Heading to Conseco Fieldhouse for the Big Ten Tournament, the team and fans are desperate for a win.
But the game didn’t end how IU would have liked, ending the third year of the Tom Crean regime as Penn State topped the Hoosiers 61-55.
The Hoosiers finish the season at just 12-20, 3-16 in conference play and failed to win a road game.
IU got off to a slow start, down 8-0 just three minutes into the game.
Tom Pritchard two fouls less than four minutes into the game and picked up his third with four minutes to go in the first half. Oladipo also was forced to the bench with three fouls just before the break.
15-1, 13-0 run fueled by freshman Victor Oladipo. He’s got a special jump to his step and immediately brought Indiana to life after it looked the same old start.
The Indiana contingent got to their feet and made their presence known. The success of the tournament in Indianapolis thrives off a successful team. The Big Ten has told Indiana they need them to return to prominence.
There was a great moment in the first half when junior walk-on Daniel Moore pushed the ball up the floor, took it to the rack and was fouled. Moore earning the old fashion three-point play right before a media timeout. As the Moore and IU came to the bench, Crean exploded and excitement, giving Daniel a big shove which had beaming.
Coach Crean is clearly the loudest coach of the day. I’m sitting near on the half court line and can clearly hear everything coach has to say. Tonight, Tom Crean spent his timed focused on the teams rather than the officials. There were multiple times throughout the game where he could have questioned a call, I mean Ed Hightower is the head official. But he didn’t.
As most teams, they have a wide-variety of creative names for plays. At one point he said, “Victor go hard. Jeremiah, let’s go hard!” And that is exactly what they did. There was a question coming into the game whether IU had thrown in the towel or would play with some fight. There’s no question the Hoosiers looked to play on Friday.
Penn State’s Jeff Brooks had a solid game because Indiana had a hard time finding someone to stop him. Brooks, who finished with a team-high 15 points, used his strong body to exploit gaps and beat freshman Will Sheehey off the dribble. Talor Battle was an obvious force to be reckoned with. Despite his height disadvantage, he maneuvers so well and takes advantage of running off screens.
Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and Celtics head coach Doc Rivers on hand. It was also a neat scene to see Steve Green, Jim Crews and Tom Abernathy of 1976 undefeated IU team sitting together.
With 2:40 to go in the game, Penn State was finally called for their first foul of the half, to Indiana’s seven. In fact, the Nittany Lions shot free throws in the bonus situation before they “committed” the first foul of the half. The crowd erupted like Indiana had just won the Big Ten Tournament after just three conference wins. By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a team finish with ONE foul in a half (plus two intentional down the stretch). It wasn’t the telling statistic but in such a close game, it was a factor.
Jeremiah Rivers is the only senior for the Hoosiers and his collegiate career is now complete. The Hoosiers lost their final nine games.
Attendance for Session 1, with three games was 16,264.