IU 81 NCC 58

The clear-cut story of this game was the 2nd half play of Jordan Hulls and Maurice Creek.  Pretty damn impressive for a pair of freshmen.

The first half for the Hoosiers was less than impressive.  In fact, 18 minutes into this game, they were losing to North Carolina Central by 1 point at Assembly Hall.  Not good.  And it was the achilles heel for this team that was causing the biggest problem.....defense. 

Fortunately, the Hoosiers woke up and went on a 41-14 run over the next 15 minutes to go from being down 33-32 to a big lead of 73-47.

This entire run was fueled by Hulls and Creek.  Hulls pulled down 7 rebounds and had 8 assists on the game and Creek scored 20 of his 29 points in the first 13 minutes of the second half.

Hulls got the start in the 2nd half and made Tom Crean look like a genius for doing so.  Early in the second half, Hulls led two fast breaks were he delivered spectacular one-handed left-handed passes for easy scores to help get the run started.  After that, he continued to play great and finished with only 1 turnover against his 8 assists. 

Jeremiah Rivers also had some great passes and also had 8 assists, but Rivers had 5 turnovers with all of them being careless and stupid turnovers.  Case in point was on the final possession of the first half (while still in a tight game), he made a one-handed sling pass that went straight out of bounds with less than 10 seconds to go.  That type of pass is sometimes necessary if you are threading something through the defense, but this was just a pass from the top of the key to the wing.  There was no reason to throw a one-handed pass in that situation.  Rivers definitely frustrated me in this game with that type of play.

Getting back to the positive.....Mo Creek is a special player.  He has scored 60 points in his last 2 games....enough said.

Tom Crean used the pine in this game.  Derek Elston started in front of Tom Pritchard.  The good news is that Pritchard responded with a pretty solid effort.  8 points on 4-5 shooting and 6 rebounds in 21 mintues.  Not spectacular, but solid.  Also, Verdell Jones spent some extended time on the bench in the middle of this game.  And any time you see Brett Finkelmeier getting minutes in a close game, that is a clear sign that there is some bad defense being played.

And finally, Tijan Jobe and Bawa Muniru were on the floor together at the end of the game.  It was awesome.  Well, actually, the idea of it was awesome.  The actual occurence of it was less than awesome, but I blame Kory Barnett.  He had the ball in a 3-on-1 situation where he could have fed either Muniru or Jobe for a dunk, but his pass got deflected out of bounds.  I felt robbed.

At the end of the day, I think we can look past a poor first half because the Hoosiers poured it on in the second half and won this game easily.  Hopefully, the next two games against Loyala (Md) and Bryant will be even easier.

Go Hoosiers!