Indiana had a much-needed five day break this week, but it wasn’t all rest and relaxation.

Rather, the No. 13 Hoosiers took only two days off this week while focusing on progress leading into Saturday’s 4 p.m. ET home contest with Houston Baptist.

“We’ve tried to work work really hard this week on development, improvement, refinement, some reminders,” IU head coach Tom Crean said. “I think our lack of practice time affected us even though we won last week. We’ve had a very good week in that sense, we’ve had a very good week and we’re excited for the game.”

The break comes at an opportune time for the Hoosiers.

While healthy players are focused on improvement on the court, injured players like sophomore forward OG Anunoby are focused on healing off it.

Anunoby, who sustained a left ankle injury in Indiana’s ACC-Big Ten Challenge win over North Carolina on Nov. 30, still remains day-to-day according to Crean. It’s also still too early for Indiana to give an estimated timetable for his return.

"He’s definitely improving, but it’s still too early to tell when he’ll be back,” Crean said. “He just continues to rehabilitate, does a little bit more at times. It’s still truly a day-to-day type of deal."

IU sophomore center Thomas Bryant benefitted from the break. On his weekly radio show Monday night, Crean said Bryant "just got straight-legged [Sunday], and it hit him a little bit."

However, with last Sundays’ game being the conclusion of a grueling four games in eight days, Bryant felt fatigue was affecting every player.

“I think all of us felt a little tired towards the end of the week, but I feel like we played pretty good out there,” Bryant said. “Four games within a week like that, overall I think we had a pretty good week.”

Indiana took a measured approach this week, wrapping up on Friday with film study and scrimmages. On Saturday, it faces an opponent with a strong offense and a weak defense.

Houston Baptist has an effective field goal percentage of 49.5 while also making 37 percent of its threes, according to KenPom. Additionally, the Huskies are able get shots off cleanly with just 5.3 percent of their overall shot attempts blocked by opponents, 18th-lowest in the country per KenPom.

However, that offense hasn’t been enough to sustain Houston Baptist, which sits at 3-4 on the season heading into Saturday’s contest.

Its four losses have been to Texas Tech, New Mexico, Marquette and Rice by an average of 19 points per game. On top of that, Houston Baptist has allowed 90 or more points in each of those losses. All four of those losses have also away from its 1,000-seat home arena.

Defensive deficiencies aside, the Huskies’ offense has performed well enough to have Crean’s attention. Crean said on his weekly radio show this past Monday night that his team can’t get into a situation where it’s trading baskets with Houston Baptist.

"They score a lot of points,” Crean said. “They've been on the road."

Indiana will have just two games in the next eight days after double the contest in the same amount of time last week. Still, similar to last week, the focus will remain on continued development.

“I told them this is not a — the first five, second five deal at all this next two weeks,” Crean said. “We’ve got to really compete. There’s a lot of room for improvement.”