It finally happened.
When freshman guard Romeo Langford drove to the basket, softly lofted a contested layup toward the rim and kissed it off the backboard for two points with 0.8 seconds left in IU’s 75-73 double-overtime home victory over No. 19 Wisconsin on Tuesday night, it was a moment Langford, the Hoosiers and their fans had been waiting for all season.
Langford finally got a clutch shot to fall in a late game situation.
He even did so by doing what he should have been doing in all those missed opportunities that came before Tuesday. He finally embraced his strong suit as an offensive player — attacking the paint and finishing at the rim instead of settling for an inconsistent step-back jumper.
Oh, how he must regret not realizing this fact sooner, even if everyone and their uncle have been screaming for him to do it all year.
“I mean, just finally, I hit one,” Langford said. “I know the past two times, I had it in my hand to end the game and it didn't come out as we planned, but I learned from mistakes in the past, and settling for a jump shot. I felt like they couldn't stop me from getting to the rim and that's exactly what I did and I made the shot.”
For the Hoosiers as a whole, they finally pulled one of these close games out with a win, which they hadn’t done since their overtime stunner at Michigan State on Feb. 2.
Yet that one felt like a bit of a fluke after it was followed up with five more losses, some being heartbreakers like the ones against Purdue and twice against Iowa, and some being ugly outings against Ohio State and Minnesota.
This one, somehow, just felt different.
Maybe because the earlier victory over Michigan State seemed like IU was surviving on a wing and prayer in what was undoubtedly an off performance by the Spartans. In the moment, even the Hoosiers seemed dumbfounded to find themselves in that situation.
Yet Tuesday, that wasn’t the case. IU outplayed Wisconsin for most of the game, responded when the Badgers made their runs and even found a way to finish a close game with some actual, coherent late game execution.
Of course, that didn’t come without its difficulties.
Yet the Hoosiers finally found a way around their mistakes — the same kind of gaffes that have plagued them all Big Ten season.
This brings up a question for this team moving forward though — how will they respond?
A victory over a ranked opponent like this somehow probably makes IU barely relevant again when it comes to NCAA tournament bubble talks and closing out the season with three more wins would only bolster its position there.
Yet we’ve seen this story play out before with this team. The first go-around with Michigan State looked like it could be a possible turning point for the Hoosiers and this one does too.
The momentum from Michigan State fizzled out. IU can’t let that happen again.
With the Spartans coming to Bloomington for round two Saturday and most certainly starving for revenge, a win like the one on Tuesday is exactly what the Hoosiers needed.
It gave them an ounce of life again. It gave them a semblance of some kind of home-court advantage that just might start bringing more people back into the stands.
Finally, it gave the Hoosiers and their fans a little more hope to hold on to.
