Indiana Basketball: Fact or Fiction for the 2019-20 season
5. The defense has the potential to be elite
With the offense largely hanging in the balance, the defense will unsurprisingly be this team’s bread and butter, and Archie Miller wouldn’t want it any other way. By no means should the defensive talent of this team be underestimated; they mean business.
Not only does this team have a lot of great defenders, but many of them are extremely lanky defenders, meaning they can guard more than one position. This gives Archie Miller a lot of choices when plugging guys into the lineup.
He has reliable rim-protectors down low and guards that can take on smaller, quicker opponents as well as taller, stronger foes.
One aspect that could cause Indiana some difficulty is if teams use the strategy of putting a smaller, quicker, hybrid forward on Trayce Jackson-Davis. It could be more difficult for Jackson-Davis to match up defensively with a quicker player and has the potential to cause some problems with two Indiana bigs on the floor.
Miller could counter by simply sliding Jackson-Davis to center and inserting Justin Smith at power forward, but he may be reluctant to abandon the old school twin towers approach which he has enjoyed talking about this preseason.
Next. 3 keys areas the Hoosiers must improve on from last season. dark
Expect this team to be among the top three defensively in the Big Ten. They had better be, because the offense may come and go, but they can always control their effort and execution on defense.
By the end of the season, this team should be menacing on that end of the floor.