Hoosiers fall to OSU

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- With four minutes left Saturday and IU trailing Ohio State 62-59, Mike Davis told his defense it needed to make only four more defensive stops. \nThat was the mission. If it was accomplished, IU would walk out of Value City Arena still unblemished in the Big Ten and with sole possession of first place. \nThe mission went awry. \nOhio State (14-2, 5-0 Big Ten) hit the offensive glass, played tight defense and out-scored the No. 25 Hoosiers (11-6, 4-1) 11-8 during that stretch, allowing the Buckeyes to win 73-67 in front of 19,200 and grab the league's top slot. \n"We gave up too many easy buckets," said Davis, IU's second-year coach. "I told our guys with four minutes to go on the clock, if we make four stops, it's our game. We didn't make stops."\nInstead, Brian Brown, who entered the game with 26 career points in four games against IU, burned the IU defense for a career-high 26 to lead OSU. Brent Darby and Terrence Dials chipped in with 11 and 10 points, respectively. Brown and Dials scored 18 of the Buckeyes' last 19 points.\nJared Jeffries led IU with 22 points, Jarrad Odle scored 16 and Tom Coverdale had 12. \nBrown, who averages just more than 14 points per game, scored 17 of his 26 in the second half and hit 10 of 13 from the field for the afternoon. His dribble penetration and ability to squash IU rallies bothered the Hoosiers throughout the second half. \n"Their strength is our weakness," Davis said. "They are a very good basketball team off the dribble, and we're not very good off the dribble defensively."\nThings could've been better for IU had senior Dane Fife not been saddled with foul trouble for the second consecutive game. Fife picked up his second foul with 3:59 left in the first half, then got whistled for his fourth with 17 minutes left in the game. Fife played only 11 minutes in the second half. \n"Brian was not going to be denied today," OSU coach Jim O'Brien said. "In a game like this, for him to get his career high, he stepped up big-time in a big game."\nIU and OSU traded buckets through much of the second half until a Jeffries' three pointer with 10:08 remaining gave IU its first lead since 13-12. \nThen Brown and Dials took over. Brown put in a pair of buckets that gave OSU a lead and extended it to three.\nKyle Hornsby's three-pointer gave IU a 59-58 lead, but Dials responded. The freshman scored 10 consecutive points, exploiting IU's interior defense and keeping the Buckeyes on top. \nIn the final two minutes, Jeff Newton and Jeffries both missed shots that would have given IU the lead or sliced the OSU lead to one.\nBrown's two free throws with 24.2 seconds left stretched the Ohio State lead to five, and when Coverdale took the inbounds pass and stepped on the sideline, OSU had the victory secured. \n"(Ohio State doesn't) have a player that you're going to see on an All-American list," Jeffries said. "But you're going to see a team that wins, and that's what they're doing right now. It was lapses late in the game that could've affected the outcome of this game."\nThe same problems that plagued IU late hurt it early. \nOSU out-rebounded the Hoosiers 34-24 and had 14 offensive rebounds; it collected nine of those by halftime.\nThe teams exchanged the lead through the first half, before OSU grabbed an eight-point lead -- the biggest of the game by either team. IU chipped it to two and later one, but OSU closed the half on a 9-5 run and used a last-second basket from Brown to take a 35-30 lead to the break. \nIU allowed the Buckeyes to shoot only 41.9 percent in the first half, but OSU exploded in the second half, shooting 57.7 percent. The Buckeyes are the Big Ten's top shooting team, at just more than 50 percent. \nIU had a hard time hitting its free throws. The Hoosiers, for the second consecutive game, struggled early. IU was just six of 12 at halftime and missed their first two of the second half before finishing 13 of 22 from the stripe.\n"You look at our free throws," Odle said. "If we hit those, we win. You're not going to win games on the road shooting free throws like that."\nDespite the first league loss, the Hoosiers remained upbeat regarding their position in the league race. Only IU and OSU have less than two losses, and the Hoosiers finish the season with four of their last six conference games in Bloomington. \nHeading to Penn State Wednesday trailing the first-place Buckeyes by a game and on the third leg of a three-game road swing, Davis isn't discouraged. \n"It's tough to win on the road," Davis said. "We figured we wouldn't go undefeated in the Big Ten. I'm not happy we lost, but I'm proud of my team. We're playing really good basketball right now. It was a situation late in the game where all we had to do was make a couple stops. We were unable to do that"