BLOOMINGTON — The constant boos inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Tuesday spoke volumes.
But the empty seats spoke louder.
Throughout Mike Woodson’s three-plus seasons as Indiana men’s basketball head coach, the program has seen plenty of highs and plenty of lows. But no night in Woodson’s tenure swung further towards either extreme than Tuesday’s game against No. 19 Illinois.
After IU got crushed at Iowa over the weekend, fans showed up ticked off before the contest even began. The crowd booed Woodson during pregame introductions louder than they’d booed all season.
But that was only the appetizer to the evening’s main course: the ugliest night in the modern history of Assembly Hall.
Every facet of Indiana’s 94-69 loss — its second straight 25-point defeat — was an indictment on Woodson and the current state of his program.
“We’re not playing tough enough,” Illinois transfer Luke Goode said after the game. “We need to come out and be ready and stick to the game plan and the scouting report. That’s been our biggest issue so far. We come out and let teams kind of punk us in a sense.”
The Hoosiers (13-5, 4-3 Big Ten) looked like they hadn’t learned their lesson from Saturday’s — frankly — unacceptable performance against Iowa. They displayed jarringly poor effort and a complete lack of composure on Tuesday, while Illinois (13-4, 5-2) ran circles around them and took their lunch money.
The jeers that began during pregame only grew louder as Illinois quickly pulled away. The Fighting Illini went on a 15-4 run after the game’s first media timeout, stretching their lead to 27-15. Boos rained down on nearly every possession, whether it was Indiana taking a bad shot, the Illini grabbing an offensive rebound with little to no resistance, or IU allowing a wide-open 3-pointer.
Trey Galloway struggled on both ends to open the game, shooting 0 for 5 in the first half. And the crowd particularly centered its ire towards the fifth-year. Fans cheered when he subbed out for Kanaan Carlyle in the first six minutes of the game, and booed when he returned six minutes later. They even booed Galloway during a timeout, when Galloway appeared on the scoreboard during a pre-recorded video segment.
Illinois stretched its lead to 23 points, 43-20, by the under-8 timeout. By that point, the student section decided booing wasn’t a strong enough reaction. They broke out “Fire Woodson” chants as the teams huddled on the court. The IU pep band started playing even louder to drown out the chants — as they’re instructed to when those sorts of things happen.
But when Illinois freshman Kasparas Jakucionis stepped to the foul line after the break, there was no way to hide the disdain. The “Fire Woodson” chants grew louder, and Indiana wasn’t doing anything to ease the frustration. The Illini racked up 60 points by halftime, and IU trailed by 28 points — its largest halftime deficit at home in the last 25 years, per ESPN. Indiana retreated to its locker room to a deafening roar of booing.
IU fans have booed their Hoosiers on their home floor plenty of times the last few years during rough games. But this was different. The energy inside Assembly Hall on Tuesday was several steps beyond the standard boo-birds heard on occasion. This was an angry crowd watching its team play a horrendously poor basketball game.
“I understand it. We got embarrassed,” Goode said. “We have to wear this jersey with more pride as Indiana players. This program is too historical and too great to be represented like that.”
The fans then took things a step further during the halftime break. Swaths of students fled for the exits, with their coats and belongings in hand. They’d had enough.
When Indiana ran back out to the court to warm up for the second half, they returned to a half-empty seating bowl. Some fans filed back in from the concourses when play resumed, but a noticeable amount of seats were abandoned.
IU showed a little more fight in the second half, and actually outscored Illinois in those final 20 minutes. But the comeback was much too little, and it came far too late. The damage had already been done, and Indiana still couldn’t correct enough miscues to ever make the game interesting.
The Hoosiers started the game 0 for 13 from 3-point range — the sort of shooting slump that has become all too familiar for Woodson’s squads — and they didn’t end that drought until Trey Galloway finally drilled one with 5:50 remaining. It cut the deficit to 27 points.
The fans who returned from halftime spent most of the second half slowly matriculating towards the exits, themselves. By the final media timeout, nearly as many Illinois fans remained in the arena as IU fans.
The crowd that stuck around saw the Hoosiers hit rock bottom with around 2 ½ minutes remaining.
Goode picked up a foul while boxing out Illini sophomore Tomislav Ivisic, who then got in Goode’s face talking smack. IU sophomore Myles Rice came over to defend his teammate and pushed Ivisic away from Goode. Several Illinois players joined the scene as referees separated Rice and Ivisic. But then, IU graduate student Oumar Ballo barreled in from the free-throw line, reached through a crowd of people with one long arm, and shoved Ivisic to the ground. That escalated the situation, with some players pushing and shoving, and other players and coaches joining the fray to break things up.
Ballo was ejected, and Rice and Ivisic both received technical fouls. A suspension could loom for Ballo from the Big Ten office ahead of IU’s game at Ohio State on Friday.
Woodson understood his players sticking up for one another, but offered little admonishment during his press conference.
“There is not a whole lot I can do, until I can back and review it. I’m sure the commissioner and everybody will take a look at what happened and make a decision on what they plan on doing. I just hope Ballo is with us our next game as we travel over to Ohio,” Woodson said. “In the heat of the battle anything is liable to happen. I don’t condone players pushing players or their player got into our player’s face. It went back and forth, two guys pushing and shoving. I don’t condone that by any means. In the heat of the battle I’m not right there in the situation where I can stop it. Sometimes things get out of hand and they happen.”
Had Assembly Hall still been full, fans might have booed the officials for ejecting Ballo but allowing Ivisic to remain in the game. But so many fans had already left by that point that the crowd reaction felt relatively muted.
Indiana’s performance on Tuesday, coming off a dismal outing on Saturday, magnifies and intensifies the serious big-picture questions and concerns surrounding the program. Woodson’s teams have shown a clear tendency to let games spiral from bad to worse when things aren’t going well. And this abomination was IU’s response to another such display.
This game felt like a turning point in the Mike Woodson era in Bloomington. His IU teams have endured plenty of rough nights over the last three-plus seasons, but none quite like this. It’s unclear what the path looks like to come back from a two-game stretch like this, capped by an absolutely embarrassing night for the program in all facets.
But Woodson and the Hoosiers will have to figure something out in that respects, before the wheels completely fall off this quickly tailspinning season.
“I don’t think we carry on like normal. Obviously things need to be addressed between players and themselves and players and each other. I think that’s really the root of it,” Anthony Leal said. “We just got to lock in, look in the mirror, and understand how embarrassing and unacceptable this is and understand that nobody gets where they want to go if the team doesn’t win.Just reassessing everything and setting our priorities, straight man-to-man and man-to-himself, and finding ways to win games.”
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