IU takes down Georgia 66-53

After 20 minutes Monday night, the No. 1 men’s basketball team in the country found itself in an unfamiliar spot.

Not just behind. The IU men’s basketball team had trailed briefly in its opener against Bryant.  

But Monday, while shooting just 32 percent from the field during the first 20 minutes of the Hoosiers’ game against Georgia in the semi-finals of the Progressive Legends Classic at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., the Hoosiers found themselves behind for much of the first half and trailed 30-29 going into the locker room.

Yet in the end, the final result was much the same, as IU pulled it together, stemming from a thunderous dunk from junior guard Victor Oladipo and a string of threes from senior guard Jordan Hulls, as the Hoosiers took down the Bulldogs 66-53.

Hulls opened the first half with a 3-pointer, but from there, the Hoosiers went cold. IU missed its next six shots from beyond the arc in the first half, and along with the team’s shooting woes, foul trouble prevented IU from getting off to the quick start it had become accustomed to during the first three games of the season.

Oladipo and sophomore forward Cody Zeller were called for two fouls each in the first 11 minutes of the game, limiting their playing time to just 17 minutes combined, and IU Coach Tom Crean said that sitting two of his starters, along with missed shots, were key to IU’s struggles in the first half.

“We just missed some shots, we had different lineups, and the thing that hurt us was we had eight turnovers in the first half,” Crean said. “We could never get a rhythm, and we never got the pace going the way we needed to get it to go, and Georgia had a lot to do with that.

“We just missed shots we normally make.”

Luckily for the Hoosiers, though, Georgia struggled from the floor, missing nearly as many open shots, shooting just 34.6 from the field as neither team was able to gain much momentum. The teams traded buckets late in the half, but with just seven seconds remaining, Georgia’s Vincent Williams sunk a free throw, giving his Bulldogs the lead going into the locker room.

Oladipo said going into the locker room, he couldn’t quite pin-point why the Hoosiers had struggled during the first 20 minutes, but Crean just told him and his teammates to keep running the floor and things would fall into place.

And that they did.

Early on in the second half, Georgia found itself with a four-point lead, but off an Oladipo slam dunk that brought the majority of the game’s crowd to its feet, the Hoosiers went on an 8-0 run to take the lead for the final time.

“Victor is a huge energy guy on both ends of the floor, especially when he gets a nice dunk – it’s always good and gets us pretty riled up,” Hulls said. “But everybody came into the second half and played a lot better for us.”

Georgia would inch within three points at 45-42 with 9:09 remaining in the game, but just second later, Hulls would bring the crowd to its feet once again, knocking down back-to-back 3-pointers, pushing IU’s lead to nine and the game out of reach.

Oladipo said that even though he can always energize the crowd with one of his two-handed dunks, Hulls is the most important guy on the team when the Hoosiers need a boost.

“That just shows you how much we need him. Without him, we can’t win,” Oladipo said. “That’s why he’s special – he’s one of the best players in the country, and he’s going to prove that. He’s one of the hardest-working people I know.”

Crean echoed Oladipo’s sentiment, saying he sees NBA-type potential in his Bloomington-native senior guard.

“With all the NBA people here tonight, that’s an NBA guard,” Crean said. “That young man is a huge winner who has a lot of skills, and he improves constantly.”

Oladipo led the both teams with 15 points and eight rebounds, followed by both Watford and Hulls who added 14 each. Freshman guard Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell led the Hoosiers with five assists to go along with four points.

Zeller, though, struggled against a Georgia defense that stuck two defenders on the 7-foot forward almost any time the Hoosiers had the ball. The sophomore scored only six points and pulled down just four rebounds Monday night, but he said going up against Georgia’s big men helped him prepare for both teams IU might have to play in the finals Tuesday night, either Georgetown or UCLA.

“Either team is going to be good,” Zeller said. “Either team is going to have a lot of talented players, so we’ll take whoever we have to play.”