My Two Cents: Hoosiers Defy the Odds in Getting Biggest Win in Years at Iowa
IOWA CITY, Iowa – After a while and with a big enough sample size, you are what your record says you are. And for Indiana's Archie Miller, that simply means that he can't beat top-25 teams on the road.
Until now.
Miller brought his struggling Hoosiers to Iowa City on Thursday night, and a beatdown was expected. Indiana was a 10.5-point underdog and No. 4-ranked Iowa was on a roll, winning five straight and shooting lights out.
It was a recipe for disaster. History said so. Current events, too.
But somehow and some way, the Hoosiers came away with a convincing 81-69 victory. It was the first time Miller had ever beaten a top-five team on the road, and he's now 2-8 on the road at Indiana against top-25 teams, with the only other win over then-No. 6 Michigan State two years ago.
They won in part because Indiana played its best basketball ever under Miller for a long stretch of the second half, going on a 23-3 run where they held Iowa, the best offensive team in the country in my book, SCORELESS from the field for nearly 12 minutes.
Miller's teams at Indiana simply don't do that. Not against ranked teams. Certainly not on the road in the Big Ten, where he was a fireable 8-24 coming into the game.
We asked for passion and energy from Indiana on Thursday night. And amazingly – we got it.
There are other things that we know with certainty, too. Iowa is the best offensive team in the country. We have proof of that. Have numbers. Have eyeball tests. And Indiana held them without a field goal for that crazy-long stretch. Iowa's inside-out offense was great.
Until now.
And there's the Jordan Bohannon, the fifth-year guard who was playing his SEVENTH game against Indiana and had made 21 previous threes against the Hoosiers. He's been salt in the wound for years against the Hoosiers. He's been a great shooter against Indiana.
Until now.
Bohannon has played in 127 college games, but he's never had a night like this. He was 0-for-9 from the field, the worst night of his career, missing all eight threes. He went 0-for-8 once as a freshman against Michigan State and he's missed nine shots in a game before, but usually when he going 7-for-16 and smirking about it the whole night.
This was a skunker. This week, he had more parking tickets than points. Indiana's harassing guards – how often do we get to say that? – made his life miserable.
"They did what everybody does. They got up in his face and they chased him around and he had a couple in and outs early and just never really got comfortable,'' Iowa coach Fran McCaffrey said. "Our offense was a little bit stagnant, I thought, and a little bit too reliant on Luka. We did get it into the bonus. We did outrebound them. But our defense, no matter what we were in, was not good and I think it all stemmed from there. We did have some good looks at it. We had it at point blank range a couple times and we missed some free throws. It was a combination of errors there.''
Bohannon was at least able to joke about his 0-for-9 night afterward.
Indiana won this game because made it incredibly difficult for Luka Garza to score during that stretch, which seems odd to say when he still had 28 points and 12 rebounds on the night. To say the Hoosiers threw the kitchen sink at him is a massive understatement.
Race Thompson and Trayce Jackson-Davis both took their shots at him, but without much success early. They were in foul trouble almost all night – there were three fouls called against them in the first 3:12, two on Thompson – and Garza was hot out of the box, scoring seven points in the first 2:45. He was on pace to score 102 points!
Garza had 15 at halftime, and had seven more by the 12:52 mark of the second half. But then he never made another field goal until hitting a three with 27 seconds to go and the outcome no longer in doubt.
That's defense right there. Indiana defense.
The surprising factor in that defensive plan, too, was freshman Jordan Geromino. He's a great athlete, but he was also giving up five inches to Garza. But he battled and battled with him in the paint, making it hard for him to catch the ball, and then swatting and pushing so hard when he got it, that Garza couldn't get any comfortable shots off.
And It worked.
For the first time all year, Indiana had to play long stretches with Jackson-Davis and Thompson BOTH on the bench at the same time. But Geromino came up big, and added seven critical points on the other end, too.
For all the bashing that Archie Miller takes, he deserves props for hitting all the right buttons on Thursday. They were behind most of this game. With the foul trouble, they could have folded up the tent, as they've done it every other game as an underdog this year.
But instead, they fought. They hustled. They played with massive energy. They played, dare I say, with passion.
Finally. Archie Miller pushing all the right buttons. He did that all week actually, challenging his team in a hard week of practice. It paid off. You have to admit it, that's good coaching.
I drove to Iowa City Thursday morning thinking that Iowa was going to win the Big Tne and go to the Final Four this year. I still think that, which says a lot about all that Indiana accomplished here. That was an incredible win. It was no fluke. For most of the second half, Indiana was the better team on the floor.
And there's no denying it. That's Indiana basketball. For a change, it wasn't Miller who had to talk postgame about how hard it is to win in this league. That was McCaffrey's job for a chance.
"I think we have to understand a little bit better what this league is and the quality of the teams that are coming in here that we're going to face,'' he said. "I thought up until now we did a pretty good job of that. I thought they were tougher than we were tonight, and that's disappointing.
"Our execution wasn't sharp. As I said before, we became a little too reliant on Luka. And, I mean, he gets 28. But we really I think became too reliant on him.''
Indiana is suddenly 4-4 in the Big Ten, with another shot at a win at home on Sunday against Rutgers. This was, without question, a huge NCAA tournament resume builder. The selection committee's first question is always, "Who did you beat, and when did you beat them?" and now Indiana has a great answer to that.
They beat the No. 4-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes on the road, and beat the hell out of them.
And they exacted pain slowly and steadily, erasing a lead, taking a lead and then closing it out by making their free throws, something that was great to see. Mostly because we've really never seen it with Miller and this group of players.
"A lot of times when you lose it's, like, we were horrible at everything. But we weren't,'' McCaffrey said. "We did some things well. We executed well at times. We were up at half. But I think we had a few too many uncharacteristic turnovers. I think 12 is too many for us. That number has to go down, so we got to take better care of the ball.''
What was amazing was the Iowa was playing a clean game early. There were 12 minutes gone before it committed its first turnover. But then Indiana's defensive got ratcheted up a notch or two – or ten. The Hoosiers were a completely different team, and it all added up to a victory. They were that impressive.
Sure, it's a very small sample size, but what Indiana showed on Thursday night that – at their best – they can play with anybody. That was an incredible win, certainly the best ever for Miller at Indiana. A week of hard look-in-the-mirror practices had a lot to do with that, but so did not quitting, and not losing confidence.
When the Hoosiers went on a roll Thursday, they had every intention of winning, and that's a wonderful thing.
Related stories on Indiana basketball
- GAME STORY: Huge defensive effort helps Indiana stun No. 4 Iowa on the road in 81-69 victory. CLICK HERE
- LIVE BLOG: Relive all the moment of Indiana's big upset of Iowa in realtime, including all the pivotal moments that turned this game around. CLICK HERE
