Indiana Hoosiers Basketball: Keys to IU Knocking off No. 1 Kentucky

The Indiana Hoosiers will topple the No. 1-seeded Kentucky Wildcats if they can pull off the following upset. 

This certainly is not an impossible task. After all, the Hoosiers are just one of two teams to beat Kentucky this year. 

Here is what they need to do to push that record to 2-0 against them on the season. 

Hit the 3

The Hoosiers are an excellent three-point shooting team. On the season, they hit 43.7 percent of their threes. The three-point shot is always the great equalizer. It can make up for any difference of talent. 

This was at the root of the Hoosiers' success in the first meeting between the two. Indiana was 9-of-15 from distance. That is good for 60 percent and was noticeably better than the 43.1 percent they shot overall from the field. 

Get to the Line

When the Hoosiers aren't casting up and draining threes, they need to focus on getting to the line. This is going to have all kinds of benefits. 

It will ensure that they stay aggressive and battle for good looks, it will help get Kentucky into foul trouble and it will result in easy points.

Just like they are from behind the arc, the Hoosiers are an excellent free-throw shooting team. They hit 76.3 percent of their shots from the charity stripe during the season. 

Limit Turnovers

The Hoosiers have to do a good job of taking care of the ball. This will prevent Kentucky from getting out into the open court—where they are so dangerous and effective—and it will lead to good looks for them. 

They won the first matchup against the Wildcats despite doing a poor job of this. They had 18 turnovers in that one. That is well above their season average of 13.8 per game on the season. 

Indiana would be foolish to think they could withstand this kind of sloppy ball-handling performance again.