Verdell Jones III picked a good time to score his only 6 points of the game.
The senior scored 6 of the Hoosiers’ final 8 points as Indiana pulled away late to beat Northwestern 71-66 on Wednesday.
“(Indiana is) a streaky team, an emotional team at home,” coach Bill Carmody said. “They went on a big run in the first half, and we had some empty possessions in the second half.”
The Hoosiers dominated the Wildcats in the paint, outscoring them 42-26. Indiana was led by center Cody Zeller who dumped in 23 points on 9-of-11 shooting while collecting seven rebounds. The pure size of the Hoosiers inside posed issues for the Cats, who started in a man-to-man defense. The defense placed senior forward John Shurna on Zeller, but he picked up an early foul trying to defend the 6-foot-11-inch freshman.
Carmody decided to switch into his trademark 1-3-1 zone defense and immediately found success with a steal on the Hoosiers’ final possession of the first half. The zone slowed Indiana’s offensive rebounding attack, limiting the Hoosiers to three offensive rebounds in the second half after they had seven in the first stanza. NU outrebounded Indiana as a whole in the second period, 15-14.
“(Indiana’s) a good shooting club and we just thought, let’s see what we can do man-to-man,” Carmody said. “They were getting the ball inside to (Christian) Watford and Zeller, and it seemed like everyone was in foul trouble, so we just said, ‘Let’s see if we can change the mentality of the game a little bit.’ I thought we accomplished that.”
Shurna said the reason the zone was more effective than man-to-man was that the new look slowed the Indiana transition game, which hurt NU early on. The Hoosiers scored only 5 points on the fastbreak in the first half, but turned eight Cats’ turnovers into 8 points in the first half.
The Cats had four players with three or more fouls, including junior guard Reggie Hearn, who fouled out with 12 seconds left. NU’s 19 team fouls led to 15 points off free throws for Indiana. Shurna said fouls are a natural part of the game, and the shorter bench exacerbated the foul issues.
“Any time you have a couple of guys in foul trouble, it’s not good,” Shurna said. “It’s tough especially with our team.”
NU has gotten balanced scoring for the most part in the last five games, but the Cats had only two scorers in double figures Wednesday. They were NU’s leading scorers overall, junior forward Drew Crawford, who had 18 points, and Shurna, who moved within 16 points of the school record for career points with 29 against the Hoosiers.
The disparity in scoring came even though eight players played five or more minutes for the Cats, a departure from Carmody’s past strategy of using a six-man rotation. NU had only 1 point off the bench, a free throw from sophomore guard JerShon Cobb in the first half. The nine players that actually saw the court were the most NU has played since it lost to Minnesota on Jan. 22.
The loss was another close one for an NU team fighting for its tournament lives. The Cats have already dropped three other conference games by 6 points or less, putting more pressure on the upcoming two-game home stand against Minnesota and Michigan.
