Up 10 with 1:35 seconds left in the game, Indiana looked well on its way to a second-straight quality win on the road at UCLA. ESPN Analytics gave Indiana a 98.6% chance of victory at that point.
Then everything fell apart on both ends of the floor.
The Hoosiers struggled to beat the Bruins’ full-court press in the final minutes, turning it over twice in the last two minutes alone. When they were able to safely inbound the ball, Indiana suddenly stopped making free throws.
To take one example, Reed
Bailey, who had the best night of his Indiana career, missed a free throw with eight seconds left. It was his first and only miss of the night on 13 attempts, and it opened the door for the near buzzer-beater 3-pointer from Trent Perry to send the game to overtime.
Having lost Conor Enright to fouls in the final minutes of overtime, Darian DeVries had to turn to Jasai Miles as the lone healthy guard on the bench. Miles then promptly fouled out himself, leaving Tucker DeVries and Lamar Wilkerson to handle point guard duties for the rest of the game.
After struggling from deep all game, Wilkerson started to find his scoring touch on drives in overtime. He hit a floater and a layup in the final two minutes of the first overtime to allow the Hoosiers to survive into the second. He’d go on to add another six points in the second overtime.
When Reed Bailey became the third Indiana player to foul out, DeVries had to turn to true freshman Trent Sisley for key minutes in overtime. He missed all three of his field goal attempts, but drew fouls on two of them to get to the free throw line, where he went 3-6 on the night.
While it wasn’t the performance he would’ve hoped for, Devries trusted him enough to get the inbound pass with 1.5 seconds, when he attempted his final layup that sent him to the line for the last time. He missed the first, but made the second to give Indiana a one-point lead that UCLA could not overcome in the final .3 seconds.
