Hoosiers roll in home-opener
By TIM MEYER
ISL Correspondent
“Courtesy of IU Athletics/Mike Dickbernd.”
BLOOMINGTON — All it took was one half. With one half, James Blackmon, Jr. was able to shake off the rust from a nearly year-long knee injury to carry the Indiana Hoosiers in their first two games of the regular season.
Blackmon led all scorers with 23 points on Wednesday night, while leading Indiana (2-0) to an easy 100-78 victory over UMass Lowell (1-2). After scoring 22 points in the second half and overtime against then #2 ranked Kansas on Friday, Blackmon came out firing against the River Hawks for 20 points in the first half on Wednesday night.
While Blackmon had his foot on the gas early, the Hoosiers as a whole struggled during the opening stretch. With 9:10 left in the first half, IU trailed 21-20. From that point on, they would outscore UMass Lowell 33-15 to blow the game wide open.
The breakout was keyed by emphasizing what Coach Tom Crean said to his team during the game: “We need to figure out what we do the best, and that’s play through the paint.” With a steady dose of a loaded front-court, Indiana was able to do just that and gain a 46-24 rebounding edge, with 19 of those being offensive boards, leading to 15 second-chance points.
While the Hoosiers were satisfied with the win, they were sure to let everybody know there is room for improvement. O.G Anunoby (15 pts, 4 rebs) said, “We were playing to dominate and move the ball on offense. We felt like we did it decently. We can do better, though.”
Coach Crean was also looking forward to future improvement. “Forty percent of our possessions had either two or more freshmen on the floor. We just don’t have that synergy of really understanding each other yet.”
Indiana should get an opportunity to test out more lineups with their next three games. They have home games against Liberty and Missouri Valley state sandwiched around a road game at IPFW before the Big Ten/ACC showdown with #5 North Carolina.
UMass Lowell, led by solid performances from Jahad Thomas (16 pts) and Tyler Livingston (14 pts) will try to bounce back, as the Indiana Classic round-robin will put them up against IPFW on Saturday.
