IU stymies Irish, improves to 10-0

It wasn’t pretty.

The IU men’s basketball team had its lowest offensive output of the season, shot 34 percent in the first half and didn’t make a 3-pointer until nearly 26 minutes into the game.

But the No. 18 Hoosiers (10-0) put the clamps down on defense to lead them to a 69-58 win against Notre Dame (7-5) on Saturday at Conseco Fieldhouse in the Crossroads Classic.

“A very, very good win for us,” IU Coach Tom Crean said. “We hadn’t experienced getting a win like that this season and one probably in the past that we might not have been able to get because it was a very, very physical game, and our guys did a great job of responding to that.”

For an Irish team that came in averaging just shy of seven 3-pointers per game, Crean said limiting that would be a key for IU.

“They’re taking a lot of pride in their defense, and this will only help and hopefully springboard them to more things because the number one key all week with Notre Dame was defending the three-point shooting,” Crean said.

Early on, the Hoosiers didn’t do that.

Notre Dame sophomore Alex Dragicevich got the Irish going early, knocking down three 3-pointers in the first 5:13 of the game. Dragicevich’s quick start put the Hoosiers in a nine-point deficit, their largest of the season.

“They screen a lot, so you’ve got to be aware, and if you’re not aware, then they’ll back-door you too,” IU junior guard Jordan Hulls said. “We just had to be very conscious of what they were doing, and I felt like our team defense really picked up, and that’s what we had to do.”

IU made the defensive adjustments and didn’t allow the Irish to score another field goal in the half. Crean said the defensive turnaround in the first half was more mental than physical.

“Our guys never wavered when we got down because we made too many mistakes,” Crean said. “A lot of our mistakes were communication mistakes, and we were waiting for someone to help us out of a situation rather than being a participant in our own rescue in that situation.”

Even though the Hoosiers held Notre Dame to 20 first-half points — a season best for IU — they led by only six. The 26-point first half output was also IU’s lowest offensive output of the season.

While IU was led by freshman forward Cody Zeller’s 14 first-half points, they shot 34 percent (11-of-32) as a team.

“The shots weren’t falling for us, and we weren’t able to get as many easy buckets, but we just had to do the little things,” Zeller said. “We can always play good defense and rebound, so we had a big emphasis on that.”

That mindset carried over into the second half, where IU continued to prevent the Irish from getting open looks from beyond the arc. After Dragicevich’s 3-pointer at 14:47 in the first half, the Irish did not make another 3-pointer until the 1:41 mark in the second half.

“For them to go 32 minutes without a three-point field goal says a lot about the way our defense rose to the challenge of guarding a team that shoots as well as they do,” Crean said.

While the Irish struggled to establish any sort of offensive rhythm on the perimeter, the Hoosiers found their rhythm on the interior. IU scored 54 of its 69 points either in the paint or at the free-throw line.

It was a win that didn’t exactly match the way Crean said he drew it up.

“The pace was not exactly where we would’ve liked it,” Crean said. “But it was never at a point where we felt we had to do something to change it. We just knew we were going to have to be really, really good in the half court.”

Any way you want to draw it up, it’s a 10-0 start for IU. Not only is it the first 10-0 start for IU since the 1989-90 season, but an Illinois loss to UNLV Saturday afternoon made the Hoosiers the last undefeated team in the Big Ten.

However, Crean said that hasn’t crossed his mind.

“That doesn’t figure into our thought process,” Crean said. “The fact that these guys have found ten different ways to win and have built on momentum is most important.”