Indiana Basketball: Maui Invitational shows peaks and valleys for Hoosiers

Indiana Basketball: lows from the Maui Inviational

That leads us into some of the negative, starting with the impact of individual players. Trayce Jackson-Davis capped off two very disappointing games with a career-high 31 points against Stanford, but he wasn’t that great against Providence or Texas.

Jackson-Davis shot just 10-27 from the field in the first two matchups in the tournament with just 10 rebounds total. Now, this isn’t all his fault. He wasn’t catching the ball in great spots and was trying to do too much in both games.

I will maintain this entire season that Jackson-Davis is not a low post scorer, he is a rim runner and rim protector. He should be scoring most of his points on second-chance opportunities, dump-offs, and pick and rolls, not post-ups. However, he insists on posting up constantly and the coaching staff encourages it, which is an oversight in understanding the strengths of your personnel.

Jackson-Davis wasn’t the only one who had a tough time in Asheville. Jerome Hunter scored eight points 3-11 shooting. Against Providence, Hunter fouled out of the game with 0 points
Khristian Lander looked sporadic and shot very poorly from the field, but he started getting it together against Stanford. Lander requires patience because he is so young and inexperienced, so he gets a pass for now.

Rob Phinisee also had a rough Maui Invitational. The stats don’t look that bad on paper from an efficiency standpoint, but we are to the point in Phinisee’s career where we expect more from him.
The lowest of lows, perhaps in the entirety of Archie Miller’s time at Indiana was the Texas game. The Hoosiers played with no energy or creativity on offense and made it so easy for Texas to shut them down.

Indiana scored just 44 points against Texas, the lowest they have scored since 2010 when Tom Crean was basically pulling fans from front-row seats at Assembly Hall and throwing them in the game. It cannot be emphasized enough just how dismal of a performance it was.

What the Hoosiers ultimately showed us was they are capable of rising above the problems that have plagued the Miller regime in Bloomington, but they are also capable of sinking deeper into those problems. We will have to see how it unfolds the rest of the season, but for now, it is a game-by-game investigation into what this team can be.