EAST LANSING, Mich. — After what might have been the biggest win of the season, the wheels seemed to fall off all at once.
Senior guard Yogi Ferrell looked exasperated. Junior forward Troy Williams didn’t score a single point. In the final minute, IU strength and conditioning coach Lyonel Anderson snapped his clipboard in half.
After trailing by just one point at halftime, IU lost 88-69 to a Michigan State team led by senior guard Denzel Valentine with 30 points and 13 assists.
“The disappointing part for us is obviously we did a very good job in the first half, but we did not continue that by playing the personal as much as we needed to,” IU Coach Tom Crean said. “They were just too comfortable.”
The Hoosiers started slow, not finding an offensive rhythm before the first media timeout. They were saved by junior forward Collin Hartman and freshman forward OG Anunoby coming off the bench.
Those two started a bench effort that outscored their Spartan counterparts 14-0 in the first half.
Eight different players scored in the first half with senior forward Max Bielfeldt leading the way with 10 points. Sunday was the first time Bielfeldt started since the Maui Invitational in November, and he led the Hoosiers with 15 points.
But IU’s bench couldn’t keep the game close in the second half. Offensively, the Hoosiers collapsed. It wasn’t anything Michigan State was doing, sophomore guard Robert Johnson said. The Spartans were playing the same box defense, but the ball stopped moving.
Perhaps the player who suffered most from the lack of ball movement was Ferrell. When the ball stopped moving it became easier for the Spartans to key in on him, Crean said.
Ferrell finished 3-of-10 from the field and 1-of-6 from behind the arc.
“When he’s holding the ball and we make him dribble, it’s easy to key on him,” Hartman said. “When we get the ball moving and get him lost in the game, then he’s really hard to guard.”
Crean has said Ferrell has been playing too many minutes. He said so after IU’s win at Michigan and again after the Iowa win. He said he needed to play freshman Harrison Niego more. But Niego only played one minute in the second half Sunday.
Meanwhile, Ferrell’s jump shot was consistently short, and he missed the front end of a 1-and-1 twice. But Crean said Ferrell wasn’t tired Sunday.
He said Ferrell had a break in the first half after he picked up his second foul and that the senior guard is used to playing a lot of minutes. He isn’t in a slump — Crean said he doesn’t believe in slumps.
“It’s not a real issue, and he’s not in one,” Crean said. “It’s a matter of taking what the defense is giving you when you have the ball in your hands a lot.”
With six and a half minutes left and the game all but out of reach, Ferrell drove to the basket. He had his shot blocked off his leg and out of bounds and was knocked to the ground.
He got up and slapped his hands in frustration. A minute later he would turn the ball over and be taken out of the game.
As soon as he walked past Crean to the bench, his frustration came out again. He wound up and slammed his right hand on the scorer’s table, in a moment summarizing the Hoosiers second half collapse.
This is not to say IU’s season is lost. The Hoosiers and the Hawkeyes are still the only two teams who control their destiny in terms of winning a Big Ten title. But the Hoosiers need to learn from Sunday for this to be possible, Bielfeldt said.
“We’re coming up on March, and we learn some things every game,” Bielfeldt said. “We learn how we play certain ways and what teams expose and what we’re good at. As long as we keep adapting and keep getting better, that’s when we can really make the best possible version of ourself.”
