“Bend but don’t break,” IU basketball answers adversity in win against Purdue
- Quinn Richards
- 2h ago
Midway through the second half of Indiana’s 72-67 win against Purdue on Tuesday night, Jasai Miles made a mistake. He left his feet while trying to find Reed Bailey, cutting to the rim. Instead, an outstretched Boilermaker hand turned a surefire assist into a loose ball that hovered above the newly-refinished Assembly Hall floor, eagerly awaiting its gravitational descent.
But as quickly as the burnt orange ball entered free fall, Miles snatched it back, and — without even taking a dribble — fired a pass to the corner. There, Nick Dorn rose up and drained his fourth 3-pointer of the evening. It was so pure off his hands that Dorn had already turned his back when the sweet sound of splashing silk echoed its tune.
The entire sequence gave Darian DeVries a sense of déjà vu.
“We had a play in practice yesterday, Jasai Miles drove, he was going to pass the corner,” DeVries said postgame. “He left his feet. He was getting ready to turn it over, deflected it. The ball was going out of bounds. And he jumped and saved it and tapped it to Nick Dorn in the corner. And that was a big part of our film session, was, you could have quit and given up on the play but he didn’t. And you know what happened tonight? He did the exact same thing.”
There’s an adage that states, “you practice how you play.” While nearly turning the ball over to gain an open look is assuredly not the best way to put that advice to use, it’s a saying that rang true for the Hoosiers. But it wasn’t Miles’ mistake that defined the play; it was the response that followed.
He refused to quit. It’s the same mindset Indiana showed throughout its upset victory Tuesday night.
After the under-12 timeout in the first half, the Boilermakers used a 12-5 run to take a four-point lead, a momentum swing that forced DeVries to call a timeout. The Hoosiers came out of the huddle, went on a 13-0 run and took an 11-point lead into halftime.
“We just had a little tough stretch in there,” DeVries said. “Gave them a little run. I thought we looked a little gassed, too. I thought we needed a quick little breather to kind of hit a reset.”
In that quote alone, DeVries used the word “little” four times. That’s because, for once, the run Indiana allowed was in fact little. It wasn’t the case with the 13-0 run the Hoosiers allowed versus Nebraska or the 19-0 run they allowed against Michigan State. But this time, Indiana didn’t let one bad stretch snowball into something much worse.
“We can’t let mistakes compound,” DeVries said. “And in a few of those losses, that’s what we did. And it turned into a 10-0 run instead of a 6-0 run. I think the guys have been much better about, mistakes are going to happen. It’s basketball. It’s not a perfect game.”
Look no further than the game’s closing minutes. Despite holding a 14-point second-half advantage, the Hoosiers allowed the Boilermakers to close the gap to just two points with less than two minutes remaining in the game.
How? Mistakes.
Indiana missed three front ends of 1-and-1s, Lamar Wilkerson turned the ball over twice in less than a minute and multiple defensive lapses allowed Trey Kaufman-Renn wide-open looks at the rim. But through it all, the Hoosiers didn’t let those shortcomings dictate the end result.
“We had a bend-but-don’t-break mentality,” Dorn said. “We know that they’re going to go on runs. It’s a game of runs. And we just have to be able to weather the storm and be able to push for it when we need it and finish plays.”
Indiana most definitely bent, but it was hustle extraordinaire Conor Enright who spearheaded its refusal to break. Typically a sparing shot-taker, he stepped up without hesitation in the game’s pinnacle, drilling a 3-pointer that gave the Hoosiers a 68-63 lead with just over a minute remaining.
“We were exhausted,” DeVries said. “So those last two minutes, for a team that hasn’t been in a lot of those situations together as a group, two minutes to go, big game, coming down to the wire, I thought guys made some really big plays.”
When exhausted, who better to lean on than Enright, the pesky defender who never seems too tired to dive to the floor whenever the opportunity arises. But in a shocking turn of events, even he can be impacted by a hard-fought win and guarding Braden Smith for a full 40 minutes certainly doesn’t help.
“Well, it feels awesome now, I’m tired, but, you know, it was great,” Enright said. “So I think we’ve changed our mindset these last couple weeks in practice. And I think it shows on the court just how we are as a team.”
If Tuesday night’s win against Purdue is any indication, Indiana has changed. The Hoosiers have learned to embrace every college football sideline reporter’s favorite word, “resilience.” For the first time in seven tries this season, Indiana overcame a Quad 1 opponent.
It just so happened to be against the program’s biggest rival.
“Weathering the storm, staying together,” Enright said, “I think we did that. We did a good job of doing that and then we made shots down in the end and got the W.”
Just as Miles refused to let a mistake end a possession in practice, the Hoosiers refused to let their mistakes end the night — and against Purdue, that was the difference.
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