It’s Time to Believe in Indiana
Posted by Patrick Engel on January 25th, 2016Seven short weeks ago, Indiana was 5-3 with losses to Wake Forest, UNLV and Duke. The Blue Devils had just pounded Indiana 94-74 in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, scored an absurd 1.52 points per possession while shooting 52 percent from the field, grabbing 19 offensive rebounds and committing just six turnovers. Angry Tom Crean pictures and photoshopped crying Michael Jordan pictures making fun of Indiana quickly became memes.
OG Anunoby has become an Indiana fan favorite because of his defense and dunks. (Michael Hickey/Getty Images).
Since that loss, Indiana has rattled off 12 straight wins and is one of two unbeaten teams in Big Ten play. The most recent victory was a 32-point romp of Northwestern on Saturday to give Indiana its seventh conference win. The Hoosiers are back in the AP Top 25 and atop the Big Ten. It’s time to believe they might be that good.
Praising a team as legitimate after beating Northwestern at home seems weird at first glance. Yes, Indiana has also yet to play Maryland, Iowa, Purdue, Michigan State. or Michigan. It squeezed out a one-point win at home versus Wisconsin and only beat Rutgers by seven. Looking at that body of work and writing off the Hoosiers is easy. But that’s not digging into it deeply enough.
All of the Big Ten wins have come without James Blackmon Jr., the team’s second-leading scorer. The importance of losing Blackmon has been well-debated. Indiana’s 7-0 record and vastly improved defense without him suggest it may be better without Blackmon, and that may well be the case. But that’s beside the point. The takeaway from his absence should be that Indiana is 7-0 since suffering a key personnel loss. That’s no easy accomplishment regardless of who the key loss is. Many will still point to the weak conference schedule, but looking beyond the results yields some impressive numbers.
Indiana’s average margin of victory in its last three home games is 30.3 points. Its average margin of victory for all seven conference wins is 16.6 points and it has outscored its conference opponents 564-448. The Hoosiers are also the only team in the Big Ten to hold every conference opponent to under a point per possession. That’s the same team that allowed Kennesaw State to score 1.09 points per possession. They’ve averaged at least a point per possession in all but one of the 12 straight wins.
Replacing Blackmon’s minutes and production has been a committee effort, but it has gone better than most would have initially expected and come from some unexpected sources. Freshman OG Anunoby, the least heralded of Indiana’s three freshmen, has burst onto the scene in Blackmon’s absence. He leads the team in steal percentage (4.2%), is second in block percentage (4.8%) and is shooting 58 percent from the floor. If he had enough rebounds, his 14 percent of offensive rebound percentage would be top-50 nationally. Max Beilfeldt, essentially cast off from Michigan after last season, has scored in double figures four times in Big Ten play. Both he and Anunoby have offensive ratings over 120.
Indiana may not prove it is a top-15 or top-10 team until it beats some of the Big Ten’s best, but their improvement, circumstances around it, and players who have emerged are impressive regardless of the quality of their wins.
