BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – A stretch of marquee nonconference games await Indiana next week in the Bahamas, but first the Hoosiers have business to attend to at home.

No. 16 Indiana hosts UNC Greensboro Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. The game will be broadcast on FS1, as the Hoosiers look to improve upon their 3-0 record. 

Despite a sluggish first half against Eastern Illinois and a few lapses against SIUE, Indiana has comfortably won each of its first three games. Its smallest margin of victory is an 87-71 win Saturday against South Carolina. Thursday’s game is predicted to play out similarly, as the analytics site barttorvik.com favors the Hoosiers by 18.9 points. 

UNC Greensboro comes to Assembly Hall with a 2-1 record, having defeated Florida Gulf Coast and North Carolina Wesleyan and losing 81-68 at SMU. In their fourth season under coach Mike Jones, the Panthers were picked to finish sixth in the preseason Southern Conference coaches poll after top-five conference finishes the last three seasons.

UNC Greensboro (177th, per Torvik) is considered a step up in competition compared to SIUE (283rd) and Eastern Illinois (294th). And although crucial matchups in the Battle 4 Atlantis loom, Indiana can’t look too far ahead.

Here are three things to watch in Thursday’s game.

Can Indiana limit UNC Greensboro’s 3-point shooting?

UNC Greensboro enters Saturday’s game shooting 39.7% as a team from 3-point range. A large chunk of that production has come from guards Kenyon Giles and Donovan Atwell. Giles has made 10-of-20 3-point attempts this season, and Atwell has made 7-of-18 attempts, accounting for 17 of the team’s 29 3-pointers made this season. The remaining 12 are spread across six players. 

Teams have not shot well from 3-point range against Indiana this season, just 26.7%, but they are getting plenty of shots up. Indiana’s defense ranks 245th out of 364 teams nationally after allowing 25 3-point attempts per game. UNC Greensboro has attempted 24.3 3-pointers per game through three contests this year, good for 162nd most in the country.

The Spartans will have to knock down outside shots to stay competitive in this game. Indiana guard Kanaan Carlyle said it’s a priority to pressure the ball and make their shots as difficult as possible. He thinks the new-look Hoosiers are still adjusting to Woodson’s defensive concepts, but they have made progress in the early stages of the season.

Defense has always been part of Carlyle’s game, and it’ll be important Thursday night.

“Since a young age, that’s been an emphasis of me and my family. My dad was my trainer growing up, so it was a big emphasis to play defense, be a two-way player, play both ends of the court,” Carlyle said Wednesday. “So me coming here, that’s something I wanted to emphasize and definitely focus on. On this team, we got a lot of scorers, a lot of people who can put the ball in the basket. And I wanted to be the one who they could depend on every single night to defend and pick up 94 feet.”

Will Luke Goode find his shooting stroke?

Indiana added Luke Goode out of the transfer portal to help solve its 3-point shooting woes from last season. The Hoosiers ranked 12th out of 14 Big Ten teams in 2023-24 with 32.4% 3-point shooting and attempted at least 97 fewer 3-pointers than every team in the conference. 

Meanwhile, Goode made 61-of-157 (38.9%) 3-point attempts last season at Illinois – more attempts and makes than any Hoosier. The 6-foot-7 Fort Wayne, Ind., native shot 38.8% from 3-point range across three seasons at Illinois. 

Since joining the Hoosiers, Goode has gotten off to a slow start from beyond the arc. He’s made 2-of-10 3-point attempts this season, both of which came in a 2-for-5 day against Eastern Illinois. They don’t count toward his season totals, but he also went 2-for-12 on 3-point attempts across both exhibition games, with both makes coming against Marian. 

Three games into the season, it’s too early to be concerned about Goode’s long-term 3-point shooting because of his strong track record in this area. Woodson also seems to have confidence in Goode’s shooting ability, as he’s drawn up plays to free him up for shots. It’s just a matter of time before shots start to fall for Goode, and Thursday would be a good time to get back on track, with three crucial games coming up in the Bahamas.

Can UNC Greensboro handle Indiana inside?

