NEW YORK — IU Coach Tom Crean wasn’t going to call timeout. He was letting his team play.
Having just banked in a 3-pointer and with his team down by three points to Georgetown, junior guard Yogi Ferrell pushed the ball up court without any particular play call.
It was a moment players simulate in driveways and parks across the country. He was operating on instinct with the game on the line and the shot clock turned off.
Ferrell used a screen from junior guard Nick Zeisloft to create space for a pull-up, fade-away 3-pointer. He buried it with under 12 seconds left. Georgetown couldn’t respond and an overtime period was set.
But Ferrell’s late-game heroics ultimately proved unrewarded. The Hoyas outscored the Hoosiers 14-10 in the extra period and held on for a 91-87 win at Madison Square Garden.
“Yogi’s a big shot maker,” Crean said. “Yogi’s one of the better guards in the country. Nobody feels worse about this game right now than he does.”
Ferrell finished with 27 points on 9-of-15 shooting. He shot 5-of-10 from beyond the arc, but it wasn’t enough to keep the Hoyas at bay.
Georgetown (8-3) scored seven-straight points to start the overtime period to build a healthy lead. Although IU (10-3) responded with punches of its own, the deficit was too large to overcome.
The loss played out eerily similar to IU’s loss to Louisville at the Garden earlier in the month. IU’s 3-point shooting slowed after the halftime break which allowed Georgetown to chip away into a 10-point halftime lead while IU’s offense cooled.
Like IU’s loss to Louisville, a double-digit second-half lead simply evaporated.
“The main thing I would say is just not finishing games,” Ferrell said of IU’s current problems. “I’d say not talking on defense. It’s just a mental thing really. I felt like this game was more mental than it was physical and we just got beat on the mental part of the game.”
Crean put blame on turnovers. IU had 17.
The miscues allowed to Hoyas to rattle off 8-0 runs like it did in the opening minutes of the second half to diminish what had at one point been a 12-point IU lead just 30 seconds into the second half.
“We’re not going to win with 17 turnovers,” Crean said.
Ferrell, sophomore forward Troy Williams and freshmen guards Rob Johnson and James Blackmon Jr. combined for 83 points. The other six Hoosiers who saw the floor had four points total.
Junior forward Hanner Mosquera-Perea, who struggled to keep Georgetown’s Joshua Smith in check on the defensive end, had two points on 1-for-5 shooting. He missed the front end of a one-and-one in overtime and wasn’t able to get much offense going around the rim.
And when IU needed Mosquera-Perea and his defensive presence in the paint the most, it went away. As the teams exchanged blows battling for momentum, IU’s defense blinked.
“The back line of our defense got quiet,” Crean said. “Especially in the guts of the game.”
Georgetown guard and Indianapolis native D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera had a game-high 29 points for the Hoyas, 24 of which came in the second half and overtime. He added four assists and three steals to go along with his 50 percent shooting from the floor.
Smith-Rivera said playing against the team from his home state was personal. He was recruited by IU, but ultimately decided to be a Hoya.
He and Ferrell grew up playing against one another and knew each other since kindergarten. Their early days of playing against one another were revisited at Madison Square Garden where the two carried their respective teams, exchanging blows throughout the second half.
Ultimately, it was Smith-Rivera who landed the final punch.
“There were moments when we both flourished,” Smith-Rivera said. “There’s always been a rivalry, but I’m winning right now.”
