Northwestern wins fifth straight over Indiana basketball with flurry of 3-pointers

Posted by author January 23, 2025 Basketball

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EVANSTON, Ill. — The Indiana basketball team showed some fight, but couldn’t overcome Northwestern’s best shooting performance of the season in a 79-70 loss Wednesday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena.

The Hoosiers (14-6, 5-4 Big Ten) lost their fifth straight game in the series.

Indiana went into halftime with all the momentum after erasing a 10-point deficit, but Northwestern exploded for nine 3-pointers in the second half to regain control of the game.

The Wildcats (12-7, 3-5) came into the game shooting just 31.5% on the season — they only shot better than 40% in five of their 18 games this season — but had no such issues Wednesday night as they unleashed a torrent of long-distance shots including four straight in the final 6 minutes to push their lead to 14 points.

They finished with a season-high 13 made 3-pointers on 48.1% shooting. Senior Ty Berry had 23 points with a career-high seven 3-pointers and Jalen Leach hit all three of his 3-pointers in the second half.

It might have been a more lopsided game if not for Mackenzie Mgbako turning the page on his shooting slump and scoring nine of his 20 points in the final 2:20. He buried a 3-pointer from the corner to make it a two-possession game with 43.6 seconds to go.

Indiana basketball coach Mike Woodson tweaks his approach against Northwestern

Woodson rarely varies his game management strategies, but he made some noticeable exceptions Wednesday night.

It started when he let Luke Goode and Myles Rice play with two fouls in the first half. Woodson usually auto-benches players in those situations and sits them out the rest of the half, but both checked back into the game with IU looking to erase a 10-point deficit.

The other change was having Malik Reneau get a few minutes at the five.

Reneau, who came off the bench, returned to the lineup after missing five straight games with a knee injury. He wore a brace on his right knee and didn’t look 100% as he missed a series of shots in the first half all within a foot of the rim.

Woodson still had enough confidence in Reneau to try him out at center without any other post player on the floor. Much of Reneau’s playing time this season has come with either Oumar Ballo or Langdon Hatton on the floor.

When IU won five straight with Reneau sidelined, the offense benefitted from the extra spacing that came from Woodson only playing one post player at a time. He was used sparingly in the second half as he works his way back from injury.

Indiana basketball (briefly) gets over the hump in ugly first half against Northwestern

Northwestern looked on the verge of turning the game into a blowout midway through the first half thanks to Berry’s scoring outburst off the bench.

He went on an 8-0 run by himself — he came into the game averaging 7.7 points per game — and put the Wildcats up 23-13 with 9:35 to go in the half with his third 3-pointer, but that was their last field goal of the half.

Indiana went on an 18-2 run and the arena exploded in “Let’s go Hoosiers” chants after Trey Galloway knocked down a floater in the lane to give it its first lead of the game with 1:30 to go in the half.

It wasn’t pretty by any means — IU went five minutes without a field goal during Northwestern’s drought — but Mgbako had some nice moments by getting to the rim for multiple layups and Galloway had seven points in the half.

Both teams shot under 40% in the first half and they combined for 15 turnovers.

Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.