Still Looking For Leadership, IU Takes On Wisconsin Team With Plenty Of It
Wisconsin has a luxury not many teams can boast: experience.
Between seniors Zak Showalter, Bronson Koenig, Vitto Brown and Nigel Hayes, the Badgers have four starters with Final Four experience, namely four senior leaders. Indiana has that too, but not quite with the same continuity. That contrast presents itself Tuesday night when the No. 25 Hoosiers host No. 13 Wisconsin at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
“They are the most experienced team in the country,” IU head coach Tom Crean said. “We’re dealing with a team that knows how to win, has been together for a long time. It’s proven and tried with them.”
While the Badgers can lean on Koenig and Hayes when times get challenging, Indiana can’t point to two players who can do the same. At least not yet.
Last season, the Hoosiers had players like that in Yogi Ferrell, Troy Williams, Max BIelfeldt and Nick Zeisloft. Crean even said on his radio show Monday that Ferrell was a “definitive name” in terms of a go-to player for his team last season, something Crean doesn’t have at the moment even though he mentioned sophomores Juwan Morgan and Thomas Bryant growing in that area.
Leadership, then, is a big reason but not the only reason why the Badgers are No. 1 in continuity minutes according to KenPom.com.
That same consistency is what Indiana seeks to apply to its current mindset. Crean said his team has to outgrow its habit of letting missed shots affect its defense in the rare times they don’t shoot the ball well. The solution to breaking that habit, according to IU junior guard Robert Johnson, comes down to keeping the game simple.
“It’s a matter of continuing to really lock in for the full 40 minutes,” Johnson said. “It’s about doing the small details better. Doing a lot little things better. As we focus on that, lock into that, we’ll be better.”
Attention to those details will be critical against the Badgers.
Despite having the 340th-slowest tempo and 338th-longest average possession length out of 351 Division I teams, they still have the 13th-most efficient offense in the nation according to KenPom. Wisconsin also turns the ball over on just 17.6 percent of possible possessions, while forcing opponents into those same mistakes on 19.7 percent of their possible possessions.
“They are a great passing team,” Crean said. “Not a good passing team, but a great passing team. They’ve gotten better and better at that this year.”
For IU, it’s been the opposite when it comes to valuing the basketball. The carelessness played a big role in losses to Nebraska (19 turnovers) and Louisville (14) last week.
The ability to outgrow those mistakes comes from having veteran players like Koenig and Hayes on a team. Indiana still continues to search for players willing to take on similar roles, and could be in for another learning experience Tuesday against Wisconsin if it doesn’t find those players quickly.
“At the end of the day, we just weren’t aggressive enough on either end of the court to be a team like [Louisville],” Crean said. “We were on the glass, but we weren’t in other areas. And that’s something we’ve got to improve quickly.”