A win is a win. ... I guess.

IU should not have won this game. 

The Hoosiers played their in-system neighbors to the north to the wire Tuesday night, sealing victory only when officials waved off what they could just as easily have been a three-shot foul on Tom Pritchard as time expired.

Six times in the second half Saturday night, IU extended its lead to one or two points. Six times, IU-Purdue University Indianapolis answered in kind to close the gap in kind. Six times the Jaguars forced a scoreless possession and came back down the floor with a chance to tie or – most often – take the lead.


They never did. 

“I think it’s a lack of understanding of just how important every possession is,” IU coach Tom Crean said of his team’s inability to expand their lead in the second half. “This helped us learn this tonight.”

The Jaguars played the Hoosiers the right way.

They sagged off the Hoosiers in transition, never allowing superior speed to beat them down the court. IUPUI played a tough 2-3 zone the home squad struggled to figure out consistently, a 7-for-24 night from the arc bearing witness to that. (These Hoosiers aren’t built for the half-court game, and anyone who didn’t believe that before Tuesday night should now.)

In essence, they took away IU’s one great offensive strength, which exists in transition.

Still, this should not have happened. This should never have been a game.

IUPUI was missing both of its point guards. The Jaguars had just six players log more than six minutes. They shot 41.1 percent from the floor and only made six of a paltry 10 free throws.

What’s worse was that the Jaguars are quite like the Hoosiers: rebuilding with all kinds of inexperience.

“I kept looking up, I’m like ‘Geez, none of these guys have ever been in this experience before,’” IUPUI coach Ron Hunter said about his young team down the stretch Tuesday. “One of the kids, the last game he played was against Southport (High School).”

But there were the Jaguars, with little over 27 seconds left, down by one with a chance to win the game. A rushed and subsequently terrible 3-pointer by Jaguar forward Alex Young and Hoosier Daniel Moore’s free throws thereafter spelled victory, but this could have been a disastrous night in Bloomington.

There is a silver lining to this, I guess. Crean’s barely legal roster got its first taste of pressure college basketball, and players responded just well enough each time the heat was on.

So many times, the Hoosiers could have expanded their lead, and yet so many times they could have given it up too.

They did neither and got the win.

There were positives within the game.

IU out-rebounded IUPUI and had 10 offensive rebounds themselves. They cut their turnover numbers almost in half, down from 23 a game ago to 14. Assists also outnumbered giveaways 17-14.

But as will often be the case this season, there were an equal amount of negatives.
Porous second-half defense allowed an 11-point advantage at the break to evaporate in just more than six minutes. They still allowed 11 offensive rebounds, a number that would probably get them handled in the Big Ten.

But rightfully so, Crean said after the game he thought the win was important for his team’s growth. After all, how many of these Hoosiers had played in a close college game before last night?

“To find a way to win, to get stops on the last three possessions after they were really scoring at will for awhile, is a great, great experience for this group,” Crean said.

See you Monday. Unless I boycott, since no one will pay me to go to Maui.