IU 67 Penn St 61

Well, well, well.  Let's take a look at where we stand after tonight's win:

• IU's first road win
• 2 conference wins in a row
• 3-3 conference record
• Tied for 5th in the Big Ten

Pretty damn good.  Some might say that we just beat a team that is winless in conference play, but I really don't give a shit about that right now.  They had to get their first road win at some point and there was no better time than tonight in my eyes.

I thought this was a great team win tonight.  IU got contributions from several players.  The Hoosiers looked ready to play and broke out to a 23-12 lead.  That would turn out to be the biggest lead of the game and I believe there was only one possession with a double-digit lead.

IU held a 35-28 lead at halftime and their balanced scoring in the half was pretty amazing:

• 6 - Watford
• 6 - Jones
• 6 - Rivers
• 6 - Hulls
• 6 - Elston
• 5 - Dumes

IU's toughest stretch came early in the second half.  After an IU bucket on their first possession, Penn State went on a 12-3 run and tied the score at 40.  But that would be the only tie of the game and IU would immediately answer in a big way.  The Hoosiers rattled a quick 10-2 run of their own that consisted of a nice bucket from Verdell, a Dumes 3, Verdell 1-2 FTs, a Dumes driving bucket, and a Dumes jumper. 

As you can see, Dumes came up big when IU needed to answer and that run pushed the lead back to 8 points at 50-42 with 10 minutes to go.  Dumes then had a turnover and a bad shot and the lead quickly shrank to 4 points.  But then Dumes answered again with another bomb.  So, even with a couple bad plays mixed in there, the good Devan greatly outweighed the bad Devan.

The lead would mostly stay in the 3 to 7 point range the rest of the way.  There was one more stretch with about 5 minutes to go that started to look scary for the Hoosiers.  A couple turnovers and several stupid fouls were the problem.  One play really stood out when Verdell had a bad turnover way out top that led to a break-away for Penn State.  And then wouldn't you know it, who else but Tom Pritchard comes in and commits a pussyfoot foul that leads to a 3-point play.  The lead was again down to 3 at 58-55 with 4:38 to play.  I appreciate Pritchard's hustle, but if you are going to foul in that situation, you can't let them get the basket too.

From that point forward, I was impressed with how the Hoosiers closed out the game.  The Nittany Lions helped with several missed 3-pointers, but the Hoosiers made the following key plays down the stretch:

• Watford with a nice post-up bucket
• Watford offensive rebound
• Verdell Jones 3-pointer (created by the Watford offensive rebound)
• Watford offensive rebound
• Verdell with one of his patented sneaky moves where he gets into the lane then pivots for the little fade-away (again, created by the Watford offensive rebound)
• With just a 4-point lead and 40 seconds to go, Daniel Moore gets fouled after just entering the game for ball-handling purposes and it's only a one-and-one.  He hits BOTH!

Interestingly, it was the two Watford offensive rebounds that led to two buckets by Verdell that sealed the victory.  However, it was IU giving up 18 offensive rebounds to Penn St that allowed this game to stay close.

Verdell did mix in a travel in the final minutes, but for the second game in a row, Verdell has hit 2 big shots late in close games to lead the Hoosiers to victory.

It should also be noted that Christian Watford just missed his second straight double-double with 11 points and 9 rebounds.  The great news for Hoosier fans is that Watford can improve and will improve in so many areas and he's already putting up some pretty nice numbers.  He's leading Big Ten Freshmen in both points and rebounds.

Looking at the stats, the key to victory for the Hoosiers tonight was 3-point shooting.  IU was 9-20 and Penn State was just 4-22.  That's really good to see with both Creek and Roth out of the lineup.  The 3-point shot is so big in college basketball and I was really concerned when this team had a stretch of 2-26 against Illinois and Michigan.  But tonight, they hit 9 three-pointers with 5 different players making one or more -- Dumes (3), Hulls (3), Jones (1), Watford (1), and Elston (1).

The Hoosiers have Iowa at home on Sunday (game moved back 1 hour to 6pm ET to try to avoid too much overlap with the Colts game).  My concern heading into tonight's game was obviously the fact that it was a road game, but also whether the Hoosiers could string together two strong performances.  Well, they did.  So now let's see if they can string together 3 and move to a winning record in conference play.

A couple additional notes that I didn't seem to work in above:

The first note is the play of Jeremiah Rivers tonight.  He opened the game by hitting two 16-foot jumpers very early in this game.  It was very promising and Doc was in the crowd and loving it.  By the way, I love it when Doc is in the crowd.  Unfortunately, the fact that Jeremiah hit those two early jumpers gave him some confidence to keep shooting.  He missed his next 4 jumpers.

Jeremiah was also saddled with foul trouble.  He picked up his 3rd foul late in the first half.  Then, he picked up his 4th early in the second half and his 5th shortly after coming back in the game after sitting for 10+ minutes.  So, he only played 17 minutes total and only 4 minutes in the second half.  In those limited minutes, he was doing his typical thing and had 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, and 1 block.  The block was another one of Jeremiah's now patented left-handed blocks.  It seems like once a game there will be an opponent that thinks they have a clear line for a right-handed layup and then Jeremiah comes flying in for a left-handed block.  It's a beautiful thing.

Bawa Muniru saw a couple minutes of action in the first half.  He was able to pull down an offensive rebound.  Now, it wasn't an authoritative rebound, it was more chasing down a long rebound, but it led to a 3-pointer by Elston late in the first half.  Bawa then got whistled for an offensive foul when setting a screen.  To be honest, he got hozed.  It was a good solid screen.  Anyway, I liked seeing him in there even if it was just for a couple minutes.  Shockingly, the main reason he was in there was because Tom Pritchard already had 3 fouls.

Here's to 5 straight hours of sporting bliss on Sunday.  It sure would be a fine day if both the Colts and the Hoosiers would win on Sunday.  Enjoy.