Analysis: A few things we learned about IU in Saturday's 80-73 win over Notre Dame

The first point that has to be made about Saturday’s 80-73 victory by Indiana over Notre Dame is that in the grand scheme of things it was a huge victory for this IU basketball program.

As I wrote on the morning of the game, this was a perception game. And the difference in that perception based on a win or a loss in the Crossroads Classic would have been major. The difference between being 9-3 and 8-4 on paper may not seem like a lot but in this particular case it would have been. Indiana needed to beat a quality opponent and that’s what it did on Saturday afternoon.

It wasn’t pretty for major stretches of the game, there’s no question about that. Robert Johnson said after the game that he was pretty sure that there were times in the second half when the Hoosiers got down by 16 points that a lot of people at home very likely turned off their televisions out of frustration. I’m guessing that’s probably pretty accurate. If people didn’t, they may have been thinking about it. Heck, as I was sitting there in Bankers Life Fieldhouse I was wondering the same thing myself.

But after rallying from that 16-point deficit, the largest come from behind victory for IU in the Tom Crean era, to beat the Irish 80-73, I’d like to turn to a thought of just what did we learn about Indiana basketball Saturday afternoon in the Crossroads Classic.

Here are some thoughts:

1. THERE IS STILL A GREAT DEAL OF FIGHT IN THIS TEAM: If ever a team had a chance to mail it in, I would think the 56-40 deficit with just over 15 minutes to play in the game would have been the time. Fans in the building were getting restless (as they should have been) and things were not going well. It was Duke all over again in terms of a lopsided result. Notre Dame was having its way with Indiana especially inside and it just didn’t seem like IU had any answers. But the Hoosiers kept chipping away. They stayed the course. (Sorry, I’ve it’s turned into Cliché Central here but the ideas seem to be the right ones). And it probably didn’t hurt that there was a large number of IU fans inside the building waiting for a reason to erupt and IU finally gave it that reason down the stretch.
2. IU WAS REALLY GOOD ON THE OFFENSIVE GLASS: Indiana had 20 offensive rebounds in the game. Notre Dame had 19 defensive rebounds. That means Indiana got to more of its missed shots than the Irish did. That’s pretty impressive. And it was eight different players that were getting to those rebounds. Troy Williams had five of them but three other players had three each. Two of them, Thomas Bryant and James Blackmon Jr., you would expect. The one that didn’t I thought was impactful in the game and that was O.G. Anunoby. He had two points and four rebounds in the 7 minutes he played. There was a sequence with IU trailing 71-64 that really stood out for me. Williams missed a free throw and Max Bielfeldt got an offensive rebound. Nick Zeisloft then missed a 3-pointer and Anunoby got the offensive board. Williams got open for a long 3 and missed it, too, but Anunoby was there to clean it up and slam it home. That cut the lead to 71-66 with 5:37 to play.
3. THE ZONE WAS EFFECTIVE: I never would have thought that Notre Dame with a good inside/outside combination would have been a team that you would have wanted to zone a lot. Apparently Tom Crean thought the same thing because he mentioned that point in his postgame remarks. But when other things aren’t working well you need to have a Plan B and I’ll credit Crean and his staff for going that direction Saturday. It was 2-3 zone. It looked like a 1-3-1 at time but it was more of a 2-3, almost a matchup 2-3 zone as people were still getting out on a specific man. But the important thing is that it worked. In the final 6:32, Notre Dame was 1 of 11 from the field. Notre Dame also missed two free throws in that stretch. It also didn’t hurt that Zach Auguste picked up his fourth with 2:44 to play and then fouled out a few minutes later. But what that zone did for Indiana was it showed this group that there are other ways it can win and the players seemed to buy into it and that’s a huge point with just 10 days to go before the start of the Big Ten season.

It’s just one victory, but again it’s a big victory. This game has the feel of one that you can look back on later and think that it was a turning point. Indiana should now go into Big Ten play on a five-game winning streak after dispatching Kennesaw State this Tuesday.

Then there are plenty of games early in IU’s schedule that should give the Hoosiers a chance to be successful. (That Jan. 10 home game with Ohio State game may look a little more difficult now after what the Buckeyes did to Kentucky on Saturday). But the point remains: IU should have a chance to now build a little momentum and maybe even get back in the top 25 before too long.

The perception coming out of Saturday’s win over Notre Dame is that Indiana has a chance to do some things if it can play at a high level and play together.

It’s just one game, but it was really a big one in the grand scheme of things.