Following a road loss to Minnesota and a loss to Louisville in Indianapolis last week, the Hoosiers appeared as though they were beginning to falter. Indiana was in desperate need of a strong performance to get their confidence back up heading into the bulk of the schedule.
Speaking to the media after the game, head coach Darian DeVries said, “We had gone back here after the Minnesota game and looked at some of the offense, what caused [the loss]. There wasn’t a lot of movement and things. As we went backwards, looking at some games earlier in the season compared to now, it stood out pretty good. We put in a ton of time here this last week on just getting more actions, more movement. Sometimes you can’t always do that. People deny. You can’t just throw the ball from side to side. At some point you have to still be able to go make a play.”
From the very beginning of the game, the Hoosiers came out with a different level of intensity; you could feel how much the team wanted to bounce back in front of the home crowd at Assembly Hall. “I thought the guys did a really good job tonight keeping the ball, as we like to say, ‘hot’, keeping it hot, keeping it moving. Player and ball movement I thought was really good tonight.” Coach DeVries said.
Part of that intensity could have been due to the change in the Hoosiers’ lineup, as Sam Alexis got the start in place of Reed Bailey. “Lineup change, like I told Reed and Sam, it wasn’t anything more than we just wanted to try to create a spark. Wasn’t anything negative towards either one of them. We wanted to take a look at it. I thought Reed responded great, like I knew he would. It freed him up a little bit. Coming off the bench, maybe just a chance to process as the game’s going. Allows us with Sam a little more physicality to start the game, then Reed comes in and utilizes some of his speed and things. [Reed] handled it great. I thought he did a nice job coming off the bench for us tonight. Very aggressive.” Coach DeVries said.
Bailey echoed his coach’s sentiment, saying that this week the message was, “Just, keep being ourselves. There’s always things we’ve been working on, whether it’s being more physical or sharing the ball, all those types of things. But just getting back to how we played some basketball.”
In addition to Bailey, Hoosiers’ sharpshooter Lamar Wilkerson was in need of a bounce-back game after struggling for the past couple of games. “I was in my head about it for a couple days. Even in practice, my coaches came up, my teammates came up, [and said], ‘just keep shooting the ball. Shooters shoot. Shoot the ball, everything is going to work out. It’s a numbers game.’” Wilkerson said after the game.
Everything definitely did work out for Wilkerson, as he ended the game with a career-high 44 points and set the record for most made threes in a game with 10.
When asked if he was aware he was making history during the game, Wilkerson said, “It never crossed my mind, actually. We lost the last two, so we were coming as a team, collectively, trying to get back to the way we were playing. The ball was just going in.”
Following a pair of tough losses, this 113-72 win over Penn State was exactly what the Hoosiers needed to get their confidence up before they face off against Kentucky on Saturday.