Kansas at Indiana Preview

The Jayhawks face their first true road test at Assembly Hall.

While the Kansas Jayhawks have played four of their first 10 games of the season on neutral courts, Saturday marks the first true road game when KU travels to Bloomington to face the Indiana Hoosiers. And while Indiana has a profile similar to Missouri’s, its style of play fits a bit closer to the Jayhawks.

Opponent Overview

Team: Indiana

Record: 7-2

KenPom: 78

Line: TBD (KenPom has KU by six)

Team Form

Indiana’s two losses are completely reasonable. One was to UCONN and the other to Auburn, who are both now in the top 10 at KenPom. But the way the Hoosiers lost wasn’t great. The Huskies beat IU by 20 (77-57), while in the most recent game for Indiana, Auburn put up triple digits in a 104-76 win.

There’s not a ton else there so far on the resume. Indiana does have two conference wins against top-100 teams — Maryland (69) and Michigan (41) — but those are the only top-100 wins IU has this year. Though it’s worth noting that both losses came on neutral sites and the Hoosiers are still undefeated at Assembly Hall, which is a tough place to play.

Players to Watch

The Hoosiers’ best player so far is a sophomore transfer who has made a huge leap. Kel’el Ware went from Oregon to IU in the offseason and has jumped up from 6.6 points as a freshman Duck to 16.7 ppg so far as a Hoosier while shooting 62% from inside the arc. The 7-footer is also grabbing 9.2 rebounds per game and averaging 1.4 blocks.

Another sophomore that has made the jump in year two is Malik Reneau, who is second on the team at 14.8 points per game to go with 4.9 rebounds and 2.8 assists. The only other player averaging double figures is senior point guard Xavier Johnson at 10.5 ppg. It was the KU game last year where Johnson suffered an injury and only played nine minutes.

Finally, the heralded freshman Kansas knows well (because he chose IU over KU) is Mackenzie Mgbako. The season started slow for him, with him only scoring in double figures once in his first five games. But since then, he has four straight double-figure scoring games, including a season high 18 against Harvard. Most impressively is that Mgbako is a perfect 21-21 from the free-throw line.

Matchups to Watch

This is going to be a battle of the paint. Kansas and Indiana both excel from inside and make it an emphasis. Indiana is 30th nationally in two-point percentage offense and 91st in defense while Kansas is 23rd in 2-point% offense and 10th in defense. Neither team takes many threes, with both the Hoosiers and Jayhawks in the 300s in three-point attempts to field-goal attempts. The difference is Kansas is making 40.3% of its attempts from deep and Indiana just 27.2%. But teams take a ton of threes against Indiana and are hitting 34.4% so far this year. So it will be interesting to see how often KU lets it fly.

For being the third tallest team in the country in terms of average height, it’s a bit surprising that IU is not a good offensive rebounding team, and Kansas will have to continue that trend and keep the Hoosiers from getting second chances. But they are great at getting to the foul line and are making free throws at a 70% clip.

On the defensive side, Indiana isn’t going to force a ton of turnovers and ranks low in steal rate. Their defense is blocking shots. So Kansas has to make sure not to commit a number of careless, unforced turnovers.

I’m interested to see how Kansas responds to a true road environment. Though given the personnel, I think the Jayhawks should take it fairly well. Hunter Dickinson has played in this arena before as a fellow Big Ten member and guys like Dajuan Harris, Kevin McCullar, and KJ Adams have played in their share of hostile environments.

Still, I think the game is closer than it would be on a neutral site. And maybe we see Indiana start to shoot better from deep. But it just feels like Kansas will have too many weapons for the Hoosiers to handle. And while this is KU’s first road game, this is also one of the best teams IU has faced this year. I think Kansas does a bit better than the KenPom projection.

Kansas 79, Indiana 70

Record ATS: 6-4

Record Straight Up: 9-1

(Last game: Kansas 73, Missouri 64)