‘Avalanche’ of mistakes have IU basketball looking to regroup after another noncompetitive performance — something becoming all too familiar

IU basketball is hoping that Saturday’s loss to Iowa was an outlier and a performance that won’t be returning over the course of the remainder of the season. After a five-game winning streak, the Hawkeyes snapped that with an 85-60 win over the Hoosiers.

After its recent surge and the belief that it had turned a real corner, a road matchup with Iowa would certainly be a telling moment; a place and team Indiana typically struggles against.

For all of the confidence and momentum IU basketball had built over the last two weeks, Saturday’s loss was more than a few steps back, especially for a team that can’t afford many no-show performances. The 25-point loss ended up being the worst Big Ten regular season loss for Mike Woodson at Indiana and now adds to a theme of ill-prepared performances in conference play over the last four years.

Mike Woodson now has 31 Big Ten losses, and 18 of those — in regular season or Big Ten tournament play — have come by 10+ points. But, the IU head coach doesn’t want to harp on IU’s showing against the Hawkeyes, rather the recent stretch of play that he hopes the team can get back to.

“We’ve been playing like a good basketball team,” Woodson said after the game. “I can’t sit here and complain.”

The message after the loss was more of one referencing Saturday’s performance being one that was ‘a little bit outside of ourselves’.

“I think we played uncharacteristic,” IU guard Myles Rice said. “We had a five-game stretch where we played really good basketball. I think tonight we got a little bit outside of ourselves. We started off slow and it was kind of an avalanche a little bit. One thing led to another and it kept going all night.”

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Indiana faced an early 21-8 deficit just seven minutes into the game but used an 18-2 run over the next six minutes to take a three-point lead, looking very much like the team of the last five games. Then, the all-too-familiar spiral for Indiana under Mike Woodson reared its head. A 20-7 run to end the half for Iowa seemingly put the game away and took any and all momentum from IU’s middle minutes of the first half.

Not only was it an inability to slow down the potent offense of Iowa, allowing the Hawkeyes to shoot 58.1 percent from the floor in the first half, it was turnovers that limited any ability for Indiana to make another run, limit the run for Iowa. IU had 12 first-half turnovers off of eight Iowa steals, resulting in 17 points off turnovers.

The second half was nothing different as Iowa finishing the night shooting 54.2 percent from the floor, outscoring IU by 21 on 3s and scoring 1.250 points per possession.

The deficit for Indiana grew to as much as 30 points.

“Our last road game was Penn State and I thought we competed from the very beginning to the end. Tonight we just looked totally different,” Woodson said. “We can’t have games like that. You have to consistently put yourself in a position where you’ve got a shot to win a basketball game. We didn’t give ourselves a chance today.”

After the belief that Indiana had found its identity of the ‘scrappy’ and ‘no quit’ mentality, Saturday’s loss was anything but the scrappy play IU had come to show as of late.

Now, it’s back to the drawing board because Saturday wasn’t just a loss, it was a statement that IU basketball is far from where it needs to be and another moment that shows the only consistent part of the Mike Woodson tenure, is the inconsistent play.

“Our last five games were very competitive and against some good teams. So we’ve got to go back and regroup,” Woodson said. “Because the Big Ten is not going anywhere. We’ve got Illinois here coming in here soon.”

SEE ALSO: Key takeaways from the IU basketball 85-60 loss to Iowa

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