IU's NCAA Tournament Chances Beginning To Slim After Loss To Purdue
Marc Lebryk / USA Today
Indiana’s NCAA tournament hopes are beginning to slim.
The Hoosiers fell to Purdue 69-64 Thursday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall and now face fewer chances to impress the NCAA tournament committee with six games remaining in the regular season.
“We accomplished a lot of things we wanted to accomplish,” Crean said. “But our margin for error is not very big.”
Sophomore center Thomas Bryant continued to carry the load offensively for the Hoosiers (15-10, 5-7 Big Ten) with a team-high 23 points in 26 minutes.
Bryant was involved in a key moment late in the contest, when he drove down the lane and was initially was called for an offensive foul while defended by Purdue sophomore forward Caleb Swanigan. The foul would’ve been Bryant’s fifth, disqualifying him from the game.
Instead, officials ruled it a double-foul on both Bryant and Swanigan, resulting in both fouling out of the contest with 44 seconds. At that moment, IU trailed Purdue by five but never cut the deficit to fewer than three the rest of the way.
Bryant said he didn’t remember much from the play other than getting to the rim.
“It just didn’t go my way,” Bryant said.
“It was momentum, no question,” Crean said of the play with the double-foul. “… There’s not much more I can add than that, but definitely momentum.”
Frontcourt depth already depleted by injuries to senior forward Collin Hartman and sophomore forward OG Anunoby took another hit in the second half of Thursday’s contest, when freshman forward De’Ron Davis left the game after “taking a hard blow to the face,” according to Crean.
Davis had to be helped off the floor by two members of IU’s athletic training staff back to the IU locker room and did not return. Crean said postgame Davis was still being evaluated.
“We’ll continue to evaluate him, and hopefully he’ll be okay,” Crean said.
IU had leading scorer and junior guard James Blackmon Jr. back at full strength after the Marion, Indiana, native missed the Hoosiers’ last three games with a lower leg injury. He finished with 11 points on 3 of 14 shooting from the field, including 1 of 7 from 3-point range, in a team-high 32 minutes starting at guard.
Blackmon said it felt good to be back.
“I felt like I'm back out there to 100 percent if not close,” he said. “Down the stretch I felt like they got us a little bit on the rebounds and just a couple plays down the stretch that we didn't make.”
Being just “a couple plays” away down the stretch on Thursday presented a situation similar to last Sunday’s game at Wisconsin, where in both cases the most experienced team won.
“It’s always extra tough to lose to a team that’s close in proximity that’s got the rivalry like that,” Crean said. “But it was the same on Sunday, came down to a couple plays. We’ve got to figure out how to get over the hump.”
Indiana has six games left in the regular season, but only two of those opponents fall within the current RPI Top 50. One of those two games includes a rematch with Purdue.
Still, Indiana’s attention is turned solely toward Sunday’s home game against Michigan and nothing beyond that.
“We’ll put our gameplan together, and that’s what our focus has got to be,” Crean said.
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