The Two Faces Of Indiana’s Defense Show Against Minnesota

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana residents like to claim it as their own, but in most Midwestern states, there’s some variation of the following phrase as it relates to ever-changing Midwest weather.

“Don’t like the weather? Just wait a minute and it will change.”

That’s kind of what Indiana’s basketball defense has been like this season. It comes and goes. Sometimes suffocating, sometimes sieve-like.

During Monday’s 82-67 victory over Minnesota, Indiana’s split personalities on defense were there in sharp relief.

Minnesota made 11 of its first 15 shots in a high-scoring start for both teams. Indiana seemed to lack the ability or will to muster the gumption for any stopping power.

Then, with the insertion of some of the bench players, most notably, Kanaan Carlyle, Luke Goode and Bryson Tucker, the Hoosiers did a 180. The Golden Gophers missed 15 of their next 18 shots. It resulted in a 16-1 Indiana run that ultimately gave the Hoosiers the cushion they needed to earn the victory.

However, Indiana’s defense continued to wax and wane. After the clampdown that encompassed the last 10 minutes of the first half and the first five minutes of the second half, the Gophers heated up again, making eight of their next 11 shots.

That last hot streak didn’t matter that much – Minnesota could muster no stopping power of its own and never got closer than 12 points in the second half – but it could have mattered in a close game.

So is Indiana good at defense or bad? There’s evidence to support both sides of the coin.

Via traditional measure, Indiana is average, but it has statistics to support some notion of quality. For example, Indiana ranks 79th nationally in field goal percentage and 89th in 3-point percentage.

Yet Indiana also ranks 134th in scoring average at 69.1 points per game. That’s partly because the Hoosiers foul a lot. Indiana averages 16.5 fouls per game, ranked 230th nationally.

The advanced stats also offer conflicting defensive data.

According to barttorvik.com, Indiana ranks 50th nationally in its calculation of defensive efficiency. It’s a formula that rates how many points would be given up over 100 possessions. Indiana allows 98.4 points by this measure.

However, Indiana is rarely near its average on a game-to-game basis. Monday was a rare exception as it had a defensive efficiency rating of 97.9 against Minnesota. However, Indiana has had four games under 90 points per game – and three games over 110 points per game.

What’s probably most sobering is that those three games over 110 all occurred against Power Five competition at Battle 4 Atlantis.

The website haslametrics takes the defensive efficiency measure one step further. It rates an expected defensive efficiency and rates performances accordingly.

However, that’s predictably vague for the Hoosiers, too. Indiana has had five games that beat expectation and five that didn’t. The Minnesota game came in worse than expected by 2.61 points.

Indiana is predictably vague from an individual player standpoint as well. Defensive rating, a measure that calculates how many points an individual player will give up per 100 possessions, cites Oumar Ballo (88.9), Anthony Leal (90.6) and Malik Reneau (91.9) as consistently effective defenders, according to barttorvik.com.

But then starters Mackenzie Mgabko (98.6), Myles Rice (99.1) and Trey Galloway (100.6) come in as average at best.

Players differ by game. Defensive box plus-minus is a measure that averages how many points per possession a player gives up and then assigns a score to the performance. Carlyle had a defensive box plus-minus of 6.6 against Minnesota, considered to be an excellent score, and his best of the season.

Indiana Hoosiers guard Kanaan Carlyle (9) defends against Minnesota Golden Gophers guard Lu'Cye Patterson (25) during the first half at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. | Robert Goddin-Imagn Images

However, Carlyle has also had four games this season where he was in negative territory, considered to be poor.

So what creates this wide disparity? Carlyle, who missed three games with a lower body injury, had his own theory.

“When we're all scoring the ball, when we all up playing defense and bring high energy, I don't think there's any team in the country that can beat us,” Carlyle said.

“When we do get comfortable, that's when stuff starts to fall off and that's when teams start to make their runs back, so we just got to make sure we put a good 40 minutes together where we play hard all 40 and not in spurts,” Carlyle added.

Indeed, Minnesota’s last spurt of quality on Monday came after Indiana pushed its lead above 20 points.

Whatever defines Indiana defensively, Indiana coach Mike Woodson wants it to be fixed. Against a lower-tier Big Ten team like Minnesota, the Hoosiers could get away with defensive inconsistency. Better Big Ten teams won’t be as forgiving.

“When things kind of go sour, there are miscues in terms of switching and somebody might get beat backdoor and shot goes up, you don't put a body on a guy and he gets an offensive rebound or he keeps the ball alive and then they score,” Woodson explained.

“Things like that we have to clean up because when you're playing in the Big Ten, going through this grind, man, those types of plays can beat you,” Woodson added.

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