Indiana often has a size advantage over mid-major opponents, and that will be the case again Thursday. UNC Greensboro’s tallest starter is Jalen Breath, a 6-foot-8, 225-pound junior, and next is 6-foot-6 senior Miles Jones. Demetrius Davis, a 6-foot-8 senior, averages 15.3 minutes per game, but the remaining forwards on the roster have each logged single-digit minutes on average. 

That’s a significant dropoff from an Indiana front line that includes 7-foot Oumar Ballo and a pair of 6-foot-9 forwards in Malik Reneau and Mackenzie Mgbako. Indiana’s guard play is much improved this year, but the Hoosiers still won’t hesitate to look inside for easy baskets, especially with a height difference like this. Indiana has played Ballo and Reneau for just under 20 minutes per game across its first three games, and it could opt to play more small-ball lineups against UNC Greensboro. 

UNC Greensboro also lacks shot-blockers, as it has blocked just eight shots all season. The disparity in size could be seen from a rebounding standpoint, too. UNC Greensboro has rebounded well this year, ranking 34th nationally with 43.3 rebounds per game, even though it doesn’t have a big front line. Indiana has been a good defensive rebounding team, 35th in the country, but it rarely crashes the offensive glass, ranking 341st in that category.

Whether Indiana’s front court can establish position inside, generate a rebounding advantage and deter UNC Greensboro at the rim will be instrumental in Thursday’s game.

Tommy Tuberville has no particular reason to care about the Alabama Crimson Tide, save for the fact many of the team’s fans vote, and a large percentage of those do so in the state he represents as a U.S. senator.

So even though he wasn’t speaking about the College Football Playoff when he addressed Birmingham’s Monday Morning Quarterback Club this week, he was speaking about the College Football Playoff.

His topic ostensibly was legislation on Name/Image/Likeness restrictions for college sports, but it was not by accident that he chose the Indiana Hoosiers to be his Exhibit A of the scourge of the NIL/transfer portal era.

“You pretty much buy a team now,” Tuberville said. “And that was a little bit forbidden when I was in coaching, but now it’s legal. Look at Indiana. They went out and bought them a football team, and look where they’re at.”

He could have said the same about Tennessee, Georgia, Ole Miss or certainly Alabama, but he knows where he’s from, and it’s not Big Ten country. So he took a shot at the team that attracted 31 transfers in advance of this season, including 13 from that established national high-major football power at, ahem, James Madison. Yeah, JMU, which joined the NCAA’s highest division two whole years ago.

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In the cacophonous conversation around college football that has grown CFP-centric, Indiana is the favored target of those who fear there might be a very-good-but-not-great SEC team excluded in favor of an IU squad that might finish the season 11-1. It was no accident Tuberville chose the Hoosiers. The only thing that would have made them a more inviting subject of derision is if they represented a blue state.

Indiana is 10-0. It won road games at UCLA, Northwestern and Michigan State, but none has a winning record. It won at home against Maryland, Nebraska, Washington and Michigan, but the Terps and Huskers have since collapsed, and UW and UM already were hurting when they arrived in Bloomington.

Indiana’s schedule strength will improve, no doubt, when it travels Saturday to Ohio State for what could fairly be described as the biggest football game in IU history. But it’s still going to fall behind most. If the Hoosiers somehow win as a two touchdown-underdog, it won’t really matter what anyone thinks of anything else. A big, crimson IU logo will appear on the CFP bracket Dec. 8.

If they lose, and if they don’t lose close, the harangues will be downright congressional.

This might not be such an issue if we all understood how the CFP evaluates teams. They have taken reporters through “mock” selection exercises the past several years, and they conducted a Zoom “webinar” last month for members of the media that revealed little of their process. We heard the words “eye test” way too much. They did mention a particular analytics company on which they rely; access to that appears to be restricted to those willing to pay for the privilege.

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The NCAA men’s basketball selection committee tells you exactly which data is evident to members, and all of those numbers can be examined by fans on a daily basis. Publicly available football power ratings and schedule strength numbers are wildly inconsistent from one evaluator to the next, and we’ve little idea whether the committee uses any or none of them.

For instance: ESPN’s strength of schedule rating puts Notre Dame at No. 82 and Indiana at No. 106. Because of the network’s ubiquity, it’s common to see that 106 number cited in discussions of IU’s fitness to reach the playoff field. But why IU and not the Fighting Irish?

