Kent State is the highest rated 13 per KenPom. They have the 38th best defense and are also battled tested. Played Houston and Gonzaga both extremely tough on the road.
Yeah...certainly Kent State is solid enough to beat us, if we play poorly.
Here's why I don't mind the matchup though, when compared to the other 13's.
In my mind, we're talking about what team can beat us if we play well for 15-20 minutes. Its unfortunate, but at this point, I almost think our team having an uneven, half of the game good, type of performance is more likely than not. So which teams can weather the good play well, and attack and take advantage of the 20 minutes of lower energy, poor on ball defense, poor rotations, overhelping, lack of energy on the boards, etc...
Furman...probably would have been the best matchup here. They're not quite as athletic and play slower, so a little more unlikely they'd have exploited those 20 bad minutes enough to beat us.
Iona...main concern here would have been Pitino. He's one of the best early round coaches in NCAA history. Obviously a lot of that came from teams that had better talent than he has at Iona. But his success implies that he very nearly always his teams ready to play, and that they play well. I think they'd weather Indiana's good play well because of that, and a Pitino coached team would likely jump on the bad IU team I explained above.
Lousiana...of the four 13 seeds, they probably have the highest end talent. I would worry about their big competing well enough during our good 20 minutes, to keep them close. And then their ability to score, and their talent, to beat us during our bad 20 minutes.
Kent State...overall, very, very solid team. In their games against high majors, the games were very slow, physical games. They can obviously beat IU if we don't play well. I just think they likely slow it down and grind it out more when playing better teams. If they do that against us, in a game we don't play well, it probably helps us.
