IU's defensive improvement is no fluke, but Archie Miller wants more

Archie Miller wants the Hoosiers to land in the top 50 nationally in defense.

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Archie Miller freely admits it — he’s “a KenPom guy.”

The popular advanced statistics website, run by Ken Pomeroy, has devotees across college basketball, Miller among them. As recently as October, Miller admitted he and his staff “circled around the numbers” at Dayton.

“It’s kind of mesmerizing to follow college basketball through that,” Miller said.

When his IU team meets Iowa on Saturday afternoon in Iowa City, those numbers will tell a very different story than they did the first time these two teams met.

“It seems like a lifetime ago,” Miller told reporters Friday.

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Indiana (15-12, 8-7 in Big Ten) is aiming for a season sweep of the slumping Hawkeyes, who have lost their last four and currently find themselves in a three-way tie for 11th in the 14-team Big Ten. Iowa’s league season began badly, with a pair of defeats during the early conference start in December, and hasn’t recovered with any consistency since.

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The Hoosiers were responsible for one of those two losses, a 77-64 win in Bloomington that was Miller’s first in league play. Both programs have diverged in fortunes since, IU largely for the better in an area Miller considers crucial.

Even after Indiana and Iowa played that night in Bloomington, the Hoosiers ranked No. 197 in adjusted defensive efficiency. That was per those Pomeroy numbers Miller admits he keeps an eye on. Poor defensive showings against Indiana State, Duke and at Michigan were like ankle weights around IU’s national ranking.

Pomeroy’s projections figured the Hoosiers would lose 15 of their final 16 conference games, and a Dec. 18 home defeat to Fort Wayne didn’t bolster the case for greater optimism.

Miller’s aim at the time? Find a way to break the top 100 defensively.

Fast forward to this weekend, and the Hoosiers have long passed their coach’s December ambitions. Heading into Saturday’s game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Indiana has a better grasp of Miller’s pack-line style and is No. 51 in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency. Moreover, IU ranks No. 1 in the Big Ten in that statistic, in conference play alone.

What does that mean in real terms?

Many of the statistics Pomeroy’s website tracks are presented on a per-possession basis. Instead of measuring success or failure per game, as traditional statistics do, they measure those factors per possession. The goal is to be able to adequately compare teams that play up-tempo, and therefore naturally initiate or defend more possessions per game, to those who play a slower, more deliberate style.

IU, for example, is 11th in the Big Ten in points per game overall, allowing 69.4. But by Miller’s own admission, the Hoosiers also want to play fast, turning defense quickly into offense and scoring in transition.

The attention Miller pays to Pomeroy’s numbers is understandable — they can give him more accurate comparisons of his team’s performance relative to competitors who don’t play as fast.

Miller’s new goal? Finish the season in the nation’s top 50.

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Working toward that goal begins with managing a top-30 offense (Iowa’s is 29th) on Saturday.

“They're much better offensively,” Miller said Friday. “Their motion is very good. Their break is really good. For us, transition defense and just being able to guard in the half-court is going to be a very, very tall task.

“I don't think either team can really rely on (the meeting in December) for a lot of ammunition to say, ‘This is what we have to do.’ It's almost like two seasons ago.”

Realizing Miller’s goal would go a long way toward completing what thus far has been a strong finish to the season. Indiana has won its last three games by a combined 56 points, and guaranteed itself a first-round Big Ten tournament bye at the end of this month.

Now, the Hoosiers must navigate one more difficult stretch — three games in seven days to finish the regular season, the first two on the road.

Miller doesn’t just want that defensive trend to continue upward. He needs it to.

“Defensively, we've really hung our hat on that work ethic and just trying to establish the base of what we do,” Miller said. “We have the majority of that in, and I think we have guys who understand that it's very, very important to the future, not only of the season but moving down the line. It's going to be a staple.

“We have our guys playing hard right now. I think most of these guys right now really are bought in and locked in on it, and that's probably the biggest thing.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

INDIANA (15-12, 8-7) AT IOWA (12-16, 3-12)

Tipoff: 2 p.m., Saturday, Iowa City, Iowa.

TV/Radio: ESPN/93.1-FM.