My Two Cents: Hoosiers Handling Tough Stretch Just Fine, But Can It Continue?

ATLANTA, Ga. — My biggest fear when the calendar flipped to December was that we could be in for a rough stretch with this Indiana basketball team. After staggering through November but still winning, I wondered if they could survive the two-week gauntlet of Maryland, Michigan, Auburn and Kansas.

So far, so good, somewhat surprisingly.

Concerned that Indiana might lose all four games, the please-show-me Hoosiers played really well in ripping Maryland at home, and then made just enough plays down the stretch to win at Michigan. They are now 7-1 overall and 2-0 in the Big Ten.

Now comes two big nonconference games, first in Atlanta on Saturday with a showdown against Auburn. Next Saturday, it's No. 2 Kansas at Assembly Hall.

It's what Indiana fans wanted, a hard, competitive schedule. What they also want, of course, are wins against top teams. They upset Michigan last week as big underdogs, and are hoping to do that same Saturday against a very good, very athletic Auburn team that's also favored by 6.5 points.

"Competition is good, gentlemen. It's always been that way in basketball,'' Indiana coach Mike Woodson said. "I've never been a coach to shy away from competition. It kind of puts our team and lets you know where you are and where you stand as a basketball team, win or lose.

"We've got a tough schedule. We knew that coming in this season, based on the players that we brought in. Auburn is next up. We'll continue to prepare for them, and we'll see where it leads us on Saturday.''

Woodson is in his third year as Indiana's head coach, and the Hoosiers have made subtle improvements in each of his first two seasons, He was a head coach in the NBA with both the New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks, so it's nice that Indiana has played in both cities this year, and Woodson has been able to make some nice reconnections.

Coming ''home'' to Atlanta is a big deal for Woodson. He coached the Hawks from 2004 to 2010, and took over a disaster. But they got better every year, and went from worst in the NBA to perennial playoff contenders.

It's good to be back home in the ATL.

"It means a lot,'' Woodson said. "That's where my head coaching career began, and I still have a home there, a lot of friends, people that supported me when I first started my journey as a head coach in Atlanta.

"It was important that I take a game back there because I think for a lot of the people that supported me that were in my corner, they are still there, and that means a lot to me. I figure bringing a game back would be something special for the people that have supported me all these years.''

He needed a lot of support early, because the Hawks were in total rebuild mode when he was hired. They had very little talent, and were starting over with a lot of young kids. They only won 13 games his first year, and it was on Woodson to make them better. He did that.

"When I started that journey (in Atlanta), I started out with 18, 19, 20-year-old young men that didn't have a clue in what the NBA was about,'' Woodson said. "And I didn't have a clue as a coach because it was a struggle because we were so young. But the beauty about that young team, from my peers, everybody kept saying, boy, you guys play hard. Boy, you're competitive. But we just weren't experienced enough to win games. We grew together as a group, and we eventually broke the ice and got in the playoffs, and that's when it all took off.

"We took Boston that year in the first round to seven games, and they ended up winning the NBA title, which that was the biggest thing for those young kids to experience because they hadn't been in the playoffs. Once they got there, the media and everybody had us being swept and wouldn't win a game. Hell, we forced a Game 7, which could have went either way. They ended up winning and then going on to win an NBA title. Those were fond memories, to be able to take a team of young men and build it and have some success behind it.''

Woodson has experienced some of that same stuff at Indiana. When he replaced the in-over-his-head Archie Miller in 2021, the Hoosiers hadn't been to the NCAA Tournament in six years. Now they've been there two years in a row, won a game each time, and want to be come a regular fixture in the postseason event.

This year's team has a ton of new faces, and they've had their fair share of struggles. What's been nice, though, is that they've still found ways to win even on bad nights.

They've been winning lately, too, even without starting point guard Xavier Johnson, who's out with an undisclosed foot/ankle injury. He's missed three games now, and freshman Gabe Cupps has had to step into that starting role.

He's battled, and has some success on the defensive end. But he's yet to score a field goal in his last 77 minutes of playing time, and needs to do more. That's going to be really critical in this little stretch against Auburn and Kansas.

Is he ready to step up?

"He's just been steady. He's been steady ever since we brought him on campus,'' Woodson said of Cupps, a freshman from Dayton, Ohio. "Yes, he has a long way to go still, still trying to figure out the college game, but the fact that he competes, he loves to compete, he puts the work in. So he doesn't look lost, just put it that way.

"I'm pleased where he is, but knowing that there's a lot of room for improvement.''

Indiana has been winning with a dominant front line, one that Auburn coach Bruce Pearl called ''the best frontcourt in the Big Ten.'' Freshman Mackenzie Mgbako keeps getting better after a slow start to the season, sophomore Malik Reneau is demanding double teams inside and scoring well, and sophomore transfer Kel'el Ware has been their best player.

Ware, who spent one year at Oregon and had a bad reputation for being lazy, has been anything but that at Indiana. He's worked hard, and he's been impressive.

The biggest thing? He's happy. That's the biggest difference.

"You heard the same stories that I heard. That was the knock on him,'' Woodson said when asked about Ware earlier this week. "But again, that's behind him. I don't even know why we're even rehashing it, revisiting it, because it's behind him. That's what was said about him when he played back there at Oregon, but we didn't recruit him for those reasons.

"We recruited him because we thought he could help us win basketball games and that we could, as a staff, put him in the best position possible to be successful to help us. He's a young kid too that's trying to figure it out. He's come in here, and we pushed him, and he's played some pretty damn good basketball for us. But we've got a long way to go. He's got to continue to grow as a player and get better, and doing that, I think he can help us continue to win basketball games.''

That's what all Indiana fans want to see, of course. Before the season started, the Hoosiers were ranked around 50 in the Kenpom preseason, and I wrote a column questioning that ranking, and thinking they would be better than that.

But then they looked awful in the early cupcake portion of their schedule, and needed one good spurt just to steal wins against Florida Gulf Coast, Army and Wright State. It looked like I was wrong.

They weren't good, and then they went to New York and got whipped by 20 by No. 5 Connecticut. Since then, though, they played a great last 10 minutes against Louisville, and found a lot of nice rhythm offensively in the win over a pretty good Harvard team.

And now, here they are, 2-0 in the Big Ten, and 7-1 overall. They are big underdogs to Auburn, and likely will be underdogs next Saturday too when they take on Kanasas in the back half of their home-and-home series. If they're 7-3 in eight days, it's not the end of the world. Auburn is good, and Kansas is really good.

But grabbing a win —or, dream big, two — would really make a statement. it would certainly change the conversation about this team, which isn't even showing up in an NCAA brackets yet. Beating Auburn and/or Kansas would change that.

Let's see how this all plays out.

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