Hoosiers Get Blown Out Again By Nebraska, Fall 85-68 in Lincoln

LINCOLN, Neb. — For the fourth time on the 2024 calendar, Nebraska blew out Indiana in a basketball game. The Cornhuskers rolled to an 85-68 victory at Pinnacle Bank Arena, and made the Hoosiers look bad in the process.

Again. And again.

The Hoosiers (8-3, 1-1 in the Big Ten) had no answer for Nebraska’s Brice Williams, who went off for 30 points, and they completely collapsed down the stretch. A one-point game with 7 minutes to go turned into a rout when the Huskers finished the game on a 17-1 run. It’s the fourth straight time Nebraska has beaten the Hoosiers, and all four have been by 15 points or more.

And this is Nebraska we’re talking about.

Indiana was a wreck defensively, allowing 85 points or more for the third time this season, all losses. Nebraska shot 61.2 percent from the field, and were just 8-for-14 from three-point range. Considering they made 40 threes in the three wins last season, that was a modest number of makes and not much of a storyline, outside of the two late threes by Williams and Juwan Gary that iced the game.

But they still scored 85 points, scoring 36 points in the paint and making 17 free throws.

“It didn’t just start late. We had no defensive presence to start the game either,” Indiana coach Mike Woodson said. “We have to get that fixed, because especially on the road you have to establish your defense. I know defense wins, especially when you’re not making shots, and we weren’t very good defensively.”

The three-pointer storyline was really more on the Indiana side. The Hoosiers camde into the game only attempting 17 threes per outing, which ranks 344th nationally out of 355 teams. On Friday, they took 35 attempts — but only made eight. They were just 3-for-20 from deep in the second half.

It was the first time in the Mike Woodson era — covering 115 games — that the Hoosiers had taken 35 three-point attempts. The previous high under Woodson was 27 in a double-overtime 112-110 loss at Syracuse on Nov. 30, 2021. The last time Indiana topped that was Jan. 19, 2016 when a Tom Crean-coach Hoosier team took 36 shots in a 103-69 win over Illinois. They made 19 that night.

Imagine that.

“I thought we had good looks (from three-point range) tonight, we just didn’t make them,” Woodson said in the understatement of the night. “I don’t care if you take 30, 40, 50 threes, when you take them, you’ve got to make them. They took the inside play away, and I thought we did a good job of sacrificing the ball. We make some of those and it’s a different game.”

The entire cast was culpable. Luke Goode made three deep balls, but missed seven others. Trey Galloway was 3-for-9. Kaanan Carlyle was 0-for-5, Bryson Tucker 1-for-5 and Myles Rice 1-for-4.

The Hoosiers dug themselves a big hole early, falling behind 13-3, but they scrapped their way back into it fairly quickly when a Luke Goode three gave them a 23-19 lead with 11:09 to go in the first half. The teams traded blows most of the rest of the half, but a late 11-2 Nebraska run gave them a 44-41 advantage at the break.

Nebraska got up nine early in the second half, but then the Hoosiers answered again. Myles Rice had the last of his four steals, and scored on a runout to tie the game at 62-62. Goode made another three at the 6:51 mark to pull Indiana within one (68-67).

It was their last field goal of the game.

During that final 6:51, Indiana went 0-for-12 from the field and had four turnovers. The errors were a bit of a surprise bcause they only had five for the game before that mark. The cold streak was not a surprise. They went scoreless the final four minutes of the first half, too.

“We kind of took a couple out of rythm and we didn’t defend well down the stretch, and that’s a recipe for disaster when you put those both together,” Rice said. “We got to be better down the stretch and play better as a team. ”

Indiana had no answer for Williams, a 6-foot-7 senior from Huntersville, N.C. who been a Hoosier kille during this losing streak. He had 30 points on 10-of-15 shooting, and also made 8-of-11 free throws. His straight-line drives to the basket were an issue all night. He also had six rebounds and five assists.

”He got downhill, got to the free throw line and he made a couple of tough shots,” Woodson said of Williams. “Once he got going, it was tough to slow him down. A lot of it was in isolation off the bounce, and we’ve got to get better with that, guarding guys off the dribble.”

Rice had 20 points to lead the Hoosiers. The steals led to some easy baskets, but he was also in attack mode all night.

“I just saw in transition that they were running with their backs to the rim and it was a chance for us to get easy shots at the rim. I though the flow of the game was right there for me, and it kind of led to us coming back a little but, but we’ve just got to be better down the stretch.”

The December portion of the Big Ten schedule is now complete, and 12 of the 18 teams split their games. Only Michigan, Michigan State and UCLA won both. Conference play will. resume for the Hoosiers on Jan. 2 with a home game against Rutgers. They have two nonconference games left, on Dec. 21 against Chattanooga, and Dec. 29 against Winthrop.