Indiana University Athletics
GRAHAM: Historic Night On The Defensive End for #iubb
11/10/2018 12:30:00 PM | Men's Basketball
By Andy Graham, IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Well, Montana State, Digger Phelps can relate.
Not that he would necessarily want to relate.
Phelps, in the first season of what proved a highly successful tenure at Notre Dame, brought his Irish into Indiana's Assembly Hall for what was fourth game ever played there on Dec. 18, 1971.
Phelps did not have much in the way of players at that juncture, and he was going against Bob Knight's first IU team, which did.
So: Indiana 94, Notre Dame 29.
When Coach Archie Miller's Hoosiers waxed Montana State, 80-35 Friday night, it marked the second-lowest point total ever posted by an IU foe in the Hall, behind only that December day in 1971.
Montana State's Bobcats were certainly out-manned, as was Phelps' team, but this Friday night provided further evidence of what Knight opined on a recent return visit to Bloomington:
Miller can coach. And he's a defensive-minded coach.
As if inspired by the season's first serious cold snap outside, Montana State shot an icy .255 from the field overall (14 of 55) and was downright frigid from beyond the 3-point arc (.115, on 3 of 26).
But there was no question the active, athletic, alert and lengthy Hoosiers had a lot to do with that, playing out of Miller's pack-line defensive context.
The Bobcats also made 25 turnovers and the Hoosiers turned those directly into 28 points. MS tallied an anemic 0.493 points per possession.
"We were better on the ball and had better activity level," Miller said of his team's defense. "We worked harder, defensively, to challenge them."
Indiana met the challenge at the other end of the court, too, posting 1.159 points per possession.
IU made mincemeat of Montana State's 2-3 matchup zone, with Romeo Langford initially handling the point up top. The Hoosiers hit 10 of their first 13 shots.
The Hoosiers were patient. They utilized almost the entire shot clock, for example, before finding Juwan Morgan inside for a nifty shot that made it 22-12 (as the Bobcats had managed to hit a couple of 3s to stay briefly within striking distance).
One particularly effective aspect of IU's early work against the zone was stationing 6-foot-10 grad-transfer Evan Fitzner around the free throw line. From there, Fitzner showed he could both hit shots and find teammates with fine high-low passing into the post.
"Yeah, he's a fantastic high-low player," Miller said of Fitzner. "He catches the ball, he keeps hands high, can throw it over the defense and has great touch in the paint, as you can see. He's gotten off to a really, really good start for us in terms of being able to play."
That assessment could apply to several Hoosiers through the 2-0 start. Name a Hoosier, and he's likely had some nice moments. And even in the wake of mistakes, they've kept playing and producing.
To cite but one example:
Sophomore forward Justin Smith took an open 3 at the top of the key early in the shot clock during a possession with 7:44 left in the first half, when Miller had intended the ball should go inside.
Miller spoke to Smith about it briefly on the sidelines.
Smith's response:
· A steal.
· An assist to the left baseline for Langford's first made college 3-pointer with 6:20 left in the half,
· Another nifty assist, this time to Morgan inside.
· A flying tip-in of a Devonte Green miss.
· A pretty give-and-go with Morgan for a Smith layup at the 4:20 mark that made it 36-13.
Some of the good stuff wasn't as quantifiable or overt.
Such as when IU's defense recovered after a Smith shot-block created a loose ball that ricocheted right to the Bobcats. The Hoosiers were alert, scrambling to rotate properly and getting there in time, to eventually created a shot-clock violation.
And even though the Hoosiers misfired on too many 3s down the stretch of the first half, one of the misses was an open look by Green taken at an appropriate moment – when IU could work the clock in the final minute to give itself two possessions to Montana State's one.
Indiana indeed then made that 2-for-1 work, taking almost every remaining second off the clock to get a Morgan bucket inside that sent the Hoosiers into intermission up 43-19.
Morgan had all of his game-high 14 points by that time. He'd finish with a game-high 11 rebounds, too.
"It was a real emphasis coming out of Chicago State," Miller said of finding Morgan offensively, which IU didn't do as much in Tuesday's season-opening win versus CSU. "Part of it is him wanting the ball, demanding the ball and us making sure that we understand, getting the ball to him, and he did his job tonight in terms of the want. He wanted it.
"When he caught it, he was very, very focused and he had a good approach the last two days, and it was good to see him pretty much dominate the paint tonight."
IU's overall domination didn't abate after halftime, either. Another of the encouraging things about Friday night was the way the Hoosiers kept the hammer down.
Such as when they scored the first eight second-half points.
And it was "dunk you very much" time.
After Morgan and Langford hit layups, Langford (one-hand tomahawk) and Smith (two-hand monster jam) had back-to-back dunks, both off Morgan assists.
Montana State coach (and Seymour, Ind., native) Brian Fish called timeout. To no avail.
Because the next Hoosiers bucket was a flying alley-oop baseline jam from Romeo off a pretty Green assist.
It was the sort of stuff that saw Langford, Smith and Morgan finish the game with combined 16 of 17 shooting from 2-point range.
And the Hoosiers kept the positives coming.
