By Matt St. Charles
Down by three with under 10 seconds to go, Indiana needed something special. Tucker DeVries fired up a 3 from the right wing, double-pumping with a defender close by to contest. The shot went up, hitting nothing, and dropped into the arms of Northwestern’s Arrinten Page. DeVries felt he was hit on his left arm, but no call was made, and the Wildcats handed the Hoosiers a 72-68 loss in Assembly Hall.
The referee, standing behind DeVries at the time of the play, didn’t blow the whistle and both Tucker and Darian DeVries were livid.
“He said he couldn’t see it,” Tucker DeVries, said, clearly holding his composure through some emotion. “That’s his explanation; that’s all I can give you. I thought it was a foul, but I’m not–it’s part of the game. That’s all I’m going to give.”
“It’s a tough play,” Darian DeVries said. “It happens fast, so it is what it is.”
There was palpable emotion in the postgame presser from Tucker DeVries and Lamar Wilkerson. They, along with the whole locker room, likely grasp what this loss means for Indiana. This was a team just on the right side of the bubble heading into the night, needing to take care of business against a clearly inferior Northwestern team that is now 5-13 in Big Ten play.
Without all that impressive of a resume before this loss, most notably being 2-10 in Quad One games, the task was simple: beat teams you should beat. What happens against teams like Illinois, Purdue, and Michigan State is acceptable, if not expected. But losses like this are not.
Even more unacceptable is putting yourself in a position where the referee making a call is needed to extend the game. Yes, it certainly appeared to be a foul, but what went into making that moment so important was all on Indiana.
“We just weren’t hooked up as a team,” Wilkerson said after his 5-17 shooting night in which he scored 18 points. “As a group of seniors, we’ve got to be better. Me personally, I have to be better at leading this team, stepping up. We could have made some plays down the stretch that could have helped us. It’s just one of those ones that hurts, because this was what our resume was–this hurt our resume.
“Ultimately, man, it shouldn’t have come down to the ref,” Wilkerson added. “We shouldn’t have put the ref in the position to make that call. When we were up, we shouldn’t have gotten comfortable. We’ve just got to do better…It’s one of those self-inflicted losses, as you say. We were the reason we lost. Kudos to Northwestern; they played a good game. But there is no way in hell we should have lost this game, if we’re just being frankly honest.”
Wilkerson is referring to the second-half lead as big as nine that the Hoosiers let slip away as they closed the game, hitting just two of their last 15 field goals and missing 11 straight at one point over a nine-minute stretch.
Indiana got up, got comfortable, and all of its offensive cohesion went out the door. A miscommunication on a backdoor cut between Tayton Conerway and Nick Dorn led to the ball being thrown out of bounds with 7:21 to go. DeVries carelessly ditching a post feed to Alexis threw off an entire possession that carried a chunk of momentum with 4:19 left. A steal led to a 2-on-1 fastbreak with the chance to add to a one-point lead, and Wilkerson threw an alley-oop to Sam Alexis that was easily stolen.
The Hoosiers have had trouble closing teams out all season, but Tuesday night was the hardest to watch.
“I thought we had a good little stretch going,” Darian DeVries said. “We got the lead built up to [13] there in the first half. Thought we had some opportunities there to really press that thing open. A lot of times it’s come down to second-chance opportunities, things like that. They get a put-back, maybe a couple of empty possessions in there, too. Just our overall consistency of sustaining 40 minutes has been an issue for us in multiple games, so it certainly showed up again tonight…There were a few clean [shots] in there we missed. Again, I thought in the second half, we got a little stagnant with some things. There wasn’t a lot of movement. We weren’t able to create advantages as much as I thought we did in the first half.”
So now, this veteran group begrudingly turns the page, turning its attention to No. 13 Michigan State coming to Assembly Hall. In their first matchup in East Lansing, the Spartans went on a 19-0 second-half run and held Indiana scoreless for seven minutes, which doesn’t bode well considering IU’s latest result.
But it provides an opportunity for a group that’s reeling, and it could possibly be a lifeline back into the dance.