By Matt St. Charles
On a Tuesday night where Indiana fans everywhere basked in the glory of Monday’s football National Championship, the Hoosiers basketball team made the trip to play one of the best teams in the country. And maybe it’s a good thing the majority of those Indiana fans took the night off from watching their school.
Indiana was easily disposed of at Michigan 86-72, and it was not as close as the final score illustrates. Sometimes, one team is just head and shoulders above the other. The Wolverines’ size dictated everything in the matchup, and the Hoosiers had no answer for it, even against a pedestrian performance from Yaxel Lendeborg.
“Yeah, it’s hard; they’re one of the biggest teams in the country,” Darian DeVries said. “I thought Sam [Alexis], Reed [Bailey], Tucker [DeVries] and Trent [Sisley] were doing all they could. They’re undersized going against those guys, but I thought they battled the best they could. Were there some opportunities there where we could’ve helped them out a little bit? Yeah. For us, that’s when we play some of these bigger teams, is that team rebounding mentality where we’re all getting into the fight.”
The signs of the blowout showed right from the tip, when IU missed its first eight field goal attempts and went just one of its first 15. Many of its first possessions involved passing around the perimeter without penetration before Conor Enright or Trent Sisley took a 3 with the shot clock winding down. The creation brought by Tayton Conerway, who started but played just two minutes, was sorely missed.
When the Hoosiers were able to find angles off dribble hand-offs and get in the paint, Michigan collapsed and rotated effectively, suffocating its opponent.
“We got off to slow starts at the beginning of both halves, and those were killers for us,” DeVries said. “We dig a hole against a team like this that makes it challenging. But I thought in both halves, our guys really fought to try to get back into the game.”
Tucker DeVries (nine points, 3-8 FG) and Lamar Wilkerson (eight points, 3-10 FG) continued to struggle, as Lendeborg was tasked with guarding the least threatening player on the floor and blitzing either of the IU catalysts to get the ball out of their hands.
Despite a less-than-excellent game from Michigan, it had no problem taking care of Indiana. The Hoosiers won the turnover battle 13-10, and the Wolverines left 11 points at the foul line, even starting 1-8.
But Indiana wasn’t able to capitalize on those weak spots, mostly because Michigan’s length and physicality covered them all up. IU was outrebounded 41-25 and gave up 12 offensive rebounds and 16 second-chance points. There was no answer for Aday Mara and Morez Johnson, Jr., who got everything they wanted inside offensively and stifled any inside attempts defensively, while also being versatile enough to switch out onto the perimeter.
“Yeah, well, I mean, we knew what their defense was going to do,” DeVries said. “We knew the switching; I thought early in the game, just their general length and athleticism bothered us. We weren’t able to get into the paint. I thought we did a much better job in the second half. We tried to get more post touches and play a little more inside-out, and got some good looks there. And then we started getting just a little more comfortable with finding ways to get some paint touches off the dribble and some of the creases. So again, as the game went on, I thought our guys did a nice job.”
That led to Michigan shooting 51% from the field while making 10 of its 25 3s. Meanwhile, Indiana went just 11-34 from outside, and when you can’t get anything up inside, and you can’t shoot effectively from behind the arc, it’s bound to be a long night.
It’s at this point that the Hoosiers need to pick a direction when it comes to personnel. It’s no secret that they’re one of the smallest teams in the Big Ten, and when they keep trotting one big out–Sam Alexis or Reed Bailey–at a time, the monstrous teams like Michigan can take advantage of it.
You can either embrace the small-ball approach and put more shooting on the floor to provide spacing for Wilkerson and DeVries to get free, or you can try to put both bigs on the floor together. How that would look logistically is unclear, but, amidst a four-game slide in conference play, any kind of shake-up may provide a spark.
Friday at Rutgers presents an urgent opportunity to stop the losing streak and grab some momentum before hosting fifth-ranked Purdue next Tuesday.
“I just like our group,” Darian DeVries said. “We’ve got great guys. They’re continuing to work. They’re continuing to prepare at a high level, and we haven’t had the wins that we wanted to. We’ve had a couple there that we felt like we could’ve gotten. But this season’s a long season, and you’re going to have a stretch or two sometimes like this.
“Our thing is, and why I feel so good about it, is that locker room is great,” he added. “We’ve got guys that want to continue to compete. They want to continue to get better. So, we’re just going to keep working, and that’s the only way you get yourself back out of it, and this group will do that.”