Indiana Basketball: Nebraska and bench mob beat Hoosiers 66-57

Looking for their fifth straight win, Indiana took on Nebraska Tuesday night. They fell just short, losing 66-57.

After narrowly beating Iowa on Saturday night, mostly due to a career night from Robert Johnson, the Hoosiers had to nervous heading to Nebraska to take on the fourth best team in the Big Ten conference.

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How the Cornhuskers aren’t ranked, when they have a better conference record, and better wins overall, yet Michigan is, is one of the more puzzling things of this college basketball season.

In the end, Indiana gave Nebraska all they had, and then some, but they were not able to pull out the win they desperately needed to stay in the hunt for the six seed in the Big Ten conference.

The game did not start off well for the Hoosiers, as they only managed six points in the first six minutes of the game, against nine for Nebraska. Cold shooting from beyond the arc was the story of the game for Indiana. After hitting a career high nine three-pointers on Saturday, Robert Johnson managed a measly 2-5 from three-point land. The bench unit, including Josh Newkirk, Collin Hartman, and Aljami Durham went 0-6 from three combined.

Overall, shooting wasn’t the problem for Indiana, as they out-shot Nebraska 45.3%(24-53) to 40.3%(25-62) The loss was mainly due to the Hoosiers inability to get a rebound, specifically on the offensive board where they were out rebounded 19-11.

Long gone are the days of Freddie McSwain Jr. helping out on the boards. After once securing 32 rebounds in a 3-game span, he has only gotten 2 in the past two games, including zero against Nebraska.

Even thought Indiana lost this matchup, we have to give props to Nebraska’s bench.

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Moving on from the Nebraska loss, Indiana will look to win their regular season finale on Friday against Ohio State in a game that could determine where they start in the conference tournament.