Hoosiers go 8-0 for first time in Crean era

It was a first half to forget for IU.

The Hoosiers were out-rebounded, out-shot from three-point range, out-shot from the free-throw line and were subsequently up only four points to Stetson going into halftime.

The second half followed a different script.

IU (8-0) outscored Stetson by 30 points in the second half to close out the Hatters (4-4) for an 84-50 win Sunday at Assembly Hall.

Senior guard Verdell Jones III said the Hoosiers didn’t need to be reamed by IU Coach Tom Crean at halftime.

“He never said anything,” Jones said. “We knew coming into the half what we had to do. We came out too lackadaisical, too lazy, too laid back, and that’s not us. That’s not who we are this year.”

Crean said a high-tempered halftime speech was not what his team needed at halftime.

“I had no interest in getting my blood pressure up at halftime because we were in a situation where we needed to win the game,” Crean said. “I was thinking, ‘Let’s get the right personnel on the court right now,’ and that’s where my mind was.”

Crean did exactly that. Instead of starting junior guard Jordan Hulls, junior forward Christian Watford and sophomore guard Victor Oladipo, Crean switched the game plan.

IU senior guard Daniel Moore, junior forward Derek Elston and sophomore forward Will Sheehey started the second half.

“It could’ve easily backfired,” Crean said. “But it worked out.”

A three-pointer from Elston and two quick layups from Sheehey gave the Hoosiers an 11-point lead two minutes into the second half.

Meanwhile, Moore did the dirty work for the Hoosiers, earning an assist, a rebound and two steals in that two-minute stretch.

“We were obviously a little flat,” Moore said. “That’s the majority of my role is to come in and pick up the tempo and pick up the energy, and that’s what Coach asked me to do at halftime. Everybody picked it up, and we had a great start to the second half.”

IU rode that momentum to a 33-5 run to start the first 11:24 of the second half.

Oladipo, who started the second half on the bench, had nine second-half points, including an alley-oop dunk at 8:36 on a pass from Moore.

Oladipo said his first-half performance was flat.

“I came out slow in the first half, and I had to pick it up in the second half,” Oladipo said. “But when we have slow starts, we have enough depth, like Daniel just showed y’all, for other people to step up and bring up the tempo.”

By night’s end, the Hoosiers tallied 59 second-half deflections, per Crean.

“Again, I’m just blown away by their defensive effort,” Crean said. “I want to get a little more blown away in the first half, though.”

Though the Hoosiers came off an emotional 86-75 win at NC State on Wednesday, Jones said it wasn’t an excuse for the slow start.

“We didn’t show any sign of a hangover in practice,” Jones said. “We had one of our best practices this year the next day. Like I said, we just came out real sluggish.”

Slow start aside, it goes down as a win for the Hoosiers. It’s an 8-0 start for the first time in the Crean era.

But as Crean said, it’s not how you start — it’s how you finish.

“We did not have a 40-minute game. That’s obvious,” Crean said. “We had some stretches in the first half that were good. We had some stretches that were not up-to-par or at the standard they needed to be. But in the second half, it’s hard to find much fault with that.”