WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Six Indiana players — Christian Watford, Cody Zeller, Derek Elston, Jordan Hulls, Victor Oladipo and Yogi Ferrell — met with the media following the Hoosiers’ 97-60 win over Purdue on Wednesday night at Mackey Arena.
Watch their postgame reaction to the largest win by an opponent ever on Gene Keady Court in the embedded media players below:
The Hoosiers won for the third time in eight days on Sunday afternoon with a 75-70 win over No. 13 Michigan State. The victory propelled IU into a first-place tie atop the Big Ten standings with Michigan.
Here’s a look at five takeaways from Sunday’s win over the Spartans:
· Victor Oladipo shines on national stage: Perhaps Sunday’s performance will finally get Indiana’s star junior the recognition he deserves in the discussion for national player of the year. Oladipo finished with a game-high 21 points on 8-of-12 shooting and also pulled down seven rebounds, but it was his perimeter defense that caused a major disruption for Michigan State. Oladipo tied a career-high with six steals which helped Indiana get out for some easy baskets in transition. “The explosiveness they showed the first five minutes was phenomenal,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. “You have to love the way Oladipo competes.” From an under recruited freshman to a player of the year candidate, Oladipo’s ascent is one of the better stories in all of college basketball this season.
· Cody Zeller came through when Indiana needed him most: For most of the afternoon, Michigan State’s size and athleticism around the basket kept Cody Zeller from finding easy looks. But as we’ve seen with Zeller throughout his career at IU to-date, he doesn’t necessarily need to score from the field to make a positive impact. When his looks weren’t going down early, he still made his way to the free throw line and hit 5-of-6 attempts. He also tied a team-high with seven rebounds. After hitting just one of his first six field goal attempts, Zeller caught a pass near the top of the key, drove left and hit a layup over Derrick Nix with 1:38 remaining to push Indiana’s lead to four at 74-70. He capped off the afternoon by taking a charge on Adreian Payne with 14 seconds to go that sealed the win. “It was winning time and Cody answered the bell,” Indiana coach Tom Crean said. “To get that charge and then get that drive and make that play in the heat of the game, that’s where his mental toughness is.”
· Indiana dictated the pace: It was no secret that Michigan State wanted to avoid a track meet with Indiana, one of the nation’s most effective transition teams. Not only did the Hoosiers dictate the pace (71 possessions), they wore down Michigan State. Several Spartans, including Payne, looked fatigued throughout the game and it showed in the closing minutes when Michigan State needed to make a play. After a Gary Harris dunk with 3:32 to play, Michigan State didn’t score the rest of the way. “Down the stretch, we were really sucking air and that caused us not to jam or step up or switch,” Izzo said. “Indiana’s a good basketball team though. I still think top-to-bottom they’re the best team because of depth.”
The Hoosiers completed a regular season sweep of Penn State with a 72-49 win on Wednesday night in Assembly Hall. Indiana has now won five straight over the Nittany Lions. The win moved Indiana, now 5-1 in the conference, to just a half game back of Michigan State, which visits Bloomington on Sunday.
Here’s a look at five takeaways from IU’s comfortable win:
· Yogi Ferrell built confidence early and sustained it all evening: Tasked with running the nation’s No. 1 team to begin the season, it hasn’t always been easy this season offensively for Ferrell, a McDonald’s All-American. But the freshman point guard continues to improve as the conference slate rolls along and Wednesday night was perhaps the most assertive we’ve seen him in terms of looking to score the ball. ”I was just taking what the defense was really giving me,” Ferrell said afterward. “Victor found me and Christian [Watford] in the second half a lot and I was open so I was going to shoot the ball.” He finished with a career-high 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting, including 3-of-4 from behind the 3-point arc.
· Will Sheehey’s defense helps resurrect his offense: After totaling just six points over IU’s last three games, Indiana’s junior spark plug scored 12 points in 24 minutes. His impact on both ends of the floor was felt by his teammates. ”It’s big for our team,” Victor Oladipo said. “Ever since he came in here with me you know it’s been big that we impact winning and him coming off the bench and having games like that and impacting them on both sides of the floor is big for us going along and hopefully he just continues to keep doing that.” As Indiana enters a brutal stretch of three games in seven days (Michigan State, at Purdue and back home vs. Michigan), it was perfect timing for Sheehey to find his footing as a scorer off the bench.
· Cody Zeller doesn’t score a field goal, Indiana doesn’t miss a beat: If you needed any further proof that Indiana’s offense is one of the nation’s best, you got it Wednesday night when the Hoosiers didn’t get a field goal from Zeller and still won by 23. With the perimeter game operating at near peak efficiency, including eight straight 3-pointers at one point, IU’s star sophomore didn’t get many field goal attempts, but still impacted the game with eight rebounds. Penn State coach Pat Chambers said that the Nittany Lions playing zone may have limited Zeller, but it also opened up the perimeter. ”I don’t think Zeller played a ton of minutes; usually he gets in a lot more than he did tonight,” Chambers said. “I saw him tweak his leg and I asked him if he was OK. He told me that he was. But the big thing was that we played zone. Sometimes that means giving up certain things, and they found our weaknesses by making the extra pass.”
For the last three games, many of the stories written about Indiana basketball have focused on the Hoosiers’ lack of bench production. For a team expected to be so deep in the preseason, the Hoosiers have struggled to get much offense out of players other than their starters during the Big Ten season.
And while the bench as a whole still had some problems in No. 7 Indiana’s 72-49 win over Penn State on Wednesday night at Assembly Hall, the bench’s most key member broke out of his mini-offensive slump.
