PHILADELPHIA — Throughout most of the start to this 2024-25 season, Indiana men’s basketball has struggled with the little things in the game and found ways to give things away.
IU often played down to its mid-major competition at home, and had to sweat out games that should’ve been far less stressful. The Hoosiers didn’t drop any of those contests, but they backed up the concerns from those wins by displaying red flags in their three losses to Louisville, Gonzaga, and Nebraska.
This was an Indiana team that entered January without a Quad I win. It needed to start capitalizing on its opportunities in conference play — quickly — to resurrect the hope and optimism the program entered the season with.
If IU is able to do that — if this team turns this season around and starts playing to its potential more consistently — mark down January 5 as the day things changed. Against a tough Penn State team in an uncommon environment at The Palestra in Philadelphia, Indiana found ways to win a big game. It wasn’t always smooth, but the Hoosiers closed out a 77-71 win on Sunday.
“It’s special, when you get a chance to win on the road in the Big Ten, that’s big time, man, because it’s not easy winning on the road,” IU head coach Mike Woodson said after the game. “Your homestands, when you play, you can’t let games slip away there. And then you got to compete like hell when you get out on the road, because teams play well at home. They just do in this league.”
Indiana (12-3, 3-1 Big Ten) got the job done for a variety of reasons — and the biggest, both figuratively and literally, was Oumar Ballo. The big man turned in one of his best games as a Hoosier, and made key plays when his team needed them most. The Arizona transfer scored 25 points on 9-of-15 shooting, with 13 rebounds, three assists, and two blocks.
There were several stretches of the game — particularly in the first half — where Indiana’s shooting went cold, so Ballo got the ball down low and had to figure something out. And most of the time, he did.
The Nittany Lions (12-3, 2-2) leaned heavily on their inside offense — 52 of their 71 points came in the paint. But Ballo impacted plenty of shots defensively, and PSU didn’t have many answers for him on the other end, even with 7-foot forward Yanic Konan Niederhauser opposing him.
This was Ballo’s first game back in the starting lineup after his one-game absence against Winthrop, and after he came off the bench against Rutgers. Indiana needed him at his best with Malik Reneau unavailable. And Ballo stepped up.
“He was huge for us,” Woodson said. “We featured him, and he responded big time. He made some shots over the top of the big seven-footer that they had — who’s, I think, a hell of a player.”
Indiana needed a strong defensive performance on Sunday to have a chance against a potent Penn State offense. The Nittany Lions entered the game 13th in the nation at 1.178 points per possession, and they ranked seventh in the country with 87.9 points per game.
The Hoosiers weren’t perfect on defense. They struggled with PSU’s straight line drives at times, gave up a bit more in the paint than Woodson was happy with, and they were a bit fortunate that PSU didn’t take better advantage of some open 3-point looks.
But on the whole, Indiana’s defense got the job done. Penn State finished with an even one point per possession. Myles Rice and Indiana’s backcourt did well in limiting Ace Baldwin Jr.’s impact. IU spent more time dictating the way this game would be played than Penn State did.
Indiana’s free-throw shooting was also a big key. The Hoosiers finished the game 73 percent at the line, but they went 8 for 9 in the final six minutes.
The team just did what it needed to do to pull out a big win.
“I’ve seen some of that throughout the early part of this season, where things got tight, they didn’t go the other way,” Woodson said. “We made our free throws. I ran out of timeouts, so it was critical that we were able to get the ball in bounds and not get trapped and get the ball up the floor and finish the game.”
IU created distance thanks to a Mackenzie Mgbako surge to open the second half, with eight points in 1:12 of game time. His hot shooting soon spread to the rest of the Hoosiers, as they went 6 for 8 from 3-point range in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Trey Galloway’s lone three with 10:20 remaining gave IU its biggest lead of the game.
Some shots stopped falling later in the half, and Penn State closed the gap. But Indiana’s dominant start to the second half built enough cushion to withstand some late-game shenanigans. And IU did have some head-scratching moments, like the sequence with less than two minutes remaining with a turnover, a Penn State 3-pointer, and then a 10-second violation.
But nothing happens in a vacuum in basketball. The Hoosiers played well for long enough stretches that those moments didn’t swing the game.
Style points don’t matter that much in games like these. Indiana just needed to win.
“It’s huge. It’s a huge win, going out on the road and handling business. It’s not easy going out on the road, and when you go back home, you don’t lose at home. So this win on the road is a big step forward for what we’re trying to accomplish here this season,” Mgbako said. “So as long as we can stick with what we’re doing and follow the game plan, I feel like we’ll have great success this year.”
This win, alone, doesn’t change Indiana’s season. The Hoosiers still have a lot of work to do to get their résumé in good enough shape to be an NCAA Tournament team. They need to build on this and turn it into momentum.
But that always has to start somewhere. Perhaps this game, along with the Rutgers game on Thursday, can be a similar stretch for Indiana as the Wisconsin and Illinois games were in January 2023.
The team’s performance over the next several games will determine how much of an impact this result could have.
But after pulling out a big win in front of a raucous crowd in a historic venue, Indiana — for the first time since November — is playing basketball suggesting optimism isn’t misguided.
“Winning on the road in the Big Ten is really hard, and we’re not taking that for granted,” Ballo said. “So whenever we win, I’m an emotional person, coming into this game, that was our focus, try to win this game, because it’s really hard to win on the road. And I’m glad we got the job done today.”
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