Hoosiers adrift

 Caught a little of Indiana's loss to Northwestern the other day, and the first thing I wondered was how I missed the re-hiring of Archie Miller. The second thing I wondered was who these guys were, because they sure didn't look like the guys who took apart North Carolina a couple of months ago.

On the offensive end, people wearing the same jerseys Indiana wore that day were dribbling into double teams and leaving their feet with no apparent thought to what they were going to do now that they were stuck in midair. Result: Turnover.

And on the other end?

No recognition. No cutting off passing/driving lanes. No help-side sliding to stop penetration.

Pretty much, the defense amounted to letting guys go and hoping Trayce Jackson-Davis could make the block. Pretty much the offense was TJD taking it to the tin or Jalen Hood-Schifino sticking the three.

And so Indiana lost by one after trailing virtually the entire game ... against Northwestern ... in Assembly Hall. 

And then ...

And then, on Wednesday, the Hoosiers went out to Happy Valley and lost by 19 to Penn State.

They did this, mainly, by consistently failing to defend the arc, even though the players acknowledged it was something they worked on in practice. The Nittany Lions said "Don't mind if we do" and impaled 'em with 18 threes.

And now certain elements of Hoosier Nation, never noted for its patience, are saying Mike Woodson can't coach and his players don't try and why did we hire this guy to begin with?

Forgetting, of course, that when Indiana did hire him, they were all saying "Finally, we got a Bob Knight guy!"

A year and a half later the Mike Woodson Hoosiers look a lot like the Archie Miller Hoosiers, and part of that is Woodson's fault and part of it is a lot of people's tendency to gild the lily when the uniforms say "Indiana." The Hoosiers were a sexy pick to win the Big Ten because Woodson reeled in one of the best freshman classes in the country; now they're 1-4 in the conference and, except for Hood-Schifino and the occasional Malik Reneau sighting, the freshmen are holding down the end of the bench.

If they're all that, why aren't more of them playing?

Why can't Indiana shoot any better than it did last year, except sporadically?

Why, if the offense had a band name, would it be TJD And Them Others?

Lots of people say now, when they didn't then, that it's because Woodson doesn't know the college game and can't coach it. Last I looked, though, it's the same game the NBA plays, only with less skill. Guys shoot. Guys rebound. Guys defend, occasionally.

It's not like the NBA's playing soccer and the colleges are playing badminton. It's still basketball.

What's different is the culture, and maybe that's what Woodson hasn't gotten yet. He keeps complaining about how his guys don't compete hard enough, apparently forgetting that he could do something about that as head coach. Bench some folks. Tell the folks who replace them that if they don't compete hard enough or execute what they practiced, he'll bench them, too.  

As Crash Davis said in "Bull Durham": They're kids. Scare 'em.

Woodson comes from an NBA culture where he was dealing with grown men, and he treated them accordingly. At Indiana, he's dealing with, yes, kids, who in some cases are less than a year out of high school. Maybe he needs to start treating them just as accordingly.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "They are missing two of their starters and best defensive players. And you can't go all Bob Knight on kids today, because they'll just enter the transfer portal and go somewhere they'll be more coddled."

True. But players get hurt all the time, and the best coaches tinker and X-and-O and find ways to adjust. And no one's suggesting going Bob Knight on 'em. Sir Bob of Knight was a brilliant coach, but he was also a bully who frequently blurred the line between discipline and abuse.

That stuff won't fly today. And it shouldn't have then.

What will work is establishing a culture of accountability and standards. That doesn't happen overnight, and I happen to think it's still a work in progress for Woodson. So I also think whatever funk the Hoosiers are in now is reversible.

March is two months away. If Indiana is still adrift then, we'll talk.