Indiana played its ugliest half of the season to open the Evansville game, but the Hoosiers outscored the Aces 42-23 in the second half to beat Evansville 67-54 and improve to 4-0 on the season. The Hoosiers' early struggles were related to poor rebounding and lots of turnovers. In the first half, IU had 12 turnovers and had only two offensive rebounds and 9 defensive rebounds (compared to 6 OR for Evansville). In the second half, IU still kept shooting well (IU shot 58 percent in the first half and 50 percent in the second half) and really turned around the rebounding and turnover numbers. IU had only three turnovers in the second half and had 8 offensive rebounds (compared to 9 DR for Evansville, meaning IU grabbed nearly half of its own missed shots). Evansville is a struggling but improving program and likely will struggle in the Missouri Valley Conference, but this is the sort of game that IU could have lost in recent years. Instead, the team significantly improved its trouble spots in the second half. This is progress. The main problem that carried over to the second half was free throw shooting: IU was 5-11 in the first half and 10-17 in the second half.
Individuals:
- Maurice Creek played his best game of the season, scoring 19 points and shooting 4-7 from behind the arc;
- Verdell Jones III scored 18 points on 7-10 from the field, although he did turn the ball over 4 times;
- Christian Watford scored 12 points and had 7 rebounds;
- Tom Pritchard scored 8 points on 4-5 shooting and had 8 rebounds, although he was 0-3 from the line.
This was a solid performance and a good reaction to the team's first major dose of adversity. The Hoosiers return to action tomorrow night against North Carolina Central.