Young players step up against LIU Brooklyn

With 4.8 seconds remaining, freshman forward Devin Davis secured a rebound off of a missed layup from LIU Brooklyn’s Jason Brickman.

With a one-point lead, the rebound and subsequent foul all but secured an IU victory.

Davis missed the front end of a one-and-one at the line, but it didn’t matter. Brickman would miss a 3-point heave at the buzzer, and IU would hold on to win 73-72 Tuesday night at Assembly Hall.

“Tonight was a great learning experience in many ways.” IU Coach Tom Crean said. “This team does not have the luxury of going through close games and hard fought battles yet. Some of the players do, like (senior forward) Will (Sheehey), obviously, but we don’t have a team of guys who have gone through that.

“We really didn’t want it to have to be tonight, but it was. The bottom line is if we didn’t have the capacity to get better, if we didn’t have the capacity to improve inside of the game and if we didn’t have the capacity to understand what the game was giving us, we’d have lost the game by 10, 12, 14, 15 points. There’s no question.”

On a roster that features 11 scholarship players who are either freshmen or sophomores, the team found a way to win down the stretch, Crean said. And the young guys played a role in that.

“It just kind of took a little bit of poise, I’d say, on our end,” sophomore guard Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell said.

With 5:34 to play in the game, freshman forward Troy Williams hit a 3-point shot to tie the game at 63.  On IU’s next possession, Williams hit another jump shot to tie the game again at 65.

Sophomore forward Jeremy Hollowell drove to the basket to get a layup to tie the game at 67 with three minutes and 30 seconds to go in the game.

“Down the road it’ll be huge,” Crean said. “Down the road to have that happen in their second game, it’ll absolutely be paramount to their future to get that. Even if we’d have lost the game, there’s experiences in there that were invaluable for them.

“But the bottom line is they found a way to win the game. They found a way to win the game. And the other team was doing everything they could do to win it, too.”

With IU trailing late, it was the young players, along with Sheehey, who were forced to step up.

Davis not only secured the rebound at the end, but he also helped tie up the Blackbirds with 15 seconds to go in the game, forcing them to call a timeout and almost creating a turnover on a jump ball.

“It wasn’t like we had a group of senior guys to go down to at the end of the bench and say, ‘Hey, go in and take care of this,’” Crean said. “We had Evan. We had Will and we had a bunch of freshmen and sophomores.”

Freshman forward Noah Vonleh had his second double-double in as many games, finishing with 17 points and 11 rebounds.

“It’s a great experience,” Vonleh said. “It’s definitely a learning experience just knowing how to handle situations like this.”

Hollowell, who had led IU in scoring against Chicago State with 16 points, scored six.

Crean admitted that Hollowell did not have a good game, but was encouraged by how he was able to come in late in the game and contribute an important basket when IU really needed it.

“He came in and played well when we needed him to play well,” Crean said. “That’s the sign of growth to me.”

Crean, who joked with the media as he entered the press room about his late arrival, said he was happy the team won tonight, but would have been happy just with the lessons his young team learned.

“We’re really trying to learn here what it’s going to take for us to have real success. Going through nights like tonight will help that.”

Follow men's basketball reporter Robby Howard on Twitter @robbyhoward1.