BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — It wasn’t pretty, and at times is was downright ugly, but Indiana won another basketball game on Thursday night. The Hoosiers beat Lindenwood 73-53 thanks to 25 points from Tucker DeVries, and are now 5-0 on the young season.
But after three games of looking really good and providing hope for a worn-out basketball fan base, the Hoosiers staggered through another lackluster game. They won, despite being 32.5-point favorites against a small school from St. Charles, Mo. that plays in the Ohio Valley Conference.
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Bbut this was way too close.
It was just a six-point game early in the second half before the Indiana defense locked down for a long run. They went on a 13-0 spurt from four-plus minutes to pull away. What was supposed to be an easy win was anything but. Lindenwood (2-4) had 19 offensive rebounds and outrebounded the Hoosiers 48-44.
Survive and advance, because now it gets real. They have major-college games with Kansas State (Nov. 25), Louisville (Dec. 6) and Kentucky (Dec. 13) coming up, and they’ll need to be better then.
And the Hoosiers know it.
“We’ve just got to play harder, to be honest,” Tucker DeVries said. “It’s been an emphasis in practice and we’ll get it fixed. I think it’s pretty obvious we were a little flat. I thought the first half was just kind of dead all around.
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“I think you see the difference in the two teams of us, of when we are bringing that energy, and that’s something we got to really focus on and make sure that we’re bringing that every time. We talk about it all the time. We’re not a very good team when we’re not playing with a bunch of enthusiasm and excitement. We’ve got to get to that every point, 40 minutes a game, and then I think we’re really good when we are doing that.”
DeVries was exceptional. He was 7-for-15 from the field, and 5-for-10 from deep. He made all six free throws for his 25 points, with three rebounds, three assists and zero turnovers in 34 minutes. But the rest of the Indiana starters — Lamar Wilkerson, Tayton Conerway, Conor Enright and Reed Bailey — were a combined 9-for-27 from the field and just 3-for-12 from three-point range.
Sam Alexis and Trent Sisley helped off the bench. Both had eight points, and Alexis fixed the mess on the boards, grabbing a team-high 10 rebounds. Sisley had six rebounds himself.
“I feel like we need to bring energy every day, and it starts with the bench, too,” said Alexis, a transfer from Florida who won a national championship last year. “The bench has to have energy as well. I don’t feel like it’s no issue. I feel like we’re showing effort out there. It’s more about hitting bodies and squeezing the ball.
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“I feel like we go pretty hard on the rebounds. It’s about squeezing the ball and hitting bodies for real. Coming off the bench, I just want to get on the court and give energy every time. You know, just see if the starting five starts off slow, just come in and bring a different type of energy, different vibe.”
Lamar Wilkerson struggled for the second straight game, making just 4-of-16 shots. Photo by Rich Janzaruk/Imagn Images.
Wilkerson, who averaged 22 points a game in the Hoosiers’ first three wins, struggled for the second straight night. He was just 4-for-16 from the field and made only 1-of-7 three-pointers. He had just nine points in Sunday’s lackluster 69-61 win against Incarnate Word and 10 on Thursday.
“Yeah. I mean, if he was 4 for (16) tonight, so that means there is an 11-for-17 coming soon,” Indiana coach Darian DeVries said. “He can let them rip whenever he wants. Like we always tell our guys, basketball is basketball. The best players in the world have off nights. He had an off-shooting night. That means we’ve got a good one coming.
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“It’s always about let’s make sure we got the win even on those nights. So he’s going to have plenty of good nights, too.”
Indiana is one of 13 Big Ten teams that remains unbeaten, but the only win over a major program was against Marquette on Nov. 9 in Chicago. According to KenPom.com rankings, the other four wins — Alabama A&M (315), Milwaukee (209), Incarnate Word (193) and Lindenwood (327 out of 365 Division I teams) — aren’t all that impressive.
That changes on Tuesday against Kansas State of the Big 12, and there are big rivalry showdowns with No. 10 Louisville and No. 11 Kentucky on Dec. 6 and Dec. 13, respectively.
So, yes, there is work to be done.
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“I thought the last couple days of practice with our guys, I thought they really learned from some of the things that happened in our last game,” Darian DeVries said. “I thought they responded really well in practice from an energy level, but there are some of the things we’ve got to fix.
“They were playing hard tonight, it just wasn’t the same juice. Ppart of it may be when the offense isn’t flowing, they’ve got to learn how to fight through that. Early in the year that as you’re getting going, you learn how to win games in a lot of different ways, and that’s an important thing to have and a quality to have.”
Indiana’s defense has carried them through some scoring slumps. Lindenwood shot just 25 percent from the field and made only 3-of-18 three-pointers.
“I thought they did a nice job tonight defensively again in the first half holding them to 17 percent,” the Indiana coach said. “That’s back-to-back games in the first half that our defense was really good. Start of the second half on both these games, it wasn’t quite as good.
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“I did think our defense again is what changed the game around in the second half. So we were able to get the lead, push back out, and a lot of that was because of defensive intensity just picked up.”
