IU 52 Illinois 65

Well, the Hoosiers came out before a season-high sell-out crowd of 17,346 fans and looked like a steaming pile of freshmen. If you recall, IU fell behind 22-1 in Champaign after an early barrage of 3-pointers by the Illini. In today's game, it was not such a quick-hitting run, but more of a methodical ass-kicking. IU was outplayed on nearly every possession in the first half. Illinois was working the ball for easy 2-point baskets while IU was struggling to get a decent look at the basket on the other end. Illinois built a 34-13 lead. IU managed to scrape out a mini 8-4 run to make the halftime score 38-21. Ouch. Take a look at the horror we like to call first half statistics: * FGs: IU 6-22, Illinois 17-27 * IU: 6 made FGs, 7 of their shots blocked * IU FTs: 3-10 including two missed front-ends (so we'll call it 3-12) The start of the second half was more of the same with IU turning it over on 3 of their first 5 possessions and the score was 44-25 with 15 minutes to go. But then Matt Roth showed the power of the 3-pointer and what a crazy little thing called momentum (aka Big Mo) can do to a basketball game. Roth hits a 3, then Illinois quickly answers with a 2. Innocent enough, but then Roth hits another 3 and gets fouled. The crowd goes crazy and he converts the 4-point play. So, in a 30-second span, the lead goes from 19 points to 14 points and for the first time of the day, the crowd has something to cheer about. Another note on the Roth 4-point play was that Crean was basically standing right next to Roth as he shot it. The shot went in the air, Roth got knocked down, there was an immediate whistle, Crean had his arm in the air before the shot hit nothing but net, and the IU bench went crazy. The very next defensive possession, Jones deflects a ball and then Williams makes a diving effort to tap the ball forward to Jones who then had a break-away layup. Crowd goes crazy and suddenly it's a 12-point game. A little more back and forth before Story converts a traditional 3-point play to make it an 11 point game as IU is in the midst of an impressive 12-4 run. It looks like Brock quiets the crowd with a monster tip-in dunk but then gets a technical foul for taunting (cheap call, but we'll take it). Obviously, this kept the crowd riled up. Unfortunately, Roth only makes 1-2 at the line (making IU just 9-19 from the stripe at this point). IU gets sloppy for a few possessions and the lead goes back to 14 points, but then Crean goes to a triangle and two defense. At least that is what they called it on the telecast. To me, it looked like a bunch of IU freshmen that didn't know what defense they were in. Either way, it worked brilliantly. Moore stepped in for a steal and a left-handed layup to make it 52-40 and the stripe-out crowd was really into it. On the next Illinois possession, the triangle and two worked again and forced Illinois into a tough late-clock FG attempt that they missed. IU quickly came down and cut the lead to 10 points on a Taber floater in the lane. Then, on the inbounds, Moore cut into the passing lane to force a bad pass that was stolen by Story. Then Moore fed Jones in the post for a nice bucket and we had ourselves an 8-point game. Illinois answers with a 2 and then Story makes a great pass to Taber for an easy deuce to get back to the 8-point deficit. More good defense by IU leads to an Illinois miss. Story grabs the rebound and scarily goes coast-to-coast and laid it in to cut the lead to just 6 points! It looked like he was going to get it stolen a couple times, but in the end, it was an impressive coast-to-coast play. Tom Crean and the crowd were going absolutely berserk with 6:30 to go. IU again forced an Illinois miss and got the rebound. At IU's end, Verdell Jones had a 3-ball in the air that would have cut the lead to 3, but he couldn't get it to go down. Illinois hit a 3 on the other end and IU never threatened again. It was a very impressive 23-10 run over 8 1/2 minutes where IU made 10-12 FGs and got themselves back in the game. IU scored 23 points in that 8-minute span and only 29 points in the other 32 minutes. So, that stretch was clearly the only bright spot of the game. The only other positive note was that Nick Williams hit 2-2 from the arc (both very early) after he has been really struggling all year from long range. The free throws were a major problem throughout the game. IU finished just 11-24 that included 3 missed front-ends. Pritchard and Story were the biggest offenders with a combined 5-14 that included all 3 missed front-ends. IU was without Dumes again, who sat out his second game as part of an indefinite suspension from not only throwing multiple elbows in the MSU game but also another brush-up in another game (NW maybe?). They clearly miss him on both ends of the floor. So, hopefully he has learned a valuable lesson from this suspension and will come back even stronger. He had been playing great up until that MSU game. Tom Crean's post-game comments certainly made it sound like Dumes would be back for Thursday's Wisconsin game. Other odds and ends: * CBS showed Tom Crean's pre-game speech. Pretty cool. * After Daniel Moore got elbowed in the face, landed on, and hurt his leg, the IU crowd had a really loud chant going. Does anyone know what they were saying? * I'm glad that Kelvin Sampson and Bruce Weber are forever linked by the Eric Gordon de-commitment because I hate them both with a passion. Speaking of Bruce Weber and Eric Gordon. Who could forget Gordon's one and only trip into Champaign? It started with the punk-ass bump from Chester Frazier in the introductions and included things being thrown at Gordon's family. Of course, it ended with Gordon having the last laugh by banking in a 3-pointer that sent the game to overtime. IU eventually won in double-overtime. Another great part of the whole thing was then listening to Bruce Weber cry about the whole thing in the post-game conference. Another thing I hate about Bruce Weber is the girly, limp, wet-noodle handshake that he offers after the game. If he offered me one of those handshakes, I would give him one of these: Shake hands like a real man. Ok, I think I have gone off-course here, but that's just my way of coping with losing to the hated Illini. I also wanted to make some brief comments about the Minnesota game that I did not have a chance to post about due to The Man working my ass off. Anyway, here were some interesting stats from that game: * All 54 IU points were scored by true freshman (not hard to believe when you think about Dumes being suspended and Taber did not score). * Of those 54 points by true freshmen, IU's leading freshman scorer Tom Pritchard did not score a single point. * This also means that IU's top two leading scorers (Dumes and Pritchard) did not score a single point. * IU had 26 turnovers. * When you consider all of the above, it is pretty remarkable that they were even competitive in this game and only lost by 8 points. Next Up: IU hosts Wisconsin. Just two weeks ago, I circled this game as a good opportunity for a victory. Wisconsin had lost 6 in a row. Unfortunately, they have turned it around and have now won 4 in a row including wins against Ohio State, Illinois, and at Penn State. So, clearly they are playing much better basketball, but maybe IU will get Dumes back and be able to pull one out of the hat. Go Hoosiers!