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Indiana heads into Big Ten play looking to rebound from its first loss of the season against Syracuse on Tuesday, in double overtime.

Nebraska enters the matchup after a four overtime loss to NC State on Wednesday.

For Mike Woodson, he is off to a 6-1 start this season and by all accounts has this team trending up. His matchup with Fred Hoiberg will be the first game with former NBA players and head coaches to face each other in a Big Ten conference game.

Hoiberg is just 5-34 in Big Ten play in two seasons at Nebraska. But, he enters this matchup with one of his more talented teams yet.

Nebraska has five guards that account for 73 percent of the team's scoring. Indiana's backcourt hasn't been terrific defending the ball this season and Mike Woodson knows that will be a huge key to the game on Saturday.

"I don't think we've played extremely well out front as of late because we've been giving up numbers to point guards and shooting guards, and that's something that we've got to get back to being better," Woodson said.

Freshman guard Bryce McGowens is averaging 18.5 points per game and at 6-foot-7 has tremendous size and length that could cause fits for some of IU's smaller guards. He is paired with guard Alonzo Verge Jr who is averaging 15 points per game and a Big Ten leading 42.7 percent assist rate on the season. He is averaging 5.9 assists per game.

How Indiana defends those two guards will play a large part in the outcome of Saturday's game.

"We talked a lot about it yesterday and did some things on the floor that I think might help us a little bit," Woodson said. "But Nebraska, they're guard driven, in terms of their style and how they play, so we're going to have to really lock in and defend off the dribble where we're not giving straight-line drives and keeping people in front of us where we're making them make tough, contested shots.

"We've got to keep them from the paint. That's going to be huge with this team going into tomorrow's game."

So far this season, Indiana is ranked sixth in the nation in field goal defense, allowing opponents to shoot just 35 percent from the field. Even better, that percentage is just 38.3 percent on 2's.

Being one of the best defenses in college basketball should set IU up for success, but it's been the turnovers and sometimes lack of cohesiveness offensively causing for some of Indiana's games to be closer than they should.

"I'm still learning our players. They're still learning me. They're still learning each other," Woodson said. "It's just work in progress right now.

"You're going to have ups and downs like that until you -- I don't know how many games it's going to take. I hope it's not long. We've had games where we've sustained it over a 40-minute period, and then we've had games where we've had slippage. That's a part of basketball. It happens."

Indiana looks to move to 7-1 on Saturday and get the Big Ten season started with a win. The game is set for Noon on Big Ten Network.

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