Thomas Bryant had the ball near the basket, but he was surrounded by Ottawa defenders. He jumped, trying to find an open teammate to pass to, and he found one in senior guard Yogi Ferrell.
However, the freshman center threw the ball into the backcourt for his second turnover of the game with 2:33 left in the first half. After the turnover, Ferrell grabbed the freshman by the arm for a bit of advice. Bryant tapped his chest a few times, as if to take the blame, and didn’t commit a turnover for the rest of the game.
All in all, there were 42 combined turnovers in IU’s 82-54 win against Ottawa on Tuesday night at Assembly Hall.
“I think we were very conscious of it,” IU Coach Tom Crean said. “We were very conscious of it after our first half of giving up 13 and not taking advantage of the situation. We want our foundation to be very strong.”
Bryant would finish with a double-double, as he scored 12 points and grabbed 11 rebounds.
Though junior forward Troy Williams also managed 12 points, he turned the ball over six times, which led the Hoosiers against the Gee-Gees.
In a 30-second stretch near the end of the first half, Williams turned the ball over twice, once when he dribbled the ball off his leg out-of-bounds.
For the most part, the turnovers were corrected at halftime for the Hoosiers. After turning the ball over 13 times, often carelessly, in the first half, IU committed only six turnovers in the second half, led by two from Williams.
“That was the main point as well, just as much as the defense,” sophomore guard James Blackmon Jr. said about the halftime adjstments. “Coach talked about it, and then we just talked to each other and said let’s fix it. I don’t think it happened a lot after that.”
The Hoosiers were trying for too many home run plays instead of trying to play simple basketball, Crean said.
However, the biggest reason for the drop in turnovers came on the other end of the court. The Hoosiers pressured the Gee-Gees into more missed shots, allowing the Hoosiers to get out on the fast break and find easy baskets.
Ottawa, however, did not change after the halftime break.
After committing 13 turnovers in the first half, the Gee-Gees turned the ball over 10 more times in the second half. IU outscored Ottawa 25-3 to finish the game, as the Hoosiers committed only one turnover in the last seven minutes.
The game’s leading scorer, Ottawa’s senior guard Caleb Agada, who scored 17 points, also led the game in turnovers with eight.
That was the biggest reason for IU outscoring Ottawa in the second half, particularly in the closing minutes of the game. IU took care of the ball; Ottawa didn’t.
“We don’t want to play slow, but we don’t want to make home run-type plays,” Crean said. “We don’t want to make plays that aren’t there — we want to make simple plays.”
