Insider: Indiana basketball needs to beat Louisville in Battle 4 Atlantis opener

Posted by Admin November 26, 2024 Basketball

PARADISE ISLAND, The Bahamas – Here, in paradise, we will finally see what the Hoosiers can do. They had better be ready to run.

No. 15 Indiana opens play in its first-ever Battle 4 Atlantis at noon ET Wednesday against Louisville. Mike Woodson’s team carries a perfect 4-0 start — and no major tests to speak of — into this event, which will rectify that concern quickly.

IU’s nonconference schedule always bent hard toward this week, and the idea that the Hoosiers would leave the heavy lifting for this trip. A home win against South Carolina might have been a decent tune-up, but it likely won’t pull much weight on selection Sunday. Whatever quality Indiana adds to its NCAA tournament resume out of conference (and it needs some) will come here.

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That means shelving the inconsistencies of the season’s first three weeks, if only for three days. It means greater focus, greater intensity and greater sharpness.

Woodson’s Hoosiers don’t have to be at their best from now until March, just from now until Saturday. And they don’t have to win every game they play, but they need to win enough of them, because building a tournament resume exclusively from Big Ten games will be like pulling a 50-pound bag of sand uphill — not impossible, but an almighty pain.

That starts with Louisville, a rebuilt program with a rebuilt roster seemingly perfect for causing Indiana trouble.

In his first season with the Cardinals, coach Pat Kelsey has leaned hard into frenzy. Louisville is one of the fastest offensive teams in the country. It forces turnovers on nearly 26% of opponents’ possessions. It plays small and it spaces the floor and, though it doesn’t hit many of them (29.4% on the season), it takes a lot of 3s.

Fully 54.6% of all the Cardinals’ field goal attempts this season have come from behind the arc, fourth nationally. For comparison’s sake, for IU that number is just 30.4%, 344^th nationally.

The Hoosiers hit them far more consistently, 35.7%. But efficiency alone doesn’t save Indiana in a game like this.

These are the kinds of opponents we’ve seen IU struggle with in recent years, up to and including UNC Greensboro last Thursday. Teams that play smaller, spread the floor and shoot a lot of 3s are a problem for Indiana, and this one does it with high-major talent.

Too often, Woodson’s teams struggle to manage dribble penetration with his pressure man-to-man defense. Breakdowns lead to kickouts, swings and open 3s. As Greensboro reminded Indiana last week, they don’t need to go down at an efficient rate to be a problem. The Spartans shot just 9-of-32 (28.1%) but that still left them plus-12 at the 3-point line, as Indiana struggled through a poor shooting performance.

But it’s how Greensboro kept that game close that should worry Woodson ahead of this one.

Between 17 offensive rebounds and 14 turnovers, the Spartans stole 31 extra possessions. Louisville isn’t a particularly gifted offensive rebounding team, but neither was Greensboro, and neither have been any of the other low- and mid-major teams in the last two seasons that have chucked and chased and outhustled the Hoosiers to extra possessions.

This isn’t meant to suggest Indiana should or will be the underdog Wednesday, against the still-rebuilding Cardinals.

IU has a pronounced advantage in size, depth and experience. Louisville’s 2-point efficiency numbers won’t do them much good in this game. Indiana should simply be able to outmuscle the Cardinals. And the Hoosiers have a lot more ways to score.

The comparison is imperfect, but Louisville’s only high-major test this season came in a home game against Tennessee. Against the same Tennessee team IU beat in Knoxville in an October exhibition, the Cardinals hit 10 3s, pulled down 13 rebounds and forced 20 turnovers, and still lost by 22.

Indiana can’t simply assume it will overlay the same result. The Hoosiers need this tournament to do a lot of work for them in the bigger picture, and they can’t afford to be casual about it.

Wednesday looks like about as much of a must-win as any game can be at Thanksgiving, not just for the sake of beating Louisville but also to set the stage for what’s to come. Shots at Gonzaga and Arizona are likely off the table with a loss in Game 1.

And so, we return to the wider theme, and to the idea that the Hoosiers need their best this week.

Few rules of thumb ring truer in college basketball than the idea that no one should be playing their best basketball in November, and that’s not what’s required of IU here. Whatever their best basketball is right now, today, is.

If Woodson doesn’t want a repeat of last season, with an empty calorie nonconference resume dragging his program behind the NCAA tournament field like an ankle weight on a marathoner, then Indiana must make the most of its week in the sunshine. A good showing in Atlantis, beginning with Louisville on Wednesday, is a must.

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