My Two Cents: No Easy Fix to Indiana's Perimeter Defense Issues
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — For the second game in a row, Indiana got burned early from 3-point range by a guard you've never heard of from a team you've never seen before.
Because it's November and the schedule is filled with cupcakes, all that Jamari Blackmon did in the first half for North Alabama wasn't enough to steal a win in Assembly Hall on Tuesday night, but it's exposing a serious problem with this Indiana team.
They just can't guard the 3-point line right now. And what makes matters worse is that there's no obvious cure to what ails them.
At least not right away.
Is it nit-picking that the Hoosiers eventually won big anyway, finishing off the Lions 91-65 before a sparse crowd on a bitterly cold mid-November night? Probably.
Is it REALLY nit-picking that the defense was actually much better in the second half? Maybe.
But still, it's disturbing that it happened two games in a row. Indiana's best defense along the 3-point line is more of a "hope they miss'' execution plan. After Portland State's two guards — Matt Hauser and Holland Woods — each hit four 3-pointers Saturday night to keep them in the game, Blackmon did the same thing Tuesday. He made all four of his 3-point attempts in the first half and scored 16 points, and it was only a 7-point game at halftime.
"Defensively, we're just not there. Perimeter defense, guarding the 3-point line, being able to execute, it wasn't there,'' Indiana coach Archie Miller said after the game.'
The worst part of what happened in the first half was that guarding the perimeter had been a point of emphasis in practice since Saturday night. Did it matter? Nope. North Alabama had a lot of wide-open looks in the first half, and shot 7 of 10 from long distance.
This is the same North Alabama team that was 2-for-21 from the 3-point line in its opener against South Carolina. Talk about night and day,
"I didn't see them take very many tough ones in the first five, six, eight minutes of the game. That's where it got going,'' Miller said with a disgusted look on his face during his postgame news conference. "To their credit, they really played well. The ball was moving fast for them and our rotations were moving way too slow.''
I'll give the Hoosiers this: They were much better defensively in the second half and were able to pull away for a comfortable win. The defense was so good, in fact, that North Alabama only scored 7 points in the first 10 minutes of the half. They made only 5 field goals the entire half, something that hasn't happened for IU's defense in seven years.
What got better was more pressure on the ball in the first place. It forced North Alabama to run more of its base offense, and the looks that were there in the first half simply weren't there in the second. The Lions attempted only four 3-pointers in the second half, and missed them all.
Al Durham had a lot to do with that. His pressure on Blackmon got more intense, and he took him out of the game. That was good — for 20 minutes.
So yeah, that's better, but is it sustainable? Can it be repeated, and be repeated for 40 minutes a game, and not just 10 minutes here or 15 minutes there?
Part of the problem with guarding the perimeter is that Indiana just doesn't have enough bodies to play small. They only have four pure guards on the roster, but senior Devonte Green hasn't played at all yet because of a hamstring injury and sophomore point guard Rob Phinisee is still working through a minutes limit as he recovers from a lower abdominal injury.
Phinisee played nearly 22 minutes off the bench Tuesday, and looked good doing it. He scored 13 points and had 6 assists, and he was able to contribute a bit more ball pressure.
That just leaves Durham and true freshman Armaan Franklin in the guard rotation. Durham can guard, no question, and Franklin is still learning his way. Both of them had four fouls.
"We're fouling too much,'' Miller said. "We had 23 fouls and that's way too many. "It was little frustrating because we knew what we needed to do, and we didn't do it.
"People are trying like crazy to do different things to (us). What they're doing to us is really picking on us perimeter-wise in terms of drive. We're having a hard time guarding the ball, and at the end of the day they're putting us in tough situations.''
This is exactly why, of course, the schedule was set up the way it was for this young team. We've tossed out the numbers ad nauseam — six of their seven November games are against teams ranked 200 or worse out of 353 in the kenpom.com rankings — so there is time to learn.
Miller has said it often that he does think this can be an elite defensive team. We've seen that in little moments, but we haven't seen it consistently. But it's early, too.
It will be nice to see it start to get better. Better pressure on the ball. Better recovery off screens. Quicker closeouts on shooters. It can ALL get better.
That can start on Saturday night.
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