IU hopes to stop nation's leading scorer

The IU men’s basketball team may be the No. 1 team in the country, sophomore forward Cody Zeller may be the Preseason National Player of the Year, a Preseason All-American and the Preseason Big Ten Player of the Year and the Hoosiers may have two former Indiana Mr. Basketball’s on their starting roster.

Saturday night, though, as IU (8-0) hosts Central Connecticut State (4-3) at 6 p.m. at Assembly Hall, the Blue Devils can boast something that no other team in the country can claim.

Guard Kyle Vinales is the nation’s leading scorer this season, averaging 25.9 points per game.

The 6-foot-1-inch sophomore has scored 20 or more points in each of the last six games for CCSU, picking up right where he left off last year as the nation’s top-scoring freshman, with 17.9 points per game.

He was named the Northeastern Conference Rookie of the Year, and his 520 points were the most-ever scored by a CCSU freshman.

Luckily for IU, though, the team has had a full week to prepare for Vinales, and IU Associate Head Coach Tim Buckley said his players should be prepared to face the best scorer in the country.

“I think he can score in a variety of ways,” Buckley said. “ He can keep up the dribble, he can go right or left, he can shoot the pull up and he has a step back to his game.

“You’ve got to keep him outside the elbows, and you’ve got to keep your chest in front and give him no open looks.”

Along with Vinales’s scoring prowess, the Blue Devils also boast the top free throw shooting team in the country, shooting 83.6 percent from the charity stripe.

Yet even with Vinales’s shooting from the field and CCSU’s strength from the line, Buckley pointed out that the Blue Devils’ starting five carries the bulk of the load.

All five players average at least 29 minutes per game so far this season, and each player averages at least eight points per game. The rest of CCSU averages fewer than 10-combined points per game thus far.

Buckley said that in watching game tape to prepare for Saturday’s matchup, he is yet to see any of the Blue Devils get tired or winded, even the five who get 10 minutes rest or fewer each game.

But Zeller said he looks forward to seeing if the Blue Devils can keep up against the Hoosiers Saturday night. He said his teammates like to think that they’re the most well-conditioned team in the country, and Saturday he hopes that a mix of running the court and utilizing the full-court press whenever necessary will start to slow down the efficient Blue Devil offense.

“We’ll see how good of shape they’re in tomorrow, cause we always think that we’re the best-conditioned team,” Zeller said. “We’re definitely going to push the tempo and see if we can wear them down when they’re playing long minutes. We’ll see how it plays out tomorrow.”