Big Ten Blog: IU can't shoot, can't guard the 3, can't beat Nebraska and this is a recording

We saw this coming during the non-conference schedule. Now it's time for Mike Woodson to dive into the portal and fix this mess.

We saw this coming early in the non-conference season. We saw it against lesser teams who had no right to think they could compete with IU’s basketball program, especially at Assembly Hall. We saw the inability to shoot from the perimeter, notably beyond the 3-point arc. We saw the consistent failures to guard the 3-point arc.

We saw it all again when it counted most, specifically in Friday’s season-ending blowout loss to Nebraska, a team that does everything IU does not and cannot. Twelve first-half three-point field goals? Shoot, that’s two full games, or more, for an IU team that has gone years – not a year, but several years – attempting to find a knockdown shooter.

Then, when they found one, notably Liam McNeeley, the Montverde Academy prospect backed out of his commitment to Mike Woodson and the Hoosiers.

So now it’s time to hit the portal and hit it hard when it opens Monday. I have absolutely no qualms with the program’s decision to reject a possible invitation to the NIT because another acronym, NIL, is far more important for a program and a head coach who have lost their way. Not only did the Hoosiers finish a desultory 19-14, Woodson’s third straight season with double digit losses, but with McNeeley gone, IU doesn’t have a single recruit scheduled to join the team next season.

It's an undeniably bad look, and I understand the sentiment that IU shouldn’t place itself above the NIT at the end of a season when it played like an NIT-worthy team. It looks, at least from a distance, like IU is above playing in the secondary tournament, or at least views itself as being above participation in the NIT.