Indiana men’s basketball survived an early season scare on Sunday night, narrowly beating Incarnate Word 69-61 at home despite a remarkably poor 3-point shooting performance.
Coming into the matchup with the best shooting numbers the program has seen in years, the Hoosiers ended up hitting just 20.8% of their attempts from distance. That’s the kind of number that can only be generated by taking a lot of shots and leads to too many empty possessions.
The door was left cracked and the Cardinals threw
it open with tough make after tough make down the stretch to chip away at the lead and put real pressure on the Hoosiers in the closing minutes. With a lineup full of seniors, Indiana did enough to win.
Indiana is built to take, and make, several 3s during games. It was pretty well established going into the season that this team was going to win games it probably shouldn’t when its shooters got hot and lose games it probably shouldn’t when they went cold.
So, what to do when the shots aren’t falling?
For starters, you can’t tell good shooters to stop getting attempts up. Tucker DeVries kept trying to make it happen and even hit a late 3 to extend the lead, which proved pivotal as things got tight in the final minutes. He might’ve gone 3-11 from distance, but Indiana was well served by one of those makes. Lamar Wilkerson wasn’t able to do the same, missing all of his three attempts. He kept scoring and helped cement the game at the line, but there’s a really good chance he would’ve seen some shots fall if he just kept taking them.
If you truly want to move away from 3s, Indiana found a way to get 35 points in the first while going 3-13 from long range. Sam Alexis, coming off the bench, led the way with 13 points on 4/5 shooting from the field and 5/6 from the free throw line. Reed Bailey added in two points of his own on just as many shots, but let’s focus on Alexis for a bit.
Tucker DeVries took time in the postgame press conference to note how important Alexis was. The odd thing is the opportunities stopped coming in the second half, he took just two shots and ended up at the line only once in 15 minutes. Bailey got two looks and made both, adding in a free throw for five total second half points.
On the game, the two combined 8/11 from the field and 7/10 from the line with 23 total points. On a night where a lot wasn’t working for the Hoosiers, getting the ball to its fives absolutely was. It’s easier said than done and a lot of those looks were right at the rim off of lobs or rebounds, but I was a bit surprised Indiana didn’t lean on either, especially Alexis, to keep extending the lead late.
I think there’s something to leaning on Alexis and Bailey when the 3s aren’t falling. If those guys are able to put pressure on the rim, it’ll keep scoring opportunities open for the offense while generating open looks from deep to see if those shooters can get it going again.
