BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – A jaded Trey Galloway took to the interview dais, flanked on his right side by Kel’el Ware. The sophomore big man had just poured in a game-high 25 points in an efficient manner.
The impact it ultimately had on the final result was minimal.
Why? Penn State, a now 11-11 team entering the contest with losses on its resume to the likes of Bucknell and Minnesota, doing so while toting the country’s 110th best offense by adjusted efficiency, had blitzed the Hoosiers to the tune of a 48-30 advantage in the second half to run away with Saturday’s game.
The fire of a 41-point first half fizzled. Penn State opened the second half on a 22-7 run, grasping its first lead of the afternoon. A four-point deficit turned to a two-point PSU advantage, then four, then six.
In a blink, the Hoosiers were down double-digits on their home floor, a margin they would not decrease to striking distance again. Indiana was apathetic – lifeless in the pursuit of a win that could mount momentum toward steering the ship the other way on a season now, after a 14-point loss to Penn State, seemingly lost at sea.
“They were just playing harder than us,” Galloway said.
Unnecessary fouls and head-scratching defensive breakdowns assisted the Nittany Lions in dealing an indelible blow to any sort of positive trajection on the remaining contests in this campaign. Gone was the good will of the previous two defensive outings. The lackluster PSU offense had just made a mockery of it.
“We can’t have (those mistakes) this late in the season,” Galloway continued.
“Second half, we were so flat coming out, something I hadn’t seen,” head coach Mike Woodson said. “When I look at their first possession of the second half, they got, I think, like 3-4 cracks at it. We couldn’t come up with loose balls, rebounds. It’s like we were a step slow. Kind of disappointed because you play a good game against Iowa, and you come back and basically lay an egg.
“They dictated everything from the very beginning, and once we fell behind, it was just tough to get back.”
Damning in adding to the snapshot of the Hoosiers’ piling adversity as the season reaches its concluding stretch, these lapses of focus that result in missed opportunities pile up like a poor spending addiction.
Indiana was a team offered only so much margin for error heading into the year, given how there would be no accurate depiction of what to expect from the amount of moving pieces the Hoosiers have thrust together to perform. But these contests are the ones IU should’ve had tabbed as must-wins – an overturned roster struggling to find consistency with a new head coach on your home floor.
No matter the amount of semblance previous year’s teams hold onto this one, victory should be achievable in games on this end of the spectrum. The talent combined with the potential, once all put together, has lifted this team before. Flashes here, a brilliant sequence there. It’s not all foreign.
Yet, the highs and lows that grasp this Indiana team and rattle it to its core handed a Quad 3 loss to a resume that looks less and less appealing to the likes of any postseason team-picking committee, let alone the top field’s. Because Indiana is struggling with issues in game 22 that it did in game two, only experiencing different results due to the nature of tougher opponents.
Even considered to be in the lower tier of the Big Ten’s teams at the midway point of conference play, playing the same game that (barely) beat Army can’t be replicated against the likes of Penn State or Rutgers. A win was forfeited, squandered squarely by Indiana’s own doings.
“Yes I want more fire from my guys,” Woodson said. “They didn’t fight tonight in the second half and that’s kind of disappointing.
“That’s a game that I thought if we played well, we had a legitimate chance to win."
Resources abound from this program and this team, one that knows itself to be better than it is in its current state. How much past precedent weighs into that evaluation is up for interpretation, but there’s a solid sense of the equity in winning at least at a semi-consecutive rate.
Playing without energy and without fire resembles that of a team okay with licking its wounds, not particularly concerned about a struggling season that’s outlook gets bleaker the longer these ups and downs wear on. That’s surely not the sentiment inside the locker room, and to assume otherwise would be unfair.
Yet, the visualization of such efforts and its many forms on the floor is where the disconnect starts and why frustration mounts. It’s not translating to the desired results in a reliable-enough manner.
“I’m not going to throw my guys under the bus,” Woodson said. “They just didn’t perform in the second half. They didn’t. They were flat as hell.”
Wherever the blame lies, it’s getting late early on whether there’s a response worth writing home about in the final nine games of the regular season – all of which coming against Quad 1 or Quad 2 opponents as things stand.
Indiana will be tested heavily down the stretch. What’s left to be learned about their resolve will be on full display – for better or for worse.
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