Indiana has carried good performances onto the road three times in the 2020 portion of the 2019-20 season – to Rutgers after beating Ohio State on Jan. 11, to Penn State after nearly knocking off Maryland on Jan. 26 and to Michigan on Sunday after decisively beating No. 21 Iowa on Thursday.
In every case, the same truth remains true: The Hoosiers struggle on the road.
And Sunday, Michigan’s “domination,” as IU head coach Archie Miller put it, of Indiana felt more like the losses at Wisconsin and Maryland than the losses at Rutgers or Penn State, as the Hoosiers fell 89-65, exterminating any momentum gained by defeating Iowa.
“Competitive, that’s the word,” Miller said after the game Sunday about woes in road play. “Obviously, everyone here feeds off home court advantage, but when you’re on the road, you’re all you’ve got. You’ve got to find a way to be good at what you do. You believe in what you do, and at a certain point in time, when that belief begins to go away, you can see it right away.”
Multiple times early in the season, Miller noted that Indiana’s defense is where it must hang its hat in 2019-20, that defense will feed offense. For the most part, that defense had traveled to those road games that followed good performances – the slugfest at Rutgers, just short offensively at Penn State – but at Michigan, Indiana was a drastically different team.
Senior forward De’Ron Davis tied the single-game shooting record (Will Sheehey also went 9-of-9), and Al Durham backed him up with 17 points while the other four starters combined for 24. Trayce Jackson-Davis – 2-for-3 with two rebounds – was negated, and Devonte Green carried over a 1-for-7 performance after scoring 27 on Thursday.
Most of Indiana’s struggles on offense were rooted in Michigan’s halfcourt defense, but defensively, Indiana was beaten at tipoff. Michigan guard Zavier Simpson made easy work of the Hoosier defense, driving inside and hitting three-point shooters on kickouts or pushing the ball up the floor in transition behind Indiana’s slow defense. No backcourt contributor could contain Simpson, and he finished with 12 points and 11 assists. That proved to be the catalyst for the way Michigan attacked Indiana – the way it spaced out the IU defense and paired it with good ball movement – and by the end of the game, the Wolverines had shot 57 percent from the floor, 53 percent from three and 18-of-22 at the free throw line.
“Our ability to guard the ball, especially in the second half, was non-existent,” Miller said. “At the end of the day, they could pretty much set a ball screen and get downhill or get shot. And if they missed, the disappointing thing was we were non-existent in our ability to get a rebound.”
That was, perhaps, the final nail in Indiana’s coffin Sunday. Michigan out-rebounded the Hoosiers by 16, and Indiana only brought down 10 total rebounds in the second half. At one point, one Wolverine fought off four Hoosiers for a rebound, and at another point, Michigan forward Franz Wagner fought off two Hoosiers on the opposite side of the rim to get a putback.
With the loss and the collapse at the core of its identity, Indiana drives home the ideas surrounding the fact that it cannot win on the road, which it will likely need to do in order to get an NCAA Tournament bid.
“Win. Just like every other team in this league. Win,” Miller said about how Indiana gets to the Tournament. “There’s no scenario, no magic number. We’ve got plenty of opportunities. There are so many good teams in this league where it’s not about what you have to do but about finding ways to get wins. Get as many as you can.”
Three games remain at home and three remain on the road, and as the opportunities to carry positive momentum onto the road fizzle out, Indiana will need to find ways to win on its own away from Bloomington, Indiana.
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