De"Ron Davis, still playing himself into competitive shape after rehabilitating his Achilles injury, pinned a block off the backboard then finished a layup off a nice dish from Damezi Anderson.
Davis then ran down a loose ball at midcourt and went all the way to score, a really good sign regarding his physical status.
"It's been a long off-season for me," Davis said, "just working myself back into game shape. I feel like, you know, as far as my Achilles and where I feel with that, I feel pretty much 100 percent now. I'm full-go in practice."
Freshman guard Rob Phinisee drilled a 3-pointer from either wing down the stretch to help cap another encouraging performance.
"Honestly I feel like Rob, out of all the freshman, besides Romeo … .just came in ready for college basketball," Davis said of Phinisee. "His body is real good. He's mentally tough and smart on the court and makes good passes, good decisions, and he just encourages us on the court."
And as the game wound down, there was Bloomington's own Johnny Jager with a sprawling save of a steal with 3:33 left.
Then, 33 seconds later, there was Race Thompson scoring his first Hoosier points on a break layup off a Green assist.
The feel-good moments just kept coming.
Sure, it wasn't perfect. Indiana, while shooting .561 from the field, overall, was just .286 from 3-point range. And the festering free throw malady has yet to be cured, with just 10 of 19 shooting there (.526).
The Hoosiers got lost defensively in transition at times. And in the halfcourt, during the second half, Montana State got several open 3-point looks from the baseline. The Bobcats only made one of those.
Marquette, the Big East stalwart that visits next Wednesday for an 8:30 PM tipoff in Gavitt Games play, will have guys – such as junior guard Markus Howard – who sink those sorts of shots.
"I'm sure there's going to be a lot on film we'll get better at," Miller said, "but we're playing hard – and we have to be ready to play the hardest we've ever played starting next week, and that will be a great test for us on Wednesday."
Junior center Davis, asked what he might tell IU's younger players about the difference when a team such as Marquette comes calling, replied: "This place explodes. This place is going to be loud."
Morgan added: "That, and just tell them, keep doing what we're doing. We try to not play down to and we try not to play up the competition. We try to stay at a steady level.
"And I think just us, the older guys telling them what it's like, I think just going through it in practice, making the practices harder than games, I think they will be ready."
And Miller wants to see even better defense.
"This team has to find a way to be a fantastic defensive team, regardless of what you say on offense," Miller said. "This team has to find a way to make its defense charge its offense (with points off turnovers) every game.
"You can see when the activity level is good and there is defense-to-offense, we can strike quick. That's something I think that we have to just continue to take a lot of pride in, in building our half-court defense."
There was much in which to take defensive pride Friday night.
Digger Phelps has seen that sort of thing in Assembly Hall before.?
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Well, Montana State, Digger Phelps can relate.
Not that he would necessarily want to relate.
Phelps, in the first season of what proved a highly successful tenure at Notre Dame, brought his Irish into Indiana's Assembly Hall for what was fourth game ever played there on Dec. 18, 1971.
Phelps did not have much in the way of players at that juncture, and he was going against Bob Knight's first IU team, which did.
So: Indiana 94, Notre Dame 29.
When Coach Archie Miller's Hoosiers waxed Montana State, 80-35 Friday night, it marked the second-lowest point total ever posted by an IU foe in the Hall, behind only that December day in 1971.
Montana State's Bobcats were certainly out-manned, as was Phelps' team, but this Friday night provided further evidence of what Knight opined on a recent return visit to Bloomington:
Miller can coach. And he's a defensive-minded coach.
As if inspired by the season's first serious cold snap outside, Montana State shot an icy .255 from the field overall (14 of 55) and was downright frigid from beyond the 3-point arc (.115, on 3 of 26).
But there was no question the active, athletic, alert and lengthy Hoosiers had a lot to do with that, playing out of Miller's pack-line defensive context.
The Bobcats also made 25 turnovers and the Hoosiers turned those directly into 28 points. MS tallied an anemic 0.493 points per possession.
"We were better on the ball and had better activity level," Miller said of his team's defense. "We worked harder, defensively, to challenge them."
Indiana met the challenge at the other end of the court, too, posting 1.159 points per possession.
IU made mincemeat of Montana State's 2-3 matchup zone, with Romeo Langford initially handling the point up top. The Hoosiers hit 10 of their first 13 shots.
The Hoosiers were patient. They utilized almost the entire shot clock, for example, before finding Juwan Morgan inside for a nifty shot that made it 22-12 (as the Bobcats had managed to hit a couple of 3s to stay briefly within striking distance).
One particularly effective aspect of IU's early work against the zone was stationing 6-foot-10 grad-transfer Evan Fitzner around the free throw line. From there, Fitzner showed he could both hit shots and find teammates with fine high-low passing into the post.
"Yeah, he's a fantastic high-low player," Miller said of Fitzner. "He catches the ball, he keeps hands high, can throw it over the defense and has great touch in the paint, as you can see. He's gotten off to a really, really good start for us in terms of being able to play."
That assessment could apply to several Hoosiers through the 2-0 start. Name a Hoosier, and he's likely had some nice moments. And even in the wake of mistakes, they've kept playing and producing.
