It's got to be a balance in the mixture. And we struggled in the pick-and-roll early on in the season. And I just kept piecing it in here and there, here and there.

"Now X, he's grown. He's figured it out. And when I say figure it out, he's figured it out to a point where he knows when he's got it. He knows when he doesn't have it. He knows when the lob or the pocket pass is there, the throwback, all of that takes time. And he's starting to figure it out. That's why you're starting to see more pick-and-roll play."

"You watch Indiana on film and in a lot of ways they mirror us in terms of Trayce being on the right side of the floor playing to his left hand. Race on the left side playing to his right hand," Wyoming head coach Jeff Linder said. "And you've got the X factor in Xavier Johnson, who from a talent standpoint is as talented as any guard out there."

At the end of the day, it's going to be a matchup between the dynamic duo of point guard and forwards. But Wyoming understands its tempo is what got it here and will not try to speed up to match Indiana.

"Maldo knows when he plays fast I get mad at him," Linder said. "The way that we use him and the way that he plays -- being that he's 6'6", 6'7", and we use him as -- we're really unorthodox in terms of using him as kind of the old school Mark Jackson, Gary Payton, Charles Barkley, get him into a lot of dribble-downs to where he can use his size. He's an incredible passer. And people think it looks easy to be able to dribble down and back your guy down from 19 feet. Well, it's in reality, hard to do. And he's got great body control. He was a post player in high school. He naturally knows how to feel his way around.

"He's a guy, too, that forces the other team to decide, okay, if you're going to try to guard him small, being 6'6", 6'7", he puts a lot of pressure on you in terms of being able to score. If you try to put a bigger guy, now he's quick enough and he's shifty enough to where he can create angles that way too. And so he's a tough matchup.

"With him and you add Graham Ike in the mix, knowing that I was going to play through those two guys, the Big Ten is the one league in the country where you're playing through the post most of the teams, whether it's Purdue, Indiana, Illinois -- you're playing through the post -- Michigan."

And Xavier Johnson is ready for that matchup, ready to compete and ready to make his presence felt in the biggest game of his career.

"I don't think he's (Hunter Maldonado) played against the type of guard that's actually going to pressure him a lot up the floor. And so I'm just ready to compete tomorrow against him."

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