IU can't miss as Xavier Johnson, Hoosiers finally play like team of Mike Woodson's dreams
This is what it looks like, when the IU basketball team gets hot enough to melt a 16-point deficit at one of the most unforgiving arenas in the Big Ten:
It looks like Trey Galloway driving to the rim, moving too fast for that floater of his but throwing it anyway, lobbing it high off the glass at Maryland’s Xfinity Center and being rewarded by the softest of kisses. It looks like Mackenzie Mgbako backing down his defender and fading away for an 8-footer, then driving the lane and getting fouled and making it anyway — making the free throw, too — then draining an open 3-pointer, then draining a contested 3-pointer, being knocked to the deck by Julian Reese as his 25-footer finds the bottom of the net.
And making that free throw, too.
It looks like 7-0 IU center Kel’el Ware, after a nightmare of a first half with 14 NBA scouts in attendance — he scored as many points in those 20 minutes as you did — getting behind the defense for a layup, then catching a pass off the rim with those soft hands and finishing. Then dunking. Then dunking again.
If it looks like IU can’t miss, well, looks aren’t always deceiving. The Hoosiers made 12 consecutive field goals. The Hoosiers, among the worst foul-shooting teams in the country — they entered the game shooting 65.3% from the line, 333rd out of 351 Division I teams — made 10 consecutive free throws, too.
For one afternoon in College Park, Md., where the Hoosiers defeated Maryland 83-78, IU basketball was the team of third-year coach Mike Woodson’s dreams.
“Tonight,” he said, “it all came together.”
You remember how it was not so long ago, when everything was coming apart? Me neither. Let’s enjoy this one.
Happy homecoming for Xavier Johnson
Be happy for Xavier Johnson. He’s from the Washington D.C. area, having gone to high school 25 miles from the Maryland campus in northern Virginia, and his family was here. Mom, dad, more.
And this is what he does? Has the best game of his injury-ravaged final year at IU? Be happy for him, and also acknowledge what Woodson has been saying for weeks: This season would’ve been different with a healthy Johnson — assuming he played at this level. The way Woodson was describing it a few days ago, he’s lost sleep over the loss of his sixth-year senior point guard.
“Every day I go to bed thinking about what this team could have been like,” Woodson was saying after IU’s 74-70 win against Wisconsin, “if we had X earlier.”
Doyel in January: Xavier Johnson is struggling, and the outside world is piling on
The way Johnson played Sunday at Maryland is how he played when he was last fully healthy two years ago, when he was a dominant Big Ten point guard on one of the best teams in the conference. Everything about Johnson has gone in the dumper this season — his shooting, his playmaking, his composure — but on Sunday he was the point guard of Woodson’s dreams.
“I just thought ‘X’ was Xavier Johnson,” Woodson said, using his full name for perhaps the first time in three years.
This was the best version of Xavier Johnson, scoring 13 points on a season-best 5-for-7 shooting from the floor and handing out a season-high six assists. He had one turnover, but it was flukey, coming when Johnson was doing what he did all game: trying to make the right play. He drove the baseline and found an open shooter in the opposite corner, but his pass grazed the back of the backboard for a turnover. Ever seen that? Me neither.
But we’ve seen Johnson play this way — we saw it for most of Woodson’s first two seasons — and we saw him controlling the action again Sunday with his speed and passing. We also saw him hounding Maryland’s guards in the second half, and he didn’t exactly take it easy on the Terps’ big men. At one point in the second half, when IU couldn’t miss, he double-teamed the 6-9 Reese and just ripped the ball from his hands. That led to a transition dunk by Mgbako, who scored a season-high 24 points, the third time in five games he has recorded a season high.
This was the Mgbako of Woodson’s dreams, too, but how about we acknowledge something else:
This was the Mike Woodson of our dreams.
IU's best 20 minutes of season
Woody’s stubborn. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that. Hell, Woodson has to know that. He knows what he knows, and good luck telling him any different.
But he’s been changing, evolving, as the season has gone along. His refinements haven’t consistently led to victory — the Hoosiers had lost four in a row, and eight of 10, before winning the past two — but they’ve happened and it would be nice of us to notice. Gone is his beloved if fictitious second unit. Woodson now plays his starters as long as they can go, and has essentially shortened what was once a 10-man rotation down to seven or eight.
And on Sunday he did something that had to have hurt: He watched Malik Reneau pick up his second foul with nearly five minutes left in the first half … and kept him in the game. This was Woodson dancing on tables and ripping off his shirt. This was him stepping out — this was him getting better — and the Hoosiers needed it. Reneau had left earlier in the half after taking a knee to the, well, after taking a knee below the belt. What do you want me to do, draw you a map? It was south of the equator. Can we move on?
Anyway, Reneau left the game and with Ware on the court but missing in action, the Terps went on a 12-2 run. Woodson didn’t want to see that again, and broke his first (half) commandment — Thou must sit with two fouls — and left in Reneau. And to his credit, Reneau didn’t take a bad situation and make it worse, as he has done way too often this season, by getting his third foul. He stayed on the court, and the Hoosiers stayed within range.
They were falling out of range early in the second half, trailing 51-35, when the Hoosiers got hot and made four shots in a row. They got hotter, and made four more in a row. They got hotter still, and made four more in a row, and now the nasty Xfinity Center, full of the most boorish fans in the Big Ten, was directing its angst at the Maryland side.
On the IU side, Ware was finishing up a nine-point, 15-rebound work of heart. Mgbako was scoring 24 and Reneau was scoring 14 and Galloway was posting 12 points, five rebounds and four assists. Johnson was replacing starter Gabe Cupps in the first minute of the second half and not coming out again.
Woodson played just six players over the final 19 minutes, with Anthony Leal getting eight of his 15 tenacious minutes off the bench, and the Hoosiers turned in their best 20 minutes of the season. IU shot 19-for-26 from the floor (73.1%), and in one brutal stretch outscored Maryland 40-13.
This was the IU team of everyone’s dreams, and if the alarm clock even thinks about going off, chuck that thing out the window. It’s been a long night around here, and not just for Woodson.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU basketball emerging from nightmare, tops Terps for 2nd straight win
