Kentucky E(Rupp)tion

LEXINGTON, Ky – IU coach Tom Crean can prepare his young Hoosiers to the best of his abilities and have them ready for anything.

But as IU has found out this season, you can’t prepare for height. Or athleticism.  

Kentucky jumped out to a 32-6 run and never looked back, crushing the Hoosiers 72-54. IU, now 5-5, never brought the game to single digits after Kentucky’s, now 7-3, initial spurt and could only muster 13 first-half points – its fewest total since its second-round NCAA Tournament loss to UCLA in 2007.

The backing of a home crowd and the Wildcats’ superior athleticism proved to be too much for the Hoosiers early in the game. IU had nine more turnovers than field goals in the first half and committed seven turnovers before the first field goal.

The Hoosiers have struggled this season when they have been matched up against longer, taller teams. Wake Forest, Gonzaga and now Kentucky have been able to exploit the lack of size IU brings to the court, translating to easy buckets and many IU turnovers.

Freshman Tom Pritchard, the man usually assigned to match up against the opposition’s biggest player, admitted it can be difficult to prepare for teams with agile personnel.

“I mean, it is tough because we don’t have anybody on our team that can be the athletic, long guy,” Pritchard said. “But we’re going to be playing a lot more teams like this, and we have to learn from these games here.”

Freshman Nick Williams said part of the reason for the Hoosiers’ slow start against Kentucky was the team’s inability to recreate in practice the type of athleticism they see during games.

“That’s exactly what happened today,” Williams said. “We haven’t seen this kind of team before, and they jumped out on us early.”

Reminiscent of the Dec. 3 Wake Forest game in Winston-Salem, N.C., Kentucky easily penetrated IU’s defense, leading to several highlight-reel dunks early in the game en route to making nine of its first 10 buckets.

“Obviously, everything that could have gone wrong for us in the first eight minutes did,” Crean said after the game. “Their pressure, intensity and enthusiasm level was as high as I have seen it this year.”

After a disastrous first half, the Hoosiers settled down in the second frame, outscoring the Wildcats 41-36 and turning the ball over just five times compared to 15 first half turnovers. But by then, the damage had already been done.

Leading a balanced Kentucky scoring attack was sophomore Josh Harrellson, who scored 11 of his career-high 15 points during the crippling first half.
 
One positive coming from the loss for IU was the return of IU freshman point guard Verdell Jones. Jones had missed the previous three games after a vicious collision left him unconscious during the Nov. 30 Cornell matchup in Assembly Hall. But Jones could only watch from the bench at the carnage during the opening few minutes of the game.

“It was very frustrating,” Jones said. “At one point I wanted to take my stuff off and jump out there without coach knowing.”

The Hoosiers know they will face teams similar to Kentucky this season, and Williams said the team can’t justify what happened on Saturday. 

“No excuses here,” Williams said. “We just got to get better.”