My Two Cents: It's Clear Justin Smith is the Barometer Guy for Indiana
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — There will be bigger games than this season opener for Indiana, but one thing was very clear on Tuesday night in the Hoosiers' 98-65 win over Western Illinois.
How clear? Real clear. It's blatantly obvious that when Justin Smith, the uber-athletic 6-foot-7 forward, plays great, then Indiana is a completely different team.
A different hard-to-beat team.
Don't worry, I'm not going to get ahead of myself with this Indiana team. Western Illinois wasn't expected to mount much of a challenge for the Hoosiers, and the Leathernecks didn't. They are ranked No. 295 out of 353 teams in the kenpom.com rankings this season.
But still, once Smith took over and started dominating this game midway through the first half, it was over.
Over. And out.
Just like that.
Smith is many things to this team, but mostly it's clear that he's the barometer, too. When he plays well, the Hoosiers are going to play well. And there's no doubt about that.
"I think so. He's one of our oldest guys,'' Indiana coach Archie Miller said after the win. "He's played in every single game as a college basketball player at Indiana, and I think that's hard to say. There's probably a lot of great players that have played here that maybe early in their career didn't play as much. He's played a lot of minutes.''
Smith finished with 24 points to lead the Hoosiers, and also had 7 rebounds. His most important stat might have been his 3 steals from the wing, all of which led to breakaways and rim-rattling dunks on the other end, two of which came in an 18-0 run in a four-minute period of the first half.
"I feel like I'm at my best in transition, so being able to create turnovers and really get out and run and use my athleticism really benefits our team,'' Smith said. "But just in general, we've got to use defense to create our offense, especially with the kind of versatility that we have and the kind of athletes that we have.
"I feel like if we just focus more on the defensive end, then we can get going.''
It was obvious to Miller, too.
"He changed the game for us in the first half with his defensive intensity,'' he said. "He was able to get out and make some plays, gave us a cushion, gave us confidence, gave us some momentum. And that's what older guys do, the most experienced guys play. I look at his numbers and his line, and I'll be honest with you, I didn't even notice that he scored 24 points. I think at the end of the day, I was just watching how he approached things there in a certain point of time. Defensively he's very, very active and made plays for us.''
Smith, who shot only 23 percent from 3-point range last year, also made a 3-pointer in Game 1, which probably knocked a lot of guys out of the "No, no, no" Smith survivor pool.
Smith is that guy who can play either forward spot, depending on if Indiana wants to go big, or go small. He started at the 3-spot, along with big guys Trayce Jackson-Davis and Joey Brunk.
But when Indiana went small midway through the first half, he slid to the 4-spot down low with Jackson-Davis, and with all that speed on the floor, the IU defense starting creating turnovers and getting easy baskets. To score 18 points in four minutes was impressive.
When he's active — on both ends of the floor — it changes everything, especially when he can take advantage of mismatches, either against smaller guys, or slower guys.
"It's definitely smart to use your advantage, especially when you have big guys on the wing like me, Jerome (Hunter), Damezi (Anderson).'' Smith said. "We're being guarded by 6-2, 6-3 guys on the floor. So just using our strength — and also our quickness if a big guy comes on to us — it's just kind of pick your poison at that point.''
We aren't going to get a real barometer reading on this Smith thing until later in the year, of course, because November's schedule is a full tray of cupcakes. Indiana's next six opponents this month — all of whom are traveling TO Bloomington to play in Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall — don't even come close to sniffing an AP Poll vote. None of the seven are even in the kenpom.com top-100.
The path to a perfect 7-0 mark this month goes through Portland State (274), North Alabama (282), Troy (278), Princeton (198), Louisiana Tech (110) and South Dakota State (209).
There's no reason Indiana shouldn't be 7-0, and there's no reason why Smith can't dominate like this every night. The better he gets, the better the Hoosiers get.
"As we keep going here, he's an important cog in our wheel,'' Miller said. "He's got to stay with it and just keep getting better.''
