Insider: Season's best Indiana basketball performances lose luster in loss at Purdue, and it's a shame

Insider: Season’s best Indiana basketball performances lose luster in loss at Purdue, and it’s a shame

Posted by author February 1, 2025 Basketball

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WEST LAFAYETTE — The shame of Friday night is in what should have been.

Not the result, so much. No. 10 Purdue deserved its 81-76 win, a hard-fought home victory in the Big Ten’s best rivalry. The result pushed the Boilermakers into sole possession of 10th all time in wins by a men’s basketball program. The team they pushed down a peg? Indiana basketball.

And this was the sort of thing that should’ve defined what was in so many ways an excellent basketball spectacle. A primetime in-state showdown, a feral atmosphere, two historically vested teams fighting tooth and nail into the final minutes on a night when nobody led by more than seven.

“It’s about making plays down the stretch and securing the win,” IU coach Mike Woodson said afterward. “We couldn’t get key stops.”

This was a standalone advertisement for Big Ten basketball at its absolute best. Or at very least it should have been.

In Bloomington, though, this will tumble into a bucket too full of disappointments across the last 10-plus years.

A second straight game decided in part by clear miscommunication between Woodson and his starting point guard. A fifth-year center so frustrated he barked at a teammate in a late-game huddle for all to see. A fifth loss in six games for a team that in long bursts proved its potential against one of the conference front runners, in a season increasingly likely to be defined by what could have been.

Or what should have been.

Indiana (14-8, 5-6 Big Ten) did so much well Friday night.

The Hoosiers managed their most difficult atmosphere. They answered every punch Purdue threw. They mixed in more than enough of their own.

Mackenzie Mgbako (25 points, five rebounds) and Luke Goode (13 points, three made 3s) punished Purdue (17-5, 9-2) on the wings where the Boilermakers looked woefully overmatched.

Oumar Ballo’s final line, 14 points and eight rebounds, did not do justice to his influence on the game. Purdue could not manage his size, length and presence. Woodson built an excellent game plan for exploiting what Purdue would struggle with — dribble penetration, high ball screens, drive and pass — and Ballo at its heart. He became the gravitational center around which the game orbited, and in concert with Trey Galloway running Woodson’s ball-screen offense, he was outstanding in both halves.

So was Galloway.

He’s saved some of his best performances in this rivalry for his turns through Mackey Arena, and he didn’t waste this last one. Galloway scored 13 of his 15 points after halftime, dovetailing excellently with Ballo and handing out five assists. As Purdue’s foul trouble in the post intensified, the Boilermakers had to shade toward Ballo on help, and Galloway ate up the open space with runners and floaters right in front of the Paint Crew they silenced.

“We were just fortunate Trey Galloway didn’t have the ball in his hands at the end there,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said postgame. “Let’s just be frank about it, because he was making plays.”

“Frank” would also have described Woodson’s explanation as to why Galloway didn’t get a touch in the game’s crucial possession.

After Purdue took the lead with less than 11 seconds remaining, Myles Rice took the inbounds pass and sprinted up the floor. Trouble was, he aimed for the far side, away from his sideline and beyond his coach’s ability to communicate with him.

Rice — arguably the fastest player on the floor but at the end of a subdued performance — aimed for the baseline. He’d scored no points to that moment, as Gicarri Harris followed him, but a half-step ahead, Rice reasoned he could either reach the lane or draw a foul.

He pulled up for an off-balance jumper. The television broadcast suggested he’d been fouled. No whistle came. Purdue scooped up the loose ball, made the necessary free throws and walked away a winner.

“Our concern in that situation would have been Trey Galloway,” Painter continued. “That was who was torching us. He was getting to the rim, he was making plays. That’s the guy who was feeling it.”

Woodson made it clear that possession was not what he’d wanted.

“I couldn’t get his attention,” Woodson said. “Once he took off, I couldn’t get to him. It was too late. The official went by. We’ve got to connect better. That’s just the bottom line. Because our high pick-and-roll stuff was going well for us with the ball in Gallo’s hands, and we just couldn’t get back to it.”

In the aftermath, cameras caught Ballo so frustrated he got heated with Rice in the huddle, as Woodson worked his team through what to do next.

That’s two games in a row now — one where Woodson got his timeout and one where he didn’t — defined at the end in part by miscommunication and disconnectedness from bench to player and back.

Maryland happened because of substitutions and a lack of communication afterward. Purdue happened because no one communicated at all.

The persistent theme is they both happened. IU lost both games and has now lost five of six. In the aftermath of Illinois, the Hoosiers spoke at length about taking back control of their season, then backed that up with an overtime win at Ohio State.

But everything will always be defined by the context around it. When the Hoosiers won nine of 10, they were allowed to write off the end of the Nebraska game as seven bad minutes. Now 1-5 in their last six, it’s equally fair to ask what the complexion of all this would look like if Bruce Thornton’s last shot had gone in.

Friday night was by a lot of measures Indiana’s best performance of the season. Individuals — Mgbako, Goode, Ballo, Leal, Galloway — turned in resilient, winning performances. Woodson’s game plan was outstanding nearly throughout. The Hoosiers played maybe the best team in the Big Ten to a standstill in a building that hates them passionately.

Win or lose, it should have meant more than this. To the rivalry. To the conference. To the season. To everything. And yes, context will lend it greater definition in the final accounting. But right now those numbers don’t add up to much, and that’s a shame.

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