Remember: It’s can’t just be about the schedule a team plays. It’s must involve how one plays against that schedule.

Notre Dame’s collection of wins is not much more imposing than Indiana’s. There’s a win at Texas A&M and little else. And Notre Dame owns the worst loss, by far, of any team that’s even thinking about doing anything with the CFP beyond watching it on television. There ought to be some consideration given to the horror/hilarity of losing at home to Northern Illinois, which currently holds a 3-4 record in Mid-American Conference play.

Indiana, currently, owns no losses to anyone, anywhere. If the Hoosiers do fall, it likely will be to a team regarded by any ranking you can find as one of the nation’s best (Ohio State).

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Indiana may spend Saturday afternoon consumed with the pursuit of a Big Ten championship, but while they’re at it, they’ll be dissected like a seventh-grade science experiment by, at the very least, fans of other CFP contenders, talk hosts looking for inflammatory segment topics and reporters who regularly cover the sport. If the Hoosiers wind up on the wrong end of the Vegas line, it’s a safe bet they’ll be the subject of dissent that will reach heavy metal decibels.   

Why is Indiana viewed as the vulnerable team in these hypotheticals? Because Knute Rockne (and Johnny Lujack and Leon Hart and Tim Brown) did not go there. IU does not have the historic success or football brand recognition the Irish have built over a century. That record of long-term excellence has earned ND a loyal television following for which NBC pays handsomely and crowds at their home stadium that consistently test capacity.

That should not get them in the field, any more than the excellence of Steve Alford, Isiah Thomas, Scott May should matter for the Hoosiers. Yeah, that’s another sport, but it’s also history.

If IU loses Saturday to Ohio State, the CFP debate should be Indiana vs. Georgia or Indiana vs. Tennessee or, indeed, Indiana vs. Notre Dame.

Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson was a television program disguised as a sporting event. March Madness is a sporting event that makes for great television. We all know which the College Football Playoff should aspire to emulate.

Putting together a College Football Playoff rankings show can’t be easy. You can only talk through resumes and rankings for so long. Maybe it shouldn’t exist, and the CFP committee can send out its top 25 in a press release. That would save everyone some time.

But if ESPN is going to continue with its rankings reveal, surely they can do better.

There were two wild claims made during Tuesday night’s CFP rankings show, featuring host Rece Davis and analysts Booger McFarland, Joey Galloway and Greg McElroy.

When comparing Penn State and Indiana — which were ranked Nos. 4 and 5 — McFarland brought up a common opponent. He said multiple times that the Nittany Lions “struggled” against UCLA in their 27-11 win earlier this season. He added that because Indiana beat UCLA by 29 points and Penn State “struggled,” the Hoosiers should be ahead in the rankings.

First of all, UCLA isn’t the only common opponent on Penn State and Indiana’s schedules. The Nittany Lions beat Washington by 29 points. Indiana beat Washington by 14 points.

But specific to McFarland’s claim that Penn State “struggled” against UCLA, he couldn’t have watched the game. The Bruins fought hard; credit where credit is due. But at no point was UCLA a threat to pull the upset on Oct. 5. Penn State had a 27-3 lead until UCLA scored a garbage-time touchdown against backups with 16 seconds left in regulation.

Not to be outdone, Galloway later suggested something that set social media into a collective bewilderment. Galloway said, when discussing Saturday’s top-five game between Indiana and Ohio State, that should sit star quarterback Kurtis Rourke to avoid injury.

Galloway suggested, because ESPN’s metrics give the Hoosiers a good chance to get in the College Football Playoff even with a loss to the Buckeyes, that Indiana should sit Rourke and avoid a situation like Florida State had with injured quarterback Jordan Travis last year. Travis suffered a season-ending injury, and the committee left out the undefeated Seminoles.

When I heard what Galloway said, I did a double take. I had to rewind my TV. What are we talking about? Benching one of the most prolific passers in college football in the team’s biggest game, not only of the season, but perhaps program history? Are we being serious? Even McElroy, Galloway’s co-worker, was in disbelief when Galloway suggested it.

But hey, if nothing else, the ESPN rankings show gives people something to talk about.