FINAL SCORE: Northwestern 73, Indiana 58 | Box Score
The ghost of Hoosier future.
Derek Elston (10 points, nine boards) and Christian Watford (nine points, six boards) playing close to the double-double men they’re capable of being night in and night out. Verdell Jones and Jordan Hulls handling the perimeter. A strong start. Controlled, sensible decisions. Being in the driver’s seat for 32 minutes of this one. Using the same scheme — a zone that forced outside shots — against Northwestern twice in the same week, and it working. Respectable shooting from the field (43.5 percent) and (sort of) from three (33.3 percent).
The ghost of Hoosier past.
The scoring droughts. A few of ‘em, but none more costly than the 9:29 without a field goal late in the second half — a stretch of time that essentially lost this team the game.
The turnovers. When the wheels fell of midway through the second half, Northwestern’s 1-3-1 zone forced the Hoosiers into plenty of them, and of course, there were a number of the unforced variety as well. In total, IU had 19. (13 of which came in the second half.)
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This one stings a bit, because IU had this game. The car was on cruise control. But they fell asleep at the wheel and veered off the road — never to recover.
It would have been nice to rack up an 11th win, nice to have a chance at a 12th win against Purdue in the next round of the tourney. But alas, what’s doomed the Hoosiers all season — their inability to take care of the ball and put the ball in the basket — doomed them again today.
Going to cut this one short instead of rambling on like usual. We’ll have plenty of end-of-the-year content starting next week for y’all, which should be fun.
Thanks for sticking with us this season, and don’t fret. Better days are ahead.
The real difference a year makes
INDIANAPOLIS — The first words out of Jordan Hulls’ mouth talked about rebounding.
Standing outside his team’s locker room after a season-ending 73-58 loss to Northwestern, the question was posed to Indiana’s young guard: What did you learn from this season?
“We can be a great rebounding team,” Hulls said. “We came together, we have lots to improve upon, but I feel like we got a lot better as the season went on.”
Down the stretch run last year, during that record-setting losing streak and through the mounting blowouts, it began to feel as though the Hoosiers had maxed out their potential for that season. Overmatched and undermanned every night, Indiana reached a point where players were physically and, perhaps, mentally worn down to such a degree that both the means and the end of each game became thoroughly predictable.
This season looked that way too, for awhile. After a strong December and January, marked by wins over the likes of Pittsburgh, Michigan and Minnesota, the Hoosiers disappeared, losing 11 in a row in mostly-forgettable fashion. Fans wanted to give up. Some of us in the media (me, mostly) wanted to let go. Even players, at times, appeared as if their hearts and heads just couldn’t align well enough to give another win-worthy effort.
The Senior Day win over Northwestern disproved that. And Thursday’s loss, deceptively large, sort of said the same.
I was in this building a year ago when, against a talented-but-not-unstoppable Penn State squad, No. 11-seed Indiana basically rolled over. The Hoosiers just looked too tired, too worn down, too short of confidence to mount a significant challenge against any Big Ten opponent.
What positives could one take from such regular, predictable, heavy losing? I don’t think it’s fair to say that this time around.
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