Tyra Buss was down on the floor by the basket at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, and the idea of a Big Ten title run for IU seemed to be fading. The sophomore point guard was squirming, her eyes filling up with tears.
She had just gone up for a reverse left-handed layup and Northwestern forward Nia Coffey swatted her shot out of bounds. Buss fell hard and her left elbow hit the ground first and suffered the toughest of the blows.
Buss said she couldn’t move her elbow. She said it was “just stuck there.”
It didn’t look like she was going to return. She went to the far end of the bench and the training staff worked with her.
Then, she was suddenly over sitting by the coaches. Next thing you know, Buss is checking back into the game three minutes — yes, three minutes — after it seemed she was done.
“If there’s not a bone sticking out, she’s playing,” Tyra’s mother, Kelly Buss, said.
And in the end, IU still lost 79-73 to Northwestern in the Big Ten quarterfinals Friday. Without Buss, it might not have been close.
The story, though, is just how tough Tyra Buss really is.
I went over to both of Buss’ parents, Tim and Kelly, at halftime and asked Tim what he thought when he saw her go down.
He thought she was done for. He shook his head and put his hands over his face. He thought she broke her arm or wrist or something.
IU Coach Teri Moren wasn’t quite as worried.
“I knew she was going to play,” Moren said.
Moren talked about how tough Buss is and how she knew it was a matter of time before she shrugged it off. She was the minority in the Fieldhouse.
Here’s the thing. This isn’t some isolated incident.
Back when Buss was a junior at Mount Carmel High School in Illinois playing in the 2A sectional semifinals, she suffered a more dramatic injury.
She said she was playing defense on a fast break, reached in and got her hand caught on the ball as the Sullivan player went up. Her shoulder was separated, and she came out for the rest of the first half.
So the trainer popped the shoulder back into place.
What did Buss do next? She scored 30 points in the second half to finish with 40 and led her team to the sectional finals for the first time.
Or there’s the time almost a year ago exactly at the 2015 Big Ten Tournament when she got her leg caught under a Rutgers defender as both went for a loose ball. She had to get checked out for a long period of time.
“I don’t know how it happened exactly, but it didn’t feel good,” she said that night. “I wanted to do whatever I could to get back in the game.”
Buss took a beating that game. Much like Friday, she was on the floor time and time again, and I remember being taken aback by how she continued to stay on the floor. It was an important display of toughness to Moren, who had been trying to instill just that into her team all season.
“She was wanting and willing to do anything to help her team this afternoon,” Moren said. “That obviously says a little bit about who she is as a person, her character.”
But back to Friday: Buss didn’t have a great game. Her shots weren’t falling even before the injury, and they certainly didn’t after.
This story isn’t about how good Buss is at basketball, though. It’s about how she kept driving to the rim and drawing hard contact. She took some hits that, in all honesty, should have been fouls.
She picked off a pass late in the game, drove full speed to the basket and took another hard blow. This one sent her flying full speed into the base of the basket and resulted in her holding her other arm.
She still got right back up and made her free throws.
My favorite, though, was when Buss tried to jump and intercept a Northwestern pass despite everyone else running back in transition defense.
Buss dragged both Wildcats with her onto the ground as they wrestled for the ball.
The ball ended up going to Northwestern.
But Teri Moren could be seen at the IU bench clapping and nodding her head in approval.
brodmill@indiana.edu