To cite but one example:
Sophomore forward Justin Smith took an open 3 at the top of the key early in the shot clock during a possession with 7:44 left in the first half, when Miller had intended the ball should go inside.
Miller spoke to Smith about it briefly on the sidelines.
Smith's response:
· A steal.
· An assist to the left baseline for Langford's first made college 3-pointer with 6:20 left in the half,
· Another nifty assist, this time to Morgan inside.
· A flying tip-in of a Devonte Green miss.
· A pretty give-and-go with Morgan for a Smith layup at the 4:20 mark that made it 36-13.
Some of the good stuff wasn't as quantifiable or overt.
Such as when IU's defense recovered after a Smith shot-block created a loose ball that ricocheted right to the Bobcats. The Hoosiers were alert, scrambling to rotate properly and getting there in time, to eventually created a shot-clock violation.
And even though the Hoosiers misfired on too many 3s down the stretch of the first half, one of the misses was an open look by Green taken at an appropriate moment – when IU could work the clock in the final minute to give itself two possessions to Montana State's one.
Indiana indeed then made that 2-for-1 work, taking almost every remaining second off the clock to get a Morgan bucket inside that sent the Hoosiers into intermission up 43-19.
Morgan had all of his game-high 14 points by that time. He'd finish with a game-high 11 rebounds, too.
"It was a real emphasis coming out of Chicago State," Miller said of finding Morgan offensively, which IU didn't do as much in Tuesday's season-opening win versus CSU. "Part of it is him wanting the ball, demanding the ball and us making sure that we understand, getting the ball to him, and he did his job tonight in terms of the want. He wanted it.
"When he caught it, he was very, very focused and he had a good approach the last two days, and it was good to see him pretty much dominate the paint tonight."
IU's overall domination didn't abate after halftime, either. Another of the encouraging things about Friday night was the way the Hoosiers kept the hammer down.
Such as when they scored the first eight second-half points.
And it was "dunk you very much" time.
After Morgan and Langford hit layups, Langford (one-hand tomahawk) and Smith (two-hand monster jam) had back-to-back dunks, both off Morgan assists.
Montana State coach (and Seymour, Ind., native) Brian Fish called timeout. To no avail.
Because the next Hoosiers bucket was a flying alley-oop baseline jam from Romeo off a pretty Green assist.
It was the sort of stuff that saw Langford, Smith and Morgan finish the game with combined 16 of 17 shooting from 2-point range.
And the Hoosiers kept the positives coming.
De"Ron Davis, still playing himself into competitive shape after rehabilitating his Achilles injury, pinned a block off the backboard then finished a layup off a nice dish from Damezi Anderson.
Davis then ran down a loose ball at midcourt and went all the way to score, a really good sign regarding his physical status.
"It's been a long off-season for me," Davis said, "just working myself back into game shape. I feel like, you know, as far as my Achilles and where I feel with that, I feel pretty much 100 percent now. I'm full-go in practice."
Freshman guard Rob Phinisee drilled a 3-pointer from either wing down the stretch to help cap another encouraging performance.
"Honestly I feel like Rob, out of all the freshman, besides Romeo … .just came in ready for college basketball," Davis said of Phinisee. "His body is real good. He's mentally tough and smart on the court and makes good passes, good decisions, and he just encourages us on the court."
And as the game wound down, there was Bloomington's own Johnny Jager with a sprawling save of a steal with 3:33 left.
Then, 33 seconds later, there was Race Thompson scoring his first Hoosier points on a break layup off a Green assist.
The feel-good moments just kept coming.
Sure, it wasn't perfect. Indiana, while shooting .561 from the field, overall, was just .286 from 3-point range. And the festering free throw malady has yet to be cured, with just 10 of 19 shooting there (.526).
The Hoosiers got lost defensively in transition at times. And in the halfcourt, during the second half, Montana State got several open 3-point looks from the baseline. The Bobcats only made one of those.
Marquette, the Big East stalwart that visits next Wednesday for an 8:30 PM tipoff in Gavitt Games play, will have guys – such as junior guard Markus Howard – who sink those sorts of shots.
"I'm sure there's going to be a lot on film we'll get better at," Miller said, "but we're playing hard – and we have to be ready to play the hardest we've ever played starting next week, and that will be a great test for us on Wednesday."
Junior center Davis, asked what he might tell IU's younger players about the difference when a team such as Marquette comes calling, replied: "This place explodes. This place is going to be loud."
Morgan added: "That, and just tell them, keep doing what we're doing. We try to not play down to and we try not to play up the competition. We try to stay at a steady level.
"And I think just us, the older guys telling them what it's like, I think just going through it in practice, making the practices harder than games, I think they will be ready."
And Miller wants to see even better defense.
"This team has to find a way to be a fantastic defensive team, regardless of what you say on offense," Miller said. "This team has to find a way to make its defense charge its offense (with points off turnovers) every game.
"You can see when the activity level is good and there is defense-to-offense, we can strike quick. That's something I think that we have to just continue to take a lot of pride in, in building our half-court defense."
There was much in which to take defensive pride Friday night.
Digger Phelps has seen that sort of thing in Assembly Hall before.?
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