KNOXVILLE, TN — Indiana basketball coach Mike Woodson had so much fun in Knoxville he extended an invitation to Tennessee coach Rick Barnes for their teams to run it back next year in Bloomington.
The two programs clashed in a charity exhibition with all proceeds from the game going to support the John McLendon Foundation. The announced attendance at Food City Center was 13,351 fans and the venue’s lower bowl was nearly full.
No. 18 Indiana pulled away down the stretch in the 66-62 win thanks to a flurry of offense from Malik Reneau.
The junior forward led all scorers with 21 points.
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“You can learn a lot from a game like this,” Woodson said. “I told coach, I’ll return the favor if he wants to come up to our place next year. I like competition like that. These guys have been beating on each other, but not like this. That team was physical and got after us tonight.”
Tennessee was ranked No. 12 in the preseason coaches poll after making a run to the Elite Eight last year and winning the SEC regular-season title.
Woodson liked that it was a close game all the way through. Indiana didn’t have more than a four-point lead during the final four minutes and needed to make a series of plays on both ends to escape with the win.
He played each of his starters 30-plus minutes.
“It was back and forth,” Woodson said. “It was huge. When you are on the road, I don’t care how you win, you got to figure it out. I thought we did that coming down the stretch.”
Woodson’s other main takeaway was that IU has work to do on the offense end.
The Hoosiers’ performance in the second half — they scored 41 points on 51.9% shooting in the second half — more closely resembled how the team has practiced in recent weeks, but their success was largely thanks to the individual efforts of Reneau and Washington State transfer Myles Rice.
Reneau and Rice combined for 41 points on 57.7% shooting while the rest of the team combined for 25 points on 22.7% shooting. The Hoosiers also turned the ball over 13 times and shot 21.1% from 3-point range (4 of 19).
“We’ve been playing better than that in practice, but when you get in stiff competition against a well-coached team that really gets after you — you got to really execute, move with pace, set screens and things of that nature,” Woodson said.
If everything clicks into place, it’s a group capable of averaging 80 points a game, a feat the Hoosiers haven’t accomplished feat since the 2015-16 season. Woodson’s top scoring team (2022-23) averaged 74.7 points per game.
“We’re capable of scoring the ball, we’re better than what we showed tonight,” Woodson said.
Indiana will have a final exhibition Friday against Marian ahead of the team’s season-opener on Nov. 6 against SIUE.
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 Indianapolis Star: What IU basketball coach Mike Woodson learned from Tennessee exhibition
