Sitting on Indiana’s bench at Conseco Fieldhouse, junior guard Jeremiah Rivers looked down and shook his head.

It was another game filled with turnovers for the Hoosiers. Another night where points were hard to come by. And one final loss.

Indiana’s season ended Thursday with a 73-58 loss to Northwestern in the opening round of the Big Ten tournament. The Hoosiers finished 10-21, the second-most losses in a season in the program’s history. Only last season’s 6-25 mark was worse.

The ugly numbers included a school record-tying 11-game losing streak. The Hoosiers failed to score 60 points in eight of their last nine games and had at least 15 turnovers in seven of their final eight games.

How can the situation get turned around?

“Will is the biggest word in my mind right now,” IU coach Tom Crean said. “We’ve got to develop more of a defensive and an offensive will.”

Offensively, it might start with two players already on the roster.

“Our team will look different when you add the spacing element into it that Matt Roth and Maurice Creek bring,” Crean said. “Obviously, Maurice was our best guy as absolutely being able to get in the lane and make a play and make a good decision with it.”

Creek was averaging a team-leading 16.4 points before suffering a season-ending knee injury Dec. 28 against Bryant. Roth, one of IU’s top outside shooting threats, suffered a foot injury in November and never returned.

Sophomore Verdell Jones III was the most consistent player, averaging 14.9 points. Freshman Christian Watford had his ups and downs while leading the team in rebounding (6 per game). Both said their top offseason goal is to add strength.

“My main thing would be just get in the weight room, just putting on weight for the physical aspect of the game and just keep working on my skill package,” Watford said.

Crean said the entire team needs to focus on getting stronger.

“A lot of guys have made a ton of progress. They have to be able to mature their bodies and grow into certain things,” Crean said. “We have to be able to learn how to really defend at this level, and so much of that is strength.

“… We’re not strong enough to body up people on cuts and drives, and we’ve really got to, we’ve got to get to that. Our bodies have got to really take a totally different look.”

There is the desire to add some presence in the paint, as the Hoosiers didn’t have much of a threat inside. Crean said that’s just one area that has to be addressed.

“I think we have a lot of needs, and I think we’ve got to develop the bigs that we have,” Crean said. “… There’s no doubt we’re trying to address that in a big way. They’ve all got to get stronger, bigger, better, more athletic. We need to continue to address that.

“But I look at our team, and we also need somebody that’s better at getting in the lane. We need somebody that can get in the lane and create havoc, that can get into that paint and make decisions to get the ball to shooters.”

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