Indiana’s season ends abruptly with loss to Syracuse in Sweet 16
By DOUG GRIFFITHS
ISL Assistant Editor
WASHINGTON D.C. — This was supposed to be the year for Indiana basketball.
The year Indiana returned to the Final Four. The year it won its first national championship since 1987.
The table was set for Tom Crean’s Hoosiers shortly after his 2011-12 team fell to eventual national champion Kentucky in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament when Christian Watford and Cody Zeller announced they would return for another season of college basketball, putting their NBA aspirations on hold at least for the time being.
With Zeller, the preseason national player-of-the-year, and Watford returning, plus Jordan Hulls, Victor Oladipo and Will Sheehey coming back, plus one of the nation’s top recruiting classes, including point guard Yogi Ferrell, arriving in Bloomington, IU was loaded.
The Hoosiers were picked preseason No. 1 and for good reason. They won the outright Big Ten championship, in a year where the conference was widely considered second to none.
IU didn’t win the Big Ten Tournament, getting bounced by Wisconsin in the quarterfinals, but still on Selection Sunday it received a No. 1 seed. The one downer was it didn’t get to play in the Midwest Region where it would have the opportunity to go through Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium to get to the Final Four.
Instead, the Hoosiers were headed to the East Region and looked like they got a favorable draw.
They hammered James Madison and survived quite a scare from No. 9-seed Temple in the opening weekend in Dayton, Ohio.
Then it was off to the nation’s capital where IU met a Syracuse team that lost in the Big East Tournament championship game to Louisville thanks to a second-half collapse and ended its regular-season by only scoring 39 points in a blowout loss to Georgetown on the same Verizon Center floor that it would be facing the Hoosiers on.
The Hoosiers were Elite Eight bound, right? Wrong. Jim Boeheim’s Orange stunned IU 61-50 on Thursday night and ended what it had hoped would be a magical ride through the NCAA Tournament.
Yes, the Hoosiers’ run came to a very abrupt ending.
Crean looked somewhat stunned as he addressed the media afterwards. To his credit, he was quick to point out just how much his basketball team had achieved.
“We have had a heck of a ride with this group, and it doesn’t feel like that tonight, won’t feel like that for a couple of days, maybe longer,” he said.
“But the bottom line is this program has come from so far and I hope at some point in time, the seniors, the guys on this team will remember that they did things that hadn’t been done first off in 20 years at Indiana but more importantly there are not any programs, whether it be Syracuse, Kentucky, Carolina, Duke, you name it that are the blue blood programs of the country that have had to endure what these guys have had to endure. They have done it with perseverance, toughness and improvement and they have done it with great class, and they will all be better for it.”
One of the major story lines was how Crean’s team struggled with Syracuse’s impressive 2-3 zone. They had barely faced zone defenses this season and looked like it. The Hoosiers certainly didn’t see any that had the kind of length and athleticism featured in the Orange’s.
“They were just long and active,” said Victor Oladipo when asked about facing Syracuse’s patented zone.”
Boeheim was elated with the way his team got after it defensively.
“Indiana presents a lot of problems offensively and we wanted to get on their three-point shooters,” said the Orange boss, whose 29-9 team will face Marquette on Saturday with a Final Four berth at stake. “We did not want to let them get good looks and we did that. Defensively we got back inside quickly on their big guys when they tried to finish around the basket. We made some really good defensive plays against them.”
Ferrell really struggled attacking Syracuse’s zone. He had the kind of game that isn’t too uncommon for true freshman. Nonetheless it was hard to fathom the Indianapolis’ native enduring such an affair, especially after he was unstoppable to start the James Madison game.
Ferrell committed four first-half turnovers and as a result didn’t start in the second half.
“I’m sure the strength and the size of the Syracuse guards had something to do with it,” Crean said.
“We prepared for it (the zone), there is no doubt about it, but it just wasn’t meant to be with that. They did an excellent job.”
The Hoosiers struggled outside – shooting just 20 percent from three-point range (3-for-15) – and they struggled overall shooting the basketball, too – connecting on 33.3 percent of their shots (16-for-48). IU struggled at the foul line as well (missing nine of 24 free throws).
When IU got good penetration, it had a very tough time avoiding getting its shots blocked. Syracuse finished with 10 rejections.
Zeller found life in the lane very difficult. He had a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds, but shot just 3-of-11 from the floor.
Watford also took 11 shots, making four, and finished with 13 points.
Oladipo led the Hoosiers with 16 points, but he wasn’t his usual self slicing and dicing the opponent’s defense.
Making life extremely challenging in the paint was the fact that IU just couldn’t get anything consistently going from the perimeter.
Hulls continued his struggles from the outside, missing all six of his shots – all three-pointers.
Sheehey missed all three of his triples, too.
IU’s backcourt had a nightmarish game. Hulls and Ferrell were outscored by Syracuse’s starting guards 38-0.
The Hoosiers turned the ball over with regularity after taking such good care of the basketball throughout the season. In fact, IU had 12 first-half turnovers, just one short of their season average for an entire game.
“We just didn’t take care of the ball like we should have,” Oladipo said. “In the first half, we got a little too anxious.”
Meanwhile, Syracuse got a career night from guard Michael Carter-Williams, who poured in a game-high 24 points, got 14 points from guard Brandon Triche and 11 points from C.J. Fair.
That trio helped the Orange shoot 43.8 percent from the field (21-of-48).
Yes, this was supposed to be Indiana’s year to make a long, deep run in March but Carter-Williams, Triche and Fair had other ideas.
The Hoosiers finished the regular season splitting their final six games, but still won the conference crown. They went 1-1 in Chicago, the site of the Big Ten Tournament and 2-1 in the tournament that matters most.
Now, immediate questions will center around whether Zeller and Oladipo and whether they’ll return to Indiana next season or bypass their remaining college eligibility to head to the NBA. There’s a very strong possibility that in the coming days/weeks they’ll be announcing their intentions to enter the NBA June Draft thus ending their IU careers.
If Zeller and Oladipo head to the NBA, Crean will definitely have to reload next season as the Hoosiers will return just one starter – Ferrell. He’ll be joined by Sheehey and Remy Abell as the only other regulars coming back.
To their credit, the aforementioned players put IU basketball back on the map again. They took a program that won a total of 28 games from 2008-11 and turned it into a 29-game winner this year.
IU’s program is once again on very solid footing, but that’s little solace after back-to-back years that have seen the Hoosiers get bounced from the Big Dance in the Sweet 16.
