Indiana’s Bench Closed Out WKU Win as Exhibition Season Comes to an End

Indiana finished its exhibition season Sunday with a 79-74 win over Western Kentucky at the Ford Center. It was the sloppiest of the three October games and the most useful one, because of who finished it.

Before the Finale

The first two exhibitions were comfortable wins. At the only real away game, Butler gave Indiana a good test at Hinkle Fieldhouse, 44-41 at halftime, before the Hoosiers outscored the Bulldogs 52-27 in the second half and won 96-68. Burton scored 11 of IU’s first 13 points that night, and the rebounding showed us what this team was going to be about. Indiana crushed Butler on the glass, 53-33, pulled down 17 offensive boards and outscored the Bulldogs 25-5 in second-chance points.

A week later they beat North Carolina 76-58 while shooting only 36.2% from the field. They held Carolina to 34.9%, outrebounded them 53-31 and grabbed nearly half of their own misses. Bryce Lindsay scored 26 off the bench in that one and already looked like a starter playing with the second unit.

Sunday in Evansville

Burton slipped on the second possession of the game, came back with two fingers taped and never got going, finishing with six points on 1 for 11 shooting. Indiana didn’t score for the first four and a half minutes, turned it over eight times in the first half and let a 12-0 WKU run turn a 20-16 lead into a 20-28 hole. The half ended with Teagan Moore, the preseason CUSA Player of the Year, hitting a shot from beyond half court at the buzzer to send the Hilltoppers into the break leading 37-35. Moore would go on to finish with 30.

WKU pushed the lead to 51-40 early in the second half, and from there Darian DeVries leaned on his bench for long stretches and trusted an all-bench lineup down the stretch. Sam Alexis, Vaughn Karvala, Prince-Alexander Moody, Bryce Lindsay and Trevor Manhertz played the crunch minutes against WKU’s regulars in a tight game and won it. Indiana’s bench outscored WKU’s 57-17.

Trent Sisley, half an hour from his home, got the crowd up when he checked in and hit a three to stop the bleeding. Moody gave the offense a jolt with an assist to Sisley, a forced travel and a triple from the top of the key, then hit the three that tied it at 63. Manhertz, who has played more than any freshman this preseason, buried one to cut the lead to three. Alexis went 6 for 7 for 15 points and put Indiana ahead from the line with 2:44 left.

Lindsay finished with 20 points on 6 of 11 shooting with four threes, and the closing minutes were his best work. A coast to coast layup to make it a two-possession game, then the assist to Alexis for the layup with 10 seconds left that sealed it. Karvala scored all four of his points in the final minute, a putback with 47 seconds left and two free throws to close it. For a freshman getting his first extended crunch-time run, that’s about as good as it gets.

The two-big look worked as well. Samet Yigitoglu drew two defenders on seemingly every post touch and kept finding Alexis for dunks, the kind of passing that made the offense run through him even on an off shooting night. And the formula held, Indiana won the glass 49-39 with 14 offensive rebounds, its third straight game bullying on the boards.

What October Showed Us

The concerns carried over from earlier in the month. Fourteen turnovers, 23 of 37 from the line, and when the game slowed down on offense, easy baskets were hard to find. Burton, who was stellar against Butler, followed a quiet night against North Carolina with a 1 of 11 afternoon.

But add it all up and October gave Indiana what it needed. Going 106-64 on the boards and 42-12 in second-chance points over the first two exhibitions, a coach who called rebounding “our whole focus,” and a bench that proved it can hold a lead in a close game, freshmen included. Three wins over Butler, North Carolina and WKU, all of them away from Assembly Hall.

The real thing deal Nov. 2 against Eastern Illinois. Whatever the rotation looks like when the games count, DeVries now knows what his second unit can do.