For Indiana men’s basketball on Tuesday, the damage was done early.
The Hoosiers entered Madison, Wisc. on a three-game losing streak, and having lost five of their last six games. And they’d lost 20 consecutive games to Wisconsin at the Kohl Center — IU’s last road win over the Badgers was in 1998.
It became very evident, very quickly, on Tuesday that the drought would continue. Wisconsin blitzed the Hoosiers from the opening tip and put them in too deep a hole to truly recover from. Even with IU settling in later in the first half and finishing tied in second-half points, the Badgers still cruised to a 76-64 victory.
Wisconsin (18-5, 8-4 Big Ten) opened the contest on a 26-4 run, punishing Indiana (14-9, 5-7) for lackadaisical defensive effort and inefficient offense with poor shot-making. IU went just 2 for 11 from the field to start the game, while UW shot 9 for 14 in the same span.
“I thought we came out with good intentions, and we were just awful defensively. I mean, just terrible,” IU head coach Mike Woodson said during his postgame radio interview. “We knew coming in that this was a great 3-point shooting team, and we still didn’t guard the 3-point line early on. I think they had nine at halftime and that was the major difference in the game.”
Indeed, the Badgers racked up nine 3-pointers by halftime on 16 attempts. This became Indiana’s fifth time in the last eight games allowing at least 10 threes, the program’s first such stretch in at least 15 years. The Hoosiers did a good job defending the 3-point line on Friday against a strong outside-shooting Purdue team, but that didn’t generate any positive momentum.
Tuesday’s brutal start accentuated the concerns over IU’s starting lineup. This was Malik Reneau’s fourth game back after missing five games with a knee injury. The junior has looked rusty and ineffective outside of a few small stretches since he came back, and he was particularly bad during Wisconsin’s big run to open this game. IU already trailed 13-2 when Reneau checked out less than four minutes into the game.
Meanwhile, Luke Goode continued to give Indiana solid minutes off the bench. This wasn’t his best game, and he, too, contributed to some of the team’s defensive lapses that allowed Wisconsin to shoot 12 for 29 from 3-point range. But the Hoosiers looked notably better on Tuesday when he and Trey Galloway checked in for Reneau and Anthony Leal.
Regardless, IU’s issues may run deeper than that. Its dreadful start to this game was marred by poor effort. The Hoosiers had these sorts of effort problems earlier in January during blowout losses to Iowa and Illinois, but they’d performed better in that regard during the current losing streak to Northwestern, Maryland, and Purdue. But they took a major step back in the effort department against the Badgers.
“We’re just not a tough team right now. We’re not. And mentally, we’re not tough,” Woodson said. “We have a game like we did at Purdue where we really competed for 40 minutes, and then we come in here and we lay an egg, based on how we started the ballgame. You spot teams on the road 20, it’s going to be tough to get back in (the game).”
This was just another case of Indiana finding ways to lose games.
This team is on very thin ice for any faint hope of postseason basketball, and it’s teetering ever-closer to an unceremonious ending to a disastrous year. IU has the talent to play much better than it has throughout this season, but the puzzle pieces just haven’t fit together often enough for that to matter.
The Hoosiers aren’t giving up on the season, and they didn’t give up on Tuesday. After giving up the 26-4 run, they outscored Wisconsin by 10 points the rest of the way. Indiana kept battling, for the most part, and created a few windows where a comeback felt at least somewhat possible.
But the brutal start left IU without any margin for error the rest of the game, and it couldn’t reach that standard. The Hoosiers similarly have no margin for error left in this season, and with only eight games left in the regular season, they’re running out of games to turn things around.
“None of these guys like to lose. I don’t like to lose,” Woodson said. “I don’t like the way we’re playing. I did prior to coming into tonight’s game, I thought at Purdue we played great, Maryland game we played great, we played a great half at Northwestern. We were awful tonight.”
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