The words “Indiana is a football school” reign more and more true as the year 2024 has gone on. The football team has done its part with the winning, and now the men's basketball team is doing its part to keep that spotlight on football after an abysmal performance in the Battle 4 Atlantis opener, falling to Louisville 89-61.
Marquee events on neutral courts continue to be a struggle in Mike Woodson’s tenure at Indiana University. Nothing went particularly well for Indiana today, and the 28-point margin actually makes it look a bit closer than it was. The Cardinals led by 38 at one point.
Indiana tried to set the tone early with a couple of perfectly executed pick-and-rolls to get Oumar Ballo a pair of dunks at the beginning of the game. They made it evident from there that they wanted to dominate Louisville down low, and they had the height advantage with Malik Reneau and Ballo. But defensively, Indiana gave Louisville a few too many open looks from long distance and the Cards capitalized. Louisville went 10-27 from three with both Noah Waterman and Reyne Smith knocking down four each. On the other end, if you take out a garbage-time Anthony Leal three at the end of the game, the Hoosiers made just six long balls.
Besides a few three-pointers at the beginning of the game, Louisville couldn’t get much going offensively early on either, and that’s when things started to get sloppy --- from the 16-minute mark until the 8-minute mark in the first half. It felt like every possession in that span was Groundhog Day. A Louisville missed jump shot or blocked layup led to an Indiana turnover on the other end. About eight minutes into the game, Indiana had already turned the ball over six times, and that number didn’t necessarily get better as the game went on.
The Hoosiers finished the game with 23 turnovers as a team, and Louisville would convert that to 30 points off turnovers. The 23 turnovers ended up being more than Indiana’s 21 made shots.
Louisville took just a seven-point lead into the locker room and it didn’t look like it could get that much worse for Indiana, but boy was that wrong. The Hoosiers came out with an extremely low amount of energy and that’s when Louisville started to take over. Louisville had 13 of the first 15 total points in the second half thanks to a couple of midrange jumpers from J’Vonne Hadley and five points from Waterman. Just four minutes into the second, Louisville was already up 17 and forced Mike Woodson to call a timeout.
Whatever the message was in that timeout, it didn't help. Indiana lost the second half by 20 points. And if there’s a bright spot at all in this game for Indiana, Malik Reneau looked good, scoring 21 on 7-12 shooting and hitting a couple of threes, but he was one of only two Hoosiers in double-figures.
Indiana has to flush this one quickly, with two more games in the next two days to finish off the Battle 4 Atlantis. They’ll play the rest of the tournament in the loser’s bracket, taking on the loser of West Virginia-Gonzaga on Thursday. The best they can finish is fifth place.
