Iowa basketball: Hawks face tough road test against Indiana

The Iowa basketball heads to Bloomington, Indiana tomorrow evening to face the 13-9 Hoosiers. Here’s a preview of this tough road matchup.

How can a team respond after upsetting the 5th ranked team in the nation? Well, by going on the road to one of the toughest environments in all of college basketball and stealing another Big Ten conference win. Tomorrow evening, that’s exactly what the Iowa basketball team intends to do when they take on the Indiana Hoosiers in Assembly Hall.

The Hoosiers, coming off a big upset over Michigan State on the road, look to stay on the winning track after losing seven consecutive games in Big Ten conference play prior to Saturday’s win.

Indiana, however, will likely have to do this without the help of second leading scorer Juwan Morgan who suffered a shoulder injury in the win over Michigan State. Morgan is currently averaging 15.9 points per game to go along with his team-leading eight rebounds per game.

UPDATE: Morgan is back in practice and expected to play in tomorrow’s matchup.

This means it will be up to star freshman and former five-star recruit (7th ranked player in the nation) Romeo Langford to shoulder even more of the scoring burden. Langford is the only other Hoosier averaging double-digit scoring and he leads the team with 17.4 points per game. He also is second on the team in rebounds per game with 5.4.

If Iowa’s defense plays like it did against Michigan, this won’t be an easy task for the freshman and his Hoosier teammates especially considering they aren’t exactly known for their offense. The Hoosiers are 9th in the Big Ten in points per game and 11th in three-point field goal percentage clocking in at just under 33%. Fortunately for Indiana, they don’t exactly rely on the threes for their scoring output. According to KenPom, they are 325th in terms of scoring distribution coming from three while their two-point scoring distribution percentage is 15th in the nation meaning the big guys down low (Luka Garza and Tyler Cook) will have their hands full.

Defensively, Indiana plays a variety of defenses similar to that of the Iowa basketball team and they do it pretty well. They are the 30th best team in the nation in defensive adjusted efficiency margin and they are 61st overall in the NCAA in terms of points allowed per game with 66.7.

While their defense isn’t quite on Michigan’s level, it’s still pretty good and they aren’t as susceptible as most teams to Iowa’s aggressive offensive style that results in teams getting in foul trouble early. Indiana is 88th in the nation in fouls per game, and head coach Archie Miller isn’t too concerned about removing guys who are in first half foul trouble. So unless the Iowa basketball team can force a few guys into fouling out, it won’t make much of a difference outside of free throws for the Hawks.

Size-wise, the Iowa basketball team and Indiana are pretty evenly matched especially with the insertion of 6’10” senior Evan Fitzner in the lineup in place of the injured Morgan.

As it stands now, as expected given Indiana’s supreme home court advantage (10-2 at home, 2-7 on the road), the Hawks are getting just a 43% chance of winning according to ESPN and a 47% chance according to KenPom.

Tip off for this intriguing road matchup for the Hawks is at 8 PM Central Standard Time, and it will be aired on ESPN.