Indiana basketball drops fifth straight to hot-shooting Northwestern

On January 23, 2025By Littum

EVANSTON, Ill. – The one Indiana basketball team showed some fight but couldn’t overcome Northwestern’s best shooting performance of the season in a 79-70 loss Wednesday night at Welsh-Ryan Arena.

The Hoosiers (14-6, 5-4 Big Ten) lost their fifth straight game in the series.

Indiana went into halftime with all the momentum after erasing a 10-point deficit, but Northwestern exploded for nine 3-pointers in the second half to regain control of the game.

The Wildcats (12-7, 3-5) entered the game shooting just 31.5 percent on the season — they shot better than 40 percent in just five of their 18 games this season — but had no such problems Wednesday night as they unleashed a flurry of long-range shots including four straight in the final 6 minutes to push their lead to 14 points.

They finished with a season-high 13 made 3-pointers on 48.1% shooting. Senior Ty Berry had 23 points with a career-high seven 3-pointers and Jalen Leach hit all three of his 3-pointers in the second half.

It could have been a lopsided game if Mackenzie Mgbako didn’t turn the page on her shooting slump, scoring nine of her 20 points in the final 2:20. He buried a 3-pointer from the corner to make it a two-possession game with 43.6 seconds left.

Indiana basketball coach Mike Woodson is adjusting his approach against Northwestern

Woodson rarely varies his game-handling strategies, but he made some notable exceptions Wednesday night.

It started when he let Luke Goode and Myles Rice play with two fouls in the first half. Woodson usually automatically benches players in these situations and sits them out for the rest of the half, but both checked back into the game with IU looking to erase a 10-point deficit.

The other change was Malik Reneau getting a few minutes at the five.

Reneau, coming off the bench, returned to the lineup after missing five straight games with a knee injury. He had a brace on his right knee and didn’t look 100% as he missed a series of shots in the first half, all within a foot of the rim.

Woodson still had enough confidence in Reneau to try him at center with no other post player on the floor. Much of Reneau’s playing time this season has come with either Oumar Ballo or Langdon Hatton on the floor.

As IU won five in a row with Reneau on the sideline, the offense benefited from the extra spacing that came from Woodson playing just one post player at a time. He was used sparingly in the second half as he works his way back from injury.

Indiana basketball gets (briefly) over the hump in ugly first half against Northwestern

Northwestern appeared to turn the game into a blowout midway through the first half thanks to Berry’s scoring outburst off the bench.

He went on an 8-0 run alone – entering the game averaging 7.7 points per game. game – and put the Wildcats up 23-13 with 9:35 to go in the half with his third 3-pointer, but it was their last field goal of the half.

Indiana went on an 18-2 run and the arena exploded into “Let’s go Hoosiers” chants after Trey Galloway knocked down a floater in the lane to give it its first lead of the game with 1:30 left in the half.

It wasn’t pretty by any means — IU went five minutes without a field goal during Northwestern’s drought — but Mgbako had some good moments getting to the rim for multiple layups and Galloway had seven points in the half.

Both teams shot under 40% in the first half and they combined for 15 turnovers.

Michael Niziolek is an Indiana reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read his full coverage by clicking here.