I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see so much negativity after this game, but I kind of am. To me, this game illustrates why the Gophers absolutely couldn't lose home games to Ohio State and Iowa(!) and really should have taken advantage of road games against Michigan, Nebraska, and Penn State. I'd argue the Gophers played better in this game than they did in any of those five games. Eventually, this team was going to get run off the court on the road, it's just not talented enough to go a whole season without it ever happening. That said, the avalanche in the second half occurred in large part to the Gophers missing some very good looks on offense and the Hoosiers hitting some tough contested 3's on the other end of the court. There were several 5 point swings that happened right on top of each other and the Gophers just couldn't recover. I felt like they showed decent fight in cutting the lead down to 10-11 a few separate times throughout the second half and some (not all) of the shots that expanded the Hoosiers lead back out were tough looks.
Positives:
I like Mathieu's drives to the basket tonight. We need him to be a threat offensively again and I liked seeing him being aggressive in the half court offense as opposed to just in the transition game where he's really struggled to finish. Obviously, Indiana's lack of size helped him here, but hopefully it was a confidence boost.
Charles Buggs continues to flash. Buggs had a couple of offensive boards in the second half that we just haven't gotten all year. He also had a nice pul up jumper off a behind the back dribble in the first half. The other thing I liked from Buggs was his attempt to disrupt Yogi in the second half both in the press and in the zone. I certainly don't fully trust him, but with another offseason he might solidify a nice role for himself.
Negatives:
The only thing that really angered me about this game was Joey King and Mo Walker on the boards. They were playing an undersized opponent tonight and they combined for one rebound in 59 minutes of play....Eliason had 3 boards in 11 minutes. I thought Mo also was not consistently aggressive in the post tonight and put up a couple of inexcusably soft attempts deep in the post against much smaller/lighter opposition. Indiana was so much more athletic in the front court, but our guys failed to use their size advantage which really hurt our chances of a win. In hindsight, a Morris/Buggs/Eliason front court would have been a better option given how Mo and Joey did on the boards.
While I think Indiana hit a number of tough shots, the Gopher defense has to get some blame 90 points and over 59% of fg's made against them. In general, the team just wasn't as sound defensively as they were against Iowa and really struggled to keep up with Indiana's excellent ball movement.
Big Picture: This was, by far, the best a team has played against the Gophers in conference play. Indiana certainly looked like the best team we've played so far and you can understand why they are undefeated at home during conference play. The Gophers were at both athleticism and skill disadvantages at numerous positions on the court and their only clear advantage (size) was negated by some soft play. In the future, we badly need to recruit some interior toughness in addition to better athletes/players. I don't feel like we have one player, outside of maybe Mathieu, who's naturally inclined to be physical and it's tough to win on the road without some guys with an element of nasty to them. I was still fairly encouraged by a lot of what I saw from the Gophers as they forced a bunch of turnovers and kept their own turnovers down. Wisconsin twice and at Michigan State are tough tasks, but that's the position this team put itself in. If they just played better earlier in the year, winning these games would be moving us up in to a nice seed in the NCAA tourney instead of needing them to sneak in. Don't be upset that we couldn't be the first B1G team to win at Indiana (on a night where they shot out of their minds no less), be upset that they blew games should have won under easier circumstances earlier in the year.
