The Minute After: Louisville
Thoughts on an 89-61 loss to the Cardinals:
Embarrassing.
There’s no other way to put this one.
The Hoosiers entered the game as 2.5-point favorites. They exited as 28-point losers. That number would have been 33 had Anthony Leal not scored five points in the last eight seconds of the game.
This loss follows a pattern.
In non-conference neutral site matchups, Mike Woodson’s teams suffer blowout losses. Two seasons ago, Arizona beat the Hoosiers by 14. Last year, Auburn defeated Indiana by 28, while UConn bested the Hoosiers by 20. (If we want to toss in neutral site conference games, Indiana lost by 27 to Nebraska in the Big Ten Tournament last season.)
But this one was different. Those other non-conference matchups featured an elite opponent. While Louisville has improved with new coach Pat Kelsey, the Cardinals aren’t elite. At least not yet. And no team should be this much better than the Hoosiers with the talent they have on this roster.
And yet here we are.
The Cardinals enforced their will in the first half. They pushed the pace and got the 3-point looks they wanted. Indiana, on the other hand, looked like the worst of the Mike Woodson era. The Hoosiers played through the post, favoring back-to-basket post-ups for Oumar Ballo and Malik Reneau with Indiana’s size advantage. As a result, Mackenzie Mgbako, their best scorer, got just two shots. And one of those was a weak-side kickout 3-pointer after Ballo was doubled.
Its guard play was horrendous. At the under 12-minute timeout, the Hoosiers had turned the ball over on 52 percent of their possessions. At half, that number was still 32 percent. And by the game’s end, it hadn’t improved, as it ended at 32. That’s right: Nearly one out of every three Indiana possessions ended in a turnover this afternoon.
Louisville wasn’t much better with the ball in the first half (29 percent turnover rate), which helped the Hoosiers stay within striking distance (37-29) at the break. And an early Reneau bucket moved the Hoosiers to within six at 37-31. But from there, Lousiville busted out an explosive 11-0 run to take a 17-point lead. Woodson called timeout to try and calm things down.
But that run broke Indiana. From that moment on, the Hoosiers played with little effort and intensity. They were resigned to the loss. It was hard to spot a rotation player fighting outside of Luke Goode. A J’Vonne Hadley bucket put the Cardinals up 38 points with 7:08 to play, the most out of hand the game got before settling at the 29-point victory for Lousiville.
Myles Rice finished 1-of-11 from the floor. Backcourt starting mate Kanaan Carlyle (0-of-2) didn’t score. Neither did Trey Galloway (0-of-2) in 20 minutes of action. Goode (1-of-5 from deep) is still struggling with his shot. The Hoosiers scored just .84 points per possession while surrendering 1.23 to the Cardinals. Indiana shot 33.3 percent (21-of-63) from the floor.
The Hoosiers competed hard at Tennessee in an exhibition win to start the season. It handled South Carolina pretty well at home. But against lesser competition, effort and intensity have gone missing. There was the first half against Eastern Illinois, where Indiana went into the locker room trailing. Last time out against UNC Greensboro, the Hoosiers didn’t play an inspiring brand of basketball, limping along to an 11-point win.
Today was more of the latter — much more — and it came at a bad time. Indiana just lost an opportunity to likely play Gonzaga tomorrow, which means it will head to conference play without a marquee non-conference win.
The season is far from over — it’s not even December yet. But this type of performance is a red flag. And if it keeps waving, the cautious optimism fans had entering this season will be gone, replaced with all the lingering questions about this program from a season ago.
Filed to: Lousiville Cardinals