Indiana earns third Sweet 16 in five seasons by ousting Kentucky
If the scheduling impasse between Kentucky and Indiana continues for years to come, then the Hoosiers will have the most recent bragging rights.
They eliminated the Wildcats on Saturday with a 73-67 second-round victory in the most anticipated clash of the NCAA tournament's opening weekend.
The game's decisive sequence began with less than eight minutes to go when Indiana's Thomas Bryant cut to the basket without the ball, lost Skal Labissiere around a screen and received a pass from Troy Williams for an easy 3-point play. Williams then attacked off the dribble on the Hoosiers' next possession and kicked to wide-open O.G. Anunoby for a left-wing 3-pointer that extended Indiana's lead to six.
Those two baskets sparked a timely 12-2 Indiana surge that gave the Hoosiers the cushion they needed to hold off a late charge from the Wildcats. When Bryant knocked down the second of two free throws with just over 10 seconds remaining to extend the lead to four again, the Indiana bench began to celebrate and the pro-Hoosiers portion of the Des Moines crowd let out a full-throated roar.
Indiana's victory sends the Hoosiers to the Sweet 16 for the third time in five seasons and continues a year of vindication for coach Tom Crean.
At the start of the season Crean was under such immense pressure that Indiana talk radio was abuzz with callers demanding his firing and fans at his son's basketball game actually taunted the boy with chants about his dad. The pressure escalated when Indiana lost to UNLV and Wake Forest at the Maui Invitational and was not competitive at Duke in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, but everything turned when the Hoosiers reeled off a long win streak to open Big Ten play.
Taking advantage of a favorable early Big Ten schedule and an injury to James Blackmon that forced Crean to go with a more defense-oriented lineup, Indiana corrected some of its early-season issues and played itself into Big Ten title contention. The Hoosiers clinched the outright league title in their second-to-last game, secured Big Ten coach of the year honors for Crean and now will advance to the Sweet 16 to face either ninth-seeded Providence or top-seeded North Carolina.
That this Sweet 16 comes at Kentucky's expense will no doubt make it even sweeter for Indiana.
Bryant led the Hoosiers with 19 points, while point guard Yogi Ferrell added 18 and Williams had 13. The Hoosiers needed that production from their stars because they shot unusually poorly from behind the arc and they lost key role players Robert Johnson and Juwan Morgan to recurring ankle and shoulder injuries.
Kentucky might have been able to take advantage had it gotten stronger performances from anyone besides All-American point guard Tyler Ulis, who kept the Wildcats competitive with 27 points and strong defense on Ferrell. Co-star Jamal Murray missed 8 of his 9 attempts from behind the arc and needed 18 shots to get 16 points. Not a single other Kentucky player scored more than seven points.
The Kentucky-Indiana matchup carried particular intrigue because of the way their rivalry abruptly ended in 2012 after the two teams met at least once a season the previous 44 years.
John Calipari wanted to stop playing home-and-home and play at a neutral site, preferably Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium. He knew his rabid fan base would travel, he wanted his team to have the experience of playing in a dome before a potential Final Four and it didn't hurt that he'd never have to play at Assembly Hall again.
Tom Crean preferred the matchup rotate between the two campus sites the way it most recently had. The Hoosiers had defeated Kentucky's 2012 national championship squad in Bloomington, and probably had a much better chance for success in the series with their students in the building every two years.
Neither coach would budge from his position, so the series has remained on hiatus to the detriment of a sport in desperate need of reasons for viewers to tune in before conference play. Neither Calipari nor Crean sounded likely to give in when asked about it earlier this week.
"I understand they need home games and that's what they want," Calipari said Friday. "There is no issue with me. We've got our schedule. They've got theirs. It hasn't hurt us, and it hasn't hurt them."
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
