Indiana signed on for two more years of the Crossroads Classic this week. It’s a move, coach Tom Crean said, that changes some non-conference scheduling.“We’re going to play a neutral game in Indianapolis.FORT WAYNE – Indiana has lost four of its last five games.
Three of those losses – at home against Minnesota and at Nebraska and Wisconsin – came down to the wire. But Indiana coach Tom Crean isn’t just emphasizing the finish as the No. 16 Hoosiers prepare for Iowa.
“The bottom line is that if you do a better job inside of the game and you keep stringing three stops in a row and you have good possessions, even if the shot doesn’t go, you have good possessions, not empty possessions – I think that’s what it is more than anything else,” Crean said Saturday. “I think you can get too caught up in how you finish and not caught up enough in the middle parts of the game, the timeout parts of the game, execution and those four-point swings that come out on a dead-ball situation on a TV timeout or a timeout that’s called.
“There’s so many parts of the game. At the end of the day, this league epitomizes possession-by-possession basketball. You just want to shore up some of the things; you want to keep eliminating the mistakes.”
IU (16-5, 4-5 Big Ten) faces Iowa (11-10, 3-5) at 6 p.m. today at Assembly Hall. Iowa has also lost four of five. But the Hawkeyes have given the Hoosiers trouble in recent years, winning the last four meetings.
“This is a new team and a new year,” Indiana guard Jordan Hulls said.
“But the last couple years they have out-toughed us here and at their place. So we need to get back to playing our game with our defensive intensity and edge that we need to have.”
The defense has been there the last three games. IU has held its opponents to 37.1 shooting and 28.1 percent from three-point territory.
“Our focus the last couple of days has certainly been just making sure that we understand where we played well (Thursday against Wisconsin) and what we have to shore up, and at the same time just keep building on what we’ve been doing because we’ve been doing some very good things,” Crean said. “The fact that we’ve held teams under 40 percent gives us something to shoot for.
“We know that’s going to be a real challenge with Iowa. They’re a hard preparation because they do a lot of different things. They have a very good system, but they also have a lot really good players and they do different things defensively. … They are a tough team and a team that is physical and a team that we have not played that well against the last couple of years. So we are really focused on it.”
