Indiana basketball stumbles late as it fails to make ‘winning plays’ in deflating loss to No. 2 Kansas

It was another chance to grab a notable win for Indiana basketball and for the majority of the afternoon, Indiana controlled the game. Coming down the stretch, however, Kansas made more plays leading to a 75-71 win.

Indiana led for 35:01 and didn’t give up the lead until the 4:53 mark of the second half.

“I thought we played pretty well. You got to tip your hat to Bill and his team because they did everything they needed to do to secure the win down the stretch,” Indiana basketball head coach Mike Woodson said postgame. “We just didn’t get it done.”

As Indiana has done for the last few games, it threw the first punch. It was a quick 8-2 run to get the game started, eventually stretching the lead to 12 midway through the first half. It was exactly the response following a blowout loss to Auburn last weekend.

Energized. Playing with Purpose. Toughness. All three were aspects that the Hoosiers were doing more of than the Jayhawks.

Following an energized Kansas run to start the second half, back-to-back 3s by Mackenzie Mgbako and Trey Galloway gave Indiana its largest lead of the game, 50-37. Then, the run that everyone knew was coming from Kansas showed up.

“Well, it’s really the first game that we’ve had, we’ve been in a lot of close games, even the early games we’ve had, and we didn’t cave,” Woodson said. “I thought tonight we didn’t make the plays defensively that we needed to make in a game like this.”

Kansas would go on to outscore Indiana 31-17 over the final 13:13 of the game. Indiana was just 4-of-11 from the field in the final 4:53, following KU’s first lead.

Kansas was 4-of-6 from the field over that span and 4-of-5 from the free throw line.

“I don’t think our defensive intensity was there the second half like we started the game and finished the first half. They picked their defense up. It was obvious. For the most part I thought we played a solid game, but they made the plays coming down the stretch. The two threes they made were huge. Then the two buckets Dickinson hit in the paint was kind of the difference in the game coming down the stretch.”

“I think down the stretch we have to do a better job of taking care of the ball. I mean, a team like that, who’s that talented and skilled, just poised, you can’t let ’em hang around. We got to extend that led at the 10-minute mark because they kept cutting into the lead, eventually took the lead,” Trey Galloway said postgame. “If you let them stick around, they’re going to be in the game. They just came out on top. We got to put them away when we have a chance.”

Trey Galloway led all scorers in what was a career game. He had 28 points on 12-of-17 from the floor. He had 15 of the team’s 31 points in the second half and six of the 11 made field goals. He played 38 of the 40 minutes.

Woodson’s bench rotation was quite different from the first nine games of the season. He had just one sub in the first 10 minutes of the game and went to a very short rotation after halftime. Anthony Walker and Kaleb Banks played just six minutes in the second half, the only two players to log a minute. Galloway, Gabe Cupps and Kel’el Ware all played 20 minutes in the second half.

Ware played 39 minutes, Cupps played 37 minutes,

“I thought fatigue set in,” Woodsons said. “I played Cupps and Gallo the whole second half. I thought fatigue set in. Gallo had about three turnovers coming down the stretch and ended up with five turnovers. That’s normally not him. I thought the fatigue factor and the fact we played him the minutes that we did kind of hurt us a little bit.

“We knew coming into the game that it was gonna be our starting five, pretty much, against their starting five. Their starting five won out.”

Fatigue was on both ends of the floor. Indiana held Kansas to .865 points per possession in the first half — something that changed drastically after halftime. In the second half, Kansas scored 1.194 points per possession. The Jayhawks shot 35.3 percent in the first half compared to 51.9 percent in the second half.

On the flip side, Indiana basketball shot 53.8 percent in the first half and 33.3 percent in the second half.

“I think the biggest thing for us, those kind of games, down the stretch you got to be the more poised team and make winning plays down the stretch,” Galloway said. “They did that. They were able to make winning plays. They came out on top.”

“It’s a game that we can definitely build on, especially after you come out of a game like the Auburn game. I didn’t know which way we would go,” Woodson said. “As a coach, I’m going to always have confidence in my team. We just had to go back to work. We put a good week of work in. We kind of put the Auburn game behind us because nobody wants to sit through that. As a coach and as a player, you don’t want to go through that. But we did.”