BLOOMINGTON – Perhaps Mike Woodson’s most important, immediate on-court achievement after assuming the hot seat at his alma mater three years ago was redressing the staggering imbalance in Indiana’s in-state rivalry.

When Woodson coached against Purdue for the first time, the Boilermakers were aiming for their 10th-straight win in the series. He won that night, then swept Purdue last season, his success contributing to a sense of restored identity within his program. How much of that bled away in the ugliness of an 87-66 loss to the No. 2 Boilermakers on Tuesday night remains to be seen, but Woodson’s biggest job now is picking his team back up from its heaviest home loss to its northern rival since before World War II.

It will be a heavy lift.

“We got smacked in the first half,” Woodson said, “and you’ve got to give them credit. I thought they were tougher.”

The first half defined the game.

DOYEL: Taunting Zach Edey is weird. Especially after he just did *that* to your beloved Hoosiers.

PLAYER RATINGS: 'They should be ashamed.'

After hitting a couple of big shots early, Mackenzie Mgbako — the player Indiana (12-6, 4-3) needed to be its mismatch offensively — hit the bench with two fouls. Kel’el Ware, whose length bothered Zach Edey but whose physicality did not match that of the reigning Big Ten player of the year, soon joined him for the same reason.

Woodson said later he regretted not bringing Mgbako back into the game sooner than he did (with roughly 2 ½ minutes left before halftime). Conspicuously, he did not say the same of Ware.

“I can’t sit here and complain about officiating,” Woodson said, after watching his team get out-shot 27-9 at the free-throw line. “We couldn’t get to Edey quick enough. … I’ve got to get my two big guys a little tougher. That’s got to help. I didn’t think we played tough enough, and Edey kind of had his way.”

DOYEL: Taunting Zach Edey is weird. Especially after he just did *that* to your beloved Hoosiers.

Last season, the Hoosiers swept Purdue (16-2, 5-2) despite Edey scoring 56 points across two games in the series because Indiana kept his supporting cast quiet. Purdue could not use Edey’s size, skill or dominance as a luxury. It needed him just to stay competitive.

Tuesday night did not follow that script. Foul trouble took two of IU’s most important offensive players off the floor, handicapping a team already struggling to score the ball. And whether it was disrupted rotations, failure to deal with fouls or something else, Indiana lost touch with the defensive sharpness needed to compartmentalize Edey’s impact.

He finished with 33 points and 14 rebounds, but Fletcher Loyer also scored 19, Lance Jones 17. Braden Smith added nine assists.

The score at halftime was 51-29. Indiana exited for intermission to a broken smattering of boos, but mostly — like their team on the floor — IU fans seemed stunned silent.

“Especially when it's a big game like this, you've got to find ways to fight and be tough,” senior guard Trey Galloway said. “At the end of the day, just going out there, competing, and finding ways to get stops, that's the biggest thing. We didn't do that.”

Indiana gamely battled back to start the second frame, twice cutting the lead to as few as nine points. Galloway finished with 17, plus four rebounds and five assists. Mgbako wrapped with 15 points that ruefully reminded Woodson how important, after his slow start to the season, the freshman from New Jersey has become to the Hoosiers offensively.

“I brought him back I think around the two- or three-minute mark right around the half,” Woodson said, “and when I think back to it, I probably should have brought him back a lot sooner, but I didn't.”

The intensity of this rivalry and the gravity of a game Indiana badly needed to serve as the foundation for its NCAA tournament resume mean this result will require some soul searching.

You don’t get to suffer your worst loss at home to Purdue since 1934 (per ESPN) and shrug it off as a bad day at the office.

Woodson will have to answer for his team’s first-half collapse. His senior leaders will as well, sixth-year captain and point guard Xavier Johnson once again in the spotlight after committing a second flagrant foul in three games. Galloway, the other half of IU’s captaincy duo, said about as many of the right things as he reasonably could after what must stand as one of the most damaging losses of his career. Now he must be at the vanguard of his team doing them, or else this season will get worse.

Because it can get worse. IU is at Wisconsin on Friday. Then, after a week and a day off, the Hoosiers go to Illinois. That’s the first of three road back-to-backs from here until the end of a regular season offering precious few opportunities for quality wins to a team that needs them and doesn’t look remotely prepared to go take them right now.

And because it’s Indiana, it can always get existentially ugly too.

This place does not handle stress well. It — and this is said in the broadest possible sense, by someone who’s worked the IU beat for well more than a decade now — assumes the worst far too quickly.

Woodson was hired after five years outside the NCAA tournament and ensured it did not become six. He put two players in the draft last season. He’s recruited at a level this program hasn’t seen in a decade, at least, and he delivered the kinds of wins that suggested the Hoosiers were at least beginning to find their footing in the Big Ten again.

This always looked like a step-back year in some respects. Teams do not often get better losing what IU lost last spring. Woodson rebuilt his roster with a slightly different vision that offered some hope, but that rebuild has not formed into something March Madness-viable. It is running out of chances to now.

The line between frustration over a difficult season and surrender of an entire tenure should not be so thin. There has to be a way for IU basketball — as a monolithic entity — to absorb an ugly run of results, even a down season, without it becoming an indictment on the state or direction of the program.

That is the needle Woodson now must thread.

He has a team disconcertingly aware of its limitations, and based on the behavior of its most experienced player glaringly lacking in leadership. He has a lineup still struggling not just for consistency but, in Woodson’s own estimation, for basic toughness. And he has a schedule that between his team’s capacity and the Big Ten’s collective lack of quality wins does not offer a particularly encouraging path back into the field of 68 this winter.

And Woodson has a fan base conditioned by nearly 25 years of disappointment and frustration to default to those extremes if not at the first sign of trouble, then certainly without much prompting. It cannot be healthy for this place to live so constantly on the edge, but it does, and it will require a big job of anyone who can correct that self-destructive tendency.

Tuesday night was, by any measure, one of the ugliest of Woodson’s tenure. It has the capacity to resonate dangerously beyond the final horn, and Loyer’s celebratory beckoning for noise from a crowd already pointed toward Assembly Hall’s exits.

These dual challenges are Woodson’s to manage. He must make more of his team, without allowing it to be pulled into the black hole of self-fulfilling prophecy that can follow seasons declared — at least in this town — on the brink.

One way or the other, Tuesday night should be a turning point in this season. It will be up to Woodson first and foremost what direction it turns.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball loss to Purdue a bad night for Mike Woodson, IU