BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Mike Woodson's had a pretty simple message for his team throughout this young season so far.
"I've been preaching all year you can be beaten by any team, doesn't matter who they are, if you don't come ready to play," he said in the opening to his postgame remarks Tuesday night.
In the Hoosiers' follow-up act to the Kansas loss on Saturday, IU looked destined for a letdown of higher magnitude than the upset chance that slipped through its hands just three days prior.
This one would've had different connotation, though.
Indiana was the better team on the floor for the majority of Saturday's loss. Disappointed in defeat, the Hoosiers could've still left the court knowing they'd put up a great fight against the No. 2 team in the country. The result, like others against marquee opponents, still didn't amount, but there were flashes of progress that IU would've loved to sustain.
The Hoosiers' victory over the Eagles, however, comes in spite of a performance that would yield the same result in most other occasions. Inconsistency from positive outcomes this season has appeared on multiple occasions. It almost dealt Indiana a fatal blow Tuesday night.
"My thing is it should never be that way," Woodson said. "When you're playing this game of basketball, and especially when you're playing here at home, you should never have highs and lows like that.
"The Kansas game was a great game. I thought we did a lot of good things in that game, but we just fell short. That doesn't mean you come back the next game and lay an egg to start the game. That's unacceptable. That's on me, man. I was very disappointed in how we played the first half. That should never be."
The Hoosiers' start, however – and subsequent stretches of the Morehead State contest that followed – suggested as such. Indiana was once again flirting with danger, but this time in a fashion unseen yet this year. Leaving the court to a chorus of boos, it faced a deficit of 11 points at the half, the Eagles punctuating Indiana's worst 20 minutes of basketball this season on a breakaway slam dunk in the dying seconds before the break.
"I thought at the start of the game we were flat, like we didn't even want to be out there," Woodson said.
Indiana, like most teams in college basketball, generally takes the floor with only a couple of minutes to go on the game clock before a resumption of play out of the half. But the Hoosiers emerged out back onto Branch McCracken Court with over six and a half minutes remaining on the game clock – around three or so minutes earlier than the Eagles did. The Hoosiers' halftime conversation was short and to the point.
"It wasn't real pretty," Woodson said of the chat. "Based on how we were playing. We were awful.
"Our fans don't come out to see stuff like that. I was very disappointed."
Indiana punched quickly out of the second half to draw within a couple possessions. Intensity was evident in the Hoosiers' approach. Some fire from the halftime speech had clearly left a visible, spirited mark.
But Morehead State responded. Two quick threes extended the gap back to 11. Then, Jordan Lathon's four-point play pushed the score out to 15.
Lathon had 30. Indiana looked lost. In his celebration, the building felt as if a dagger had been pierced through it. The wind certainly seemed to had left the building.
But not Indiana's bench.
'I always say momentum is a powerful force and that's the beautiful part about this sport," Anthony Walker said postgame, fresh off a team-high 18 points. "I think the most important part of their run is the fact that we didn't stray away from each other."
Indiana's final response was came in the form of a 20-4 run over the contest's final eight and a half minutes. In the weening moments of a non-conference contest IU was a double-digit favorite in, capped off by a game-sealing block on Lathon's final shot attempt from Malik Reneau, it had avoided an unrecoverable blow to its tournament resume in the form of a one-point victory.
Lathon, after his dagger-like three that put Indiana officially on the ropes, didn't score another bucket on the evening.
In reality, Indiana's constant flirtation with disaster is something the Hoosiers can only rectify themselves. Slow starts have dug holes that they've expended all of their energy to extract from. So far in similar competitions on the slate, nearly identical late flurries have been required of the Hoosiers to escape Florida Gulf Coast, Army, Wright State and now Morehead State.
Anthony Walker, like his coach, understands such opponents are not lesser than Indiana due to their status of competition in which they play at. It's largely due to his contributions – 18 points, nine rebounds and 23 valuable minutes off the Hoosier bench – that Indiana's taste after this game isn't any further sour than it likely already is.
But at some point, the Hoosiers risk their late-game heroics falling short of the desired outcome due to a particular evening's early fallacies. The Hoosiers themselves would tell you they shouldn't be dealing with the same issues after game 11 as they did after game one.
In exclusivity with the Hoosiers' fifth-year Miami transfer, Walker told TheHoosier.com that Indiana would be a different team come February and March than it is in November and December. Just the night before on his weekly radio show, Woodson alluded to his team still learning how to win with so many new faces on this year's roster. Sometimes, those wins have to look ugly. Indiana's result over the Eagles certainly wasn't pretty.
But Walker's a veteran for Indiana this year, capable of adapting to any role. His voice carries weight and importance. On the importance of solving the matter, it would not go unheard on Tuesday evening.
"That's something we have to take pride in ourselves," Walker said, referencing the subpar starts Indiana has gotten out to this year. "We have to create our own energy, especially coming out of the gate in the game, and this won't be a problem all year, trust me. We will pick our energy up. This was definitely a lesson."
In going about said business, the Hoosiers' solution is not yet clear. If the Hoosiers had possession of that sought-after answer, both Woodson and Walker attest, Indiana would likely have a couple more comfortable notches under its belt.
It's got to start with what the Hoosiers can control. Because Indiana can't be in this position on a nightly basis.
Not with the strength of the league it'll embark upon after the first of the year. Not with a team that longs for March.
"We'll be the boss of our own energy for the rest of year," Walker said. "Trust me on that one."
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