Zach Osterman | IndyStar

Zach Osterman / IndyStar

Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – After an unexpected, promising performance Wednesday at home against Duke, Saturday’s 69-55 loss at Michigan probably felt like a step back for Indiana fans.

IU coach Archie Miller doesn’t see it that way. He also doesn’t see it in the way you expect.

“We didn’t beat Duke,” Miller said postgame. “I’ve got to keep coming back to that point. We lost the game to Duke. And if any of that ‘hey it feels good’ stuff creeps into your locker room or your bus, you come out here and you go 0-for-8 on layups.

“You’ve got to be a focused team, you’ve got to be possessed with getting better and you have to really understand the reality of winning and losing. Playing to win is everything.”

The Hoosiers (4-4, 0-1) opened Big Ten play with a scattered, disorganized performance at both ends of the floor in Ann Arbor.

They were horrid to start on offense, scoring just two points in the game’s opening 7 1/2 minutes. They gave up too many easy 3-point looks early on, digging themselves a 16-point hole. They turned the ball over nine times in the first half alone, and tossed up bad shots that essentially qualified as giveaways.

Zach Osterman / IndyStar

“Our offense was just stagnant,” said junior forward Juwan Morgan, whose 24 points led all scorers. “We weren’t moving the ball. Everybody was just trying to create for themselves, not create for others, and then Michigan capitalized on that.”

Indiana steadied itself in brief spurts, but never truly fixed its problems. So bad things happened, like an 8-0 Michigan run right after IU cut the lead to five in the second half.

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Good teams follow big performances with consistency and steadiness. Flawed teams don’t sustain as well. Miller wants his team to be “possessed with getting better,” but it’s abundantly clear the Hoosiers are still learning what that looks like.

So you get weeks like this one, where Indiana plays the No. 1 team in the country almost to a standstill, outscores a long, hyperathletic Duke squad in the paint and — even disregarding moral victories — gives itself a chance to beat maybe the best team in the country …

… and then starts Big Ten play flat and badly.

“No moral victories around here,” Morgan said, echoing Miller’s Duke message. “In the end, we lost, so there’s no victories in that. Did we do some good things? Yeah. Did we do some bad things? Yeah. But at the end of the day, we lost, and we have to get better from it.”

And the Hoosiers will now have to get better from a game that saw them allow Michigan to hit 11 3-pointers and score 1.08 points per possession, all while holding Indiana to just 55 points.

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Big Ten basketball: Michigan 69, Indiana 55

Duke and Michigan are both, in their own ways, signs of growth from Indiana. But Saturday was also an important reminder, that not all growth is painless.

So return to Miller’s post-Duke message, because it’s as important as anything that happened in Ann Arbor.

Any new coach will set expectations high and demand much. But Miller doesn’t want to talk about progress at the expense of hammering home the need for further improvement. It’s not what brought him from Dayton to Bloomington, and it’s not going to make a flawed team better.

Miller’s Duke answer came in response to a question asking whether Saturday was disappointing in light of Wednesday’s performance. He didn’t refute the suggestion so much as he rejected the question’s core premise.

“We should’ve beat Duke,” he said. “We didn’t. But a good team at home in front of that crowd with four minutes to go in the game, one-point lead, finds a way to win. Then you can really feel good about it.”

Indiana will have more nights like Wednesday. It will have more afternoons like Saturday. Archie Miller won’t compromise his expectations for any of it.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

MICHIGAN 69, INDIANA 55

INDIANA (4-4) — D.Davis 2-7 0-0 4, Morgan 9-14 6-9 24, Durham 2-4 0-0 5, Newkirk 3-8 0-0 7, Johnson 2-4 2-2 6, McSwain 0-4 0-0 0, Smith 0-1 0-0 0, Hartman 1-4 0-1 2, Jones 0-2 0-0 0, Green 3-7 1-2 7, McRoberts 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 22-55 9-14 55.

MICHIGAN (7-2) — Wagner 6-10 1-2 13, Abdur-Rahkman 2-5 2-2 8, Brooks 2-4 0-0 5, Matthews 3-5 1-2 8, Robinson 2-10 0-0 6, Livers 2-4 0-0 4, Teske 2-3 2-2 6, Simpson 0-2 0-2 0, Poole 7-12 0-0 19, Watson 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 26-55 6-10 69.