BLOOMINGTON — For the second time in as many weeks, Indiana basketball coach Mike Woodson questioned his team’s effort.
The No. 18 Hoosiers (4-0, 0-0) won 69-58 over UNC Greensboro on Thursday night to stay undefeated, but Woodson spent much of his post-game press conference venting his frustration over his team’s uninspired play.
“I thought they played harder than we did,” Woodson said. “We didn’t play hard, and that’s unacceptable. That’s on me.”
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Woodson expressed the same frustration over the way his team played in the first half of a 90-55 win over Eastern Illinois. He told reporters after that game he thought his players were still “home in bed asleep” during the first half and were “awful.”
On Thursday, IU played its best basketball in the opening minutes. The Hoosiers built an early 19-5 lead with Myles Rice knocking down a pair of 3-pointers and held the Spartans to just two field goals in the first 11 minutes.
UNC Greensboro got back into the game when Woodson went to his bench.
“I started subbing, and that was after guys had played a deep seven, eight, nine minutes straight, and once they got rolling, we gave them hope, and they played a solid game all the way through,” Woodson said.
His team didn’t.
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Woodson’s biggest source of disappointment was finishing the game with just 16 assists on 25 made field goals. He wasn’t pleased when IU had just 12 assists on 26 field goals against South Carolina either.
“That’s awful,” Woodson said. “I mean, it’s awful.”
Indiana failed to crack 80 points for the first time this season. This was also the first time this season the Hooseirs shot under 50%.
Myles Rice (20) and Bryson Tucker (14) were the only players in double-digits. They shot a combined 46.4% from the field while the rest of the team shot just 26.6%. As a team, the Hoosiers finished the game shooting 41.7% from the field and had 14 turnovers.
“With this team, we should average between 20 and 30 assists,” Woodson said. “So the play tonight, the way we played offensively tonight was selfish as hell, to me, and that’s something that just can’t be because we have enough guys on this team that can make basketball plays.”
“We’ve just got to be unselfish and sacrifice the ball for the sake of the team and good things will happen.”
Woodson said many of the passes his team did make on Thursday had no chance of making it to their intended target.
“You saw how we threw the ball in the half-court setting all over the place,” Woodson said. “These are things that we can all work to get better. I’ve got to just push us in that direction to get better.”
Woodson made it clear his team would be spending some time in the coming days figuring out what went wrong and cleaning it up before turning their attention to the Battle 4 Atlantis. The Hoosiers next game is against Louisville on Wednesday.
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: IU basketball: Mike Woodson blasts ‘selfish’ play vs UNC Greensboro
