Can Indiana basketball salvage this season?
The Hoosiers, who once were 12-2 and ranked as high as 21st in an early January AP poll, suffered their seventh straight defeat Wednesday, losing to lowly Rutgers, 66-58, in a game that was punctuated by a nine and a half scoring drought in the second half at the RAC in Piscataway.
IU fans are enduring the Hoosiers’ worst losing streak since 2011 when the Hoosiers lost the last nine games of the Big Ten season. Indiana is now 12-9 and 3-7 in the Big Ten and is spiraling out of control, skidding to 11th place in the conference standings and are in danger of falling out of the NCAA picture after Rutgers went on a 22-0 run to turn a nine-point deficit into a double-digit lead.
Center Eugene Omoruyi had a double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds and guard Geo Baker had 16 points and five assists as Rutgers (11-9, 4-6) won its third straight Big Ten game for the first time in school history. “We weren’t really even thinking about how many points we were scoring,’’ Baker said of the run. “I knew they weren’t scoring and that was the main thing. Keep locking them up, playing good defense.’’
IU had 20 points from freshman guard Romeo Langford, shot just 35 percent for the game and was only 6 for 23 (26.1 percent) from three point range.
This is not what coach Archie Miller envisioned when he took over this program two years ago, slipping to 11th place. But, given his available personnel, there is only so much he can do.
Miller has a home state hero star in Langford, a likely lottery pick in the upcoming NBA draft and one of the Big Ten’s best big men in Juwan Morgan. The two have combined to average 33.7 points and 13.4 points, but they can only do so much in an offense that is broken and a defense that is allowing Big Ten opponents to shoot 50 percent inside the arc largely because Morgan is an undersized center and 6-10 power forward De’Ron Davis has missed essentially the entire game with an injury. creating uncomfortable inside mismatches.
Indiana has been plagued with injuries. Aside from Davis, freshman point guard Rob Phinisee has missed time with a concussion, forwards Jerome Hunter and Race Thompson have yet to play. The recent suspension of junior guard Devonte Green took away the team’s fourth leading scorer while St Mary’s graduate transfer Evan Fitzner, who was supposed to supply the team with some perimeter fire power, has been a disappointment. The result has been a thin bench.
It doesn’t get any easier. IU has a road game at Michigan State Saturday and then a home game against offensive minded Iowa coming up.
“It’s not magic, stick with it,’’ Miller said. “Have to hang in there with it. At some point in time, if you keep showing up every day and you keep doing it the right way and keep finding a way, eventually something good will happen, and that can cause the next chain of events, but this is a difficult league to play in, especially when you’re not playing your best. We’ll see.’’
