Indiana assistant coach Steve McClain, sophomore Will Sheehey and junior Christian Watford met with the media on Tuesday to preview tomorrow’s game at Michigan. Watch the press conference in high-definition quality in the embedded media player below:
Watch Michigan coach John Beilein preview tomorrow’s game over at UMHoops.
Christian Watford set his feet in nearly the same spot where he hit a game-winning 3 against Kentucky, and prepared to fire.
Only this time the Hoosiers weren’t trailing by two in the final seconds. Indiana had a 17-point lead against Penn State with just over five seconds remaining. The Hoosiers needed to take a shot or accept a turnover for a shot-clock violation.
Watford rose up and was fouled hard by Penn State’s Matt Glover, starting a small scrum near the Indiana bench. Will Sheehey, who wasn’t even in the game at the time of the foul, appeared to be jawing with a Penn State player, and had to be restrained by Calbert Cheaney, the Hoosiers’ Director of Basketball Operations.
Sheehey was given a technical foul for his involvement and was ejected from the game because he was part of a double technical assessed earlier in the game.
“You hate to end the game like that,” said Penn State coach Patrick Chambers. “Both teams competed, both played hard and you want to leave it on the floor, but there’s no need for that. And I’ve talked to my team about that. We have a great reputation of playing hard and competing, but I don’t want to be a cheap-shot artist or any team that’s going to start fights. That’s not who we’re gonna be.”
Even though Sheehey was ejected, Indiana coach Tom Crean said he doesn’t expect Sheehey to be suspended for Thursday night’s game at Wisconsin.
“To my knowledge, nothing different with Will’s status,” Crean said. “There were no punches thrown or anything like that, it wasn’t considered a fight. It was more verbal than anything else. We’ve already talked about that internally. It”s just a maturity thing.”
Indiana struggled at times defensively in its first four conference games, but the Hoosiers’ vulnerability was mostly hidden by their hot shooting.
The No. 7 Hoosiers (15-2, 3-2) entered Thursday night’s game against Minnesota as the nation’s top 3-point shooting team by percentage. They were shooting 50.5 percent from the field overall. In many ways, they were winning by simply outshooting their opponents.
When Indiana’s shots weren’t falling against the Golden Gophers, however, their shortcomings on defense were much more visible – and costly.
The Hoosiers made only 4-of-18 shots from 3-point range and 24-of-55 overall. They struggled to find an offensive rhythm or get enough defensive stops to go on an extended run.
The Hoosiers’ inability to get a stop down the stretch put them in deeper and deeper holes – holes they were unable to climb out of.
“The easiest thing in the world to do is to be sky high when you’re making shots,” said Indiana coach Tom Crean. “The hardest thing to do is to understand how committed you have to be to the game of defense and rebounding when you’re not.
“Defense creates offense, defense creates more opportunities, defense creates the fast break – you name it. The best teams gain confidence from their defense, not the other way around.”
Cody Zeller, Jordan Hulls and Will Sheehey met with the media following Indiana’s 77-74 loss to Minnesota at Assembly Hall on Thursday night. Watch the press conference in high-definition video in the embedded player below:
It all caught up with the Hoosiers tonight.
The defense that’s been slumping? Minnesota exposed it tonight, its guards finding lanes to the hole, penetrating from the perimeter past Indiana’s olé’ing defense to the hoop for scores. And when the Hoosiers went 2-3 zone for extended minutes — something they’ve barely flirted with in-game all season — things did not get better. Minnesota attacked a 2-3 zone the way you’re supposed to: It found the man in the middle; Indiana collapsed in; the Gophers found seams off the baseline and kicked out to wing shooters that were hitting shots. Minnesota scored 1.15 points per possession inside Assembly Hall tonight. A performance like this, my friends, will not pull Indiana’s defense out of the Big Ten cellar.
That 3-point shooting that’s been transcendent? It fell from the sky to the earth with a loud thud. Indiana had its worst shooting night beyond the arc of the season (4-of-18, 22.2%).
On nights when shots aren’t falling and defense is lacking, there are still ways to win. Indiana stayed in this one because it got to the line and converted rather well (23-25, 88%, 45.5% FTR). It got into the bonus with a lot of time left in the second half (9:05), and hit 9-of-10 down the stretch. Two of those came on and-1 situations from Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller during IU’s final, furious run — one in which they almost snuck back into this game and stole a victory.
Offensive rebounding (second-chance points) and taking care of the ball (turnover percentage) are other ways. For a stretch in the second half, Minnesota seemed to be grabbing every offensive rebound in sight for putbacks. The Hoosiers didn’t do a good job of keeping the Gohpers off their offensive glass at all, as they rebounded 43.2 percent of their misses. Yet, Indiana actually won this battle, as the Hoosiers rebounded 45.2 percent of their misses and scored 22 second-chance points to Minnesota’s 13.
If there was anywhere they let this one slide away, it was that on top of shooting poorly from beyond the arc and playing bad D, the Hoosiers were sloppy. They turned the ball over on 23.7 percent of their possessions (16 times), which was just a little bit too much to overcome. The above video is a pretty apt summation of Indiana’s night; as the Hoosiers mounted their comeback, Christian Watford almost knocked a rebound out of bounds. A subsequent pass to an open Zeller near the basket which could have pulled the Hoosiers within four fumbled off his hands. (Though, Zeller did steal the ball on the next Minnesota possession, which led to Oladipo’s and-1.)
Indiana coach Tom Crean wouldn’t say whether sophomore swingman Will Sheehey will play Thursday against Minnesota, but he did say Sheehey has been practicing with the team this week.
Crean continues to say Sheehey is “day-to-day,” but said he is progressing.
“He shot some Saturday night, but Sunday was really the first day that he had gone out and done anything else with the team,” Crean said.
When asked how Sheehey looked in practice, junior forward Christian Watford said “he’s developing good” but he’s “not 100 percent.”
The 6-foot-6 sophomore was injured when he accidentally stepped on a loose ball in practice on Dec. 21. Sheehey is averaging 10.7 points in 20 minutes per game off the bench.
