Indiana Basketball gets the best performance in loss on Purdue and it’s a shame

On February 1, 2025By Littum

West Lafayette – The shame from Friday night is in what should have been.

Not the result, so much. No. 10 Purdue Deserved his 81-76 victory, a hard-fought victory in Big Ten’s best rivalry. The result pushed Boilermakers into the only possession of 10. All the time in victories by a men’s basketball program. The team they pushed down a stick? Indiana Basketball.

And this was the kind of thing that should have defined what was in so many ways an excellent basketball show. A primetime showdown in the state, a wild atmosphere, two historically held teams fighting for tooth and nails in the final minutes of an evening when none of more than seven.

“It’s about making acting down the stretch and securing the victory,” said IU coach Mike Woodson afterwards. “We couldn’t get key stops.”

This was an independent advertisement for the Big Ten Basketball at its absolute best. Or at least it should have been.

In Bloomington, however, this will tumble into a bucket that is too full of disappointments in the last 10-Plus years.

Another equal game partially decided by clear misconomation between Woodon and his starting point guard. A fifth -year center so frustrated that he barked on a teammate in a late game skin for everyone to see. A fifth loss in six matches for a team that in Lange Bursts proved its potential against one of the conference’s front runners in a season that will increasingly be defined by what could have been.

Or what should have been.

Indiana (14-8, 5-6 Big Ten) did so much good Friday night.

The Hoosis succeeded their most difficult atmosphere. They answered each punch Purdue threw. They mingled more than enough of their own.

Mackenzie Mgbako (25 points, five rebounds) and Luke Goode (13 points, three made 3s) punished Purdue (17-5, 9-2) on the wings where Boilermakers looked violent.

Oumar Ballo’s last line, 14 points and eight rebounds did not do justice to his influence on the game. Purdue could not control its size, length and presence. Woodson built an excellent game plan to exploit what Purdue would struggle with – dribbles penetration, high ball screens, driving force and pass – and ballo in the heart. He became the gravitational center, which the game circled over, and in interaction with Trey Galloway, who ran Woodson’s ball screen, he was excellent in both halves.

Then Galloway was.

He has saved some of his best performances in this rivalry for his swing through the MacKey Arena and he did not waste this last one. Galloway scored 13 of his 15 points after the break, Svalehailing brilliantly with Ballo and handed out five assists. When Purdue’s poor trouble in the position was intensified, Boilermaker’s shadow against Ballo had to help, and Galloway ate the open space with runners and floaters right in front of the paint crew they were silent.

“We were just lucky that Trey Galloway didn’t have the ball in his hands at the end there,” said Purdue coach Matt Painter Postgame. “Let’s just be honest about it because he played.”

“Frank” would also have described Woodson’s explanation of why Galloway did not get a touch in the game’s decisive possession.

After Purdue took the lead with less than 11 seconds left, Myles Rice took inbound’s pass and sprinted up the floor. The problem was that he was aiming for the outside, away from his sidelines and beyond his coach’s ability to communicate with him.

Rice – undoubtedly the fastest player on the floor, but at the end of a muted notion – aimed at the baseline. He hadn’t scored any points to the moment Gicarri Harris followed him, but half a step ahead, Rice justified that he could either reach the track or draw a mistake.

He pulled up for a jumper offalance. The television broadcast suggested that he had been thrown. No whistle came. Purdue scooped the loose ball up, made the necessary free throw and went away a winner.

“Our concern in this situation would have been Trey Galloway,” the painter continued. “That’s where the torment of us. He came to the edge he played. It’s the guy who felt it. “

Woodson made it clear that possession was not what he had wanted.

“I couldn’t get his attention,” Woodon said. “When he started, I couldn’t come to him. It was too late. The official passed by. We need to connect better. It’s just the bottom line. Because our tall pick-and-roll-things went well for us with the ball in Gallo’s hands and we just couldn’t get back to it. “

In the wake, cameras caught Ballo so frustrated that he was heated with rice in the hug when Woodson worked his team through what to do next.

These are two games in a row now – one where Woodson got his timeout and one where he did not – eventually defined partly of misconception and disconnection from bench to player and back.

Maryland happened due to substitutions and lack of communication afterwards. Purdue happened because no one communicated at all.

The lasting theme is that they both happened. IU lost both games and has now lost five of six. In the wake of Illinois, Hoosiers spoke in the long run of taking control of their season and then supported an overtime gain in Ohio State.

But everything will always be defined by the context around it. When Hoosiers won nine of 10, they were allowed to write off the end of the Nebraska game as seven bad minutes. Now 1-5 in their last six, it’s just as reasonable to ask what skin color of all this would look like if Bruce Thornton’s last shot had gone in.

Friday night was by many measures Indiana’s best performance in the season. Individuals – Mgbako, Goode, Ballo, Leal, Galloway – turned in resilient, winning performances. Woodson’s game plan was almost outstanding everywhere. The Hoosians may have played the best team in the Big Ten for a standstill in a building that hates them passionately.

Wind or loss it should have meant more than this. To the rivalry. To the conference. For the season. To everything. And yes, context will give the greater definition of the final accounts. But right now, these numbers are not adding much and it is a shame.

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