Indiana Basketball: How the Hoosiers get back to March Madness.

4. Indiana Basketball needs to keep a clean resume.

Indiana needs to play better on the road to avoid bad losses. Nothing cripples a resume come March worse than losses to teams at the bottom of the conference. Indiana had a few ugly losses last season. They split with Rutgers and Penn State, but no one knew how good the Nittany Lions would be at the beginning of conference play.

They swept Purdue, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Also, they defeated every tournament team in the conference except for Iowa, Maryland, and Northwestern. Coach Woodson and the Hoosiers need to duplicate that in 23-24. That won’t be easy with a retooled lineup.

How do you keep a clean resume? One way is to win your clunkers. A sign of a young team maturing is its ability to win games despite not playing well. It’s the old Jim Valvano line, “win and advance.” The Hoosiers can’t allow its offense to dictate its defense.

Another way to keep a clean resume is to avoid losses to inferior opponents. They have to defeat teams at the bottom of the conference. Indiana has done an excellent job in their non-conference of taking care of business. The degree of difficulty increases during conference play, but Woodson and his staff must find ways to win, especially when they are the more talented team.