Will Sheehey, who didn’t score in games against Minnesota and Wisconsin and had only six points Sunday against Northwestern, scored 12 points and made two huge 3-pointers in the first half to break Penn State’s spirit. Sheehey made 4-of-6 shots in all, including all three of his 3-pointers in 24 minutes of action.
“It was Sheehey hitting 3s,” Penn State coach Patrick Chambers said of the game getting away from his team late in the first half. “Usually he is a good mid-range jump shooter. That team has a lot of talent and you can’t take everything away. Sheehey made two 3s and it opened everything up.”
Sheehey’s back-to-back long balls softened the Penn State zone and opened things up for other people. It was 23-14 before he made his first one. Four minutes and 30 seconds later, it was 41-19 and the rout was on.
“That’s who Will is, that’s what Will brings,” said Indiana coach Tom Crean. “He’s one of our best players, he really is.”
The majority of Hoosier Nation is likely talking about Sheehey’s return today. But if you ask Sheehey, he’d say he never went anywhere.
“I never think about that kind of stuff,” Sheehey said of not scoring for two straight games. “If you see me not playing hard on the defensive end, that’s when something’s wrong. It’s never gonna happen.”
Assistant coach Kenny Johnson, Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller met with the media on Tuesday to preview Wednesday’s game with Penn State.
Watch and listen to both press conferences in the embedded media players below:
EVANSTON, Ill. — After a 21-point, 13-rebound performance, Cody Zeller sat at the postgame podium inside Welsh-Ryan Arena and was asked by a member of the media to react to the big numbers he’s put up so far this Big Ten season.
“I could care less,” the normally docile 7-footer responded, feigning a smile. “A win’s a win.”
It was perhaps the theme of Indiana’s afternoon against the Wildcats, a 67-59 win in which the Hoosiers were outscored 42-36 in the second half and had trouble with the Wildcats’ halfcourt trap out of a 1-3-1 zone. Northwestern, behind some sharpshooting from distance (5-of-10) and little mistakes on offense (just one turnover) after halftime, were able to make things interesting after Indiana went up 16 at the 11:09 mark on a pair of Christian Watford free throws.
“They just kind of speed us up for a while, we kind of panicked for a while,” said Zeller. “That’s what their defense forces you to do. Once we started getting into the middle, the baseline, we started getting open shots.”
Those shots came on three straight possessions: A Jordan Hulls jumper was tipped in by Zeller. A Victor Oladipo 3-pointer followed by a Will Sheehey jumper also helped keep the Wildcats at bay, though a Jared Swopshire 3-pointer after IU’s mini-run pulled them to within five points with 2:31 to go. But that’s as close as it would get. The Wildcats could do little else but put the Hoosiers to the line late, where they converted (7-of-8 in the last 57 seconds).
“A very telling point for this game was when we scored three straight buckets when the game could have gone the other way for us,” said Tom Crean.
The Hoosiers have now won their first three road games of the Big Ten season and five of their last six dating back to last season.
“It’s kind of tough to explain, even in high school I didn’t believe in home-court advantage (being) such a big deal,” said Zeller. “But now that I’ve experienced it is — it’s worth quite a few points.”
Added Tom Crean: “It’s really hard as a freshman to go anywhere in the Big Ten, but especially to play Northwestern for your first time. Because you have no real idea just how hard they cut, how much movement they’re in … until you go through it, it’s hard, it’s really hard.”
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Five takeaways from Indiana’s win at Purdue
Here’s a look at five takeaways from Wednesday’s win over the Boilermakers:
· This was IU’s most complete performance of the season: As suggested in the lede (and in Justin’s column), Indiana played its most complete game this season to-date Wednesday night. The Hoosiers were clicking on both ends of the floor as they scored 1.4 points per possession and limited Purdue to just 0.83 points per trip. All five starters scored in double figures, spearheaded by 19 points from Cody Zeller. When Indiana is playing its best, the ball is moving and the assist totals Wednesday were indicative of that. The Hoosiers had assists on 21 of 33 field goals, including a career-high seven from Will Sheehey. On defense, the Hoosiers allowed A.J. Hammons to erupt for 30 points, but the rest of Purdue’s team went a combined 12-of-41. Terone Johnson, Purdue’s leading scorer, was handcuffed for most of the night and managed just four points (on 2-of-6 shooting) and committed four turnovers. “I thought [Victor] Oladipo was great,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “He did an unbelievable job of getting into us and not letting our guys do what they want to do.”
· Cody Zeller played like a national player of the year candidate: Hammons turned in a career-best effort with 30 points, but Zeller’s ability to draw fouls early in the game on the freshman limited him to 10 first-half minutes. Indiana’s strategy early on was clear: Feed the post relentlessly and go right at Hammons. It was effective as Hammons had three fouls by halftime and couldn’t play as aggressively on defense as Purdue would have liked. Zeller finished with 19 points and 11 rebounds. Seven of those rebounds were offensive and Zeller, who has struggled at times this season from the foul line, hit all seven of his attempts.
· Indiana punished Purdue on the offensive glass: The Boilermakers entered the game allowing opponents to rebound just 29.4 percent of their misses on the offensive glass. Indiana corralled 53.6 percent of its misses, a season-high for an opponent versus Purdue. In total, Indiana amassed 18 offensive rebounds and had 24 second-chance points. “They were quicker to the ball,” Painter admitted postgame. One of the overlooked areas of improvement for IU is on the offensive glass. The Hoosiers ranked 59th in the country a season ago in offensive rebounding percentage and through 21 games this season, they’re 6th nationally.
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