Indiana Basketball: Lack of playmaker the silent killer for Hoosiers

It may be a new year, but the same problems with the Indiana Basketball team persist from last year and it’s not a quick fix.

After playing perhaps its worst game of the year Saturday against Maryland, Indiana basketball is left to take a long hard look in the mirror.

The course of this season is similar to that of last season; a good start to the year (albeit, mostly against a cupcake schedule this season), and several astonishingly poor performances to follow it up. This team is like a ship whose bottom-side resembles a slice of Swiss cheese, water gushing through. There may be too many holes to patch to save this ship from sinking.

There are so many things to nitpick with this season so far. Just to acknowledge a few of them: the effort has been inconsistent, the offense goes through long stretches where they look like a JV team playing Big Ten basketball, the defense has been horrible at times, returning players have shown little to no better than they did the year before, and the three-point shooting and free throw shooting is consistently bad. There is a lot of work to be done to turn this team into a legitimate threat.

One under-the-radar vice that eats away at this team, however, is the complete absence of a playmaker. Indiana is 189th in the nation in total assists on the year, with Rob Phinisee leading the team with 3.4 assists per game, followed by Al Durham with 2.9, Devonte Green with 2.6, and Armaan Franklin with 2.1.

Some may argue that Rob Phinisee is a solid playmaker. While Phinisee does lead the team with a whopping (sarcasm) 3.4 assists per game, he is not what I’d consider a consistent playmaker.

There is a distinct difference between a player who sees an open man and can throw an accurate ball (a valuable skill to have) versus someone who knows how to make plays for others, much like there is a difference between a spot-up shooter like Damezi Anderson and a shot creator like Green.

Rob Phinisee does have some instances where he made plays for others (two, in fact, against Maryland), but he excels at organizing and controlling the offense more than anything else.

So let’s take a look at how a great playmaker such as Cassius Winston is able to create offense for his teammates, compared to a guy like Devonte Green, who has struggled to be that consistent playmaker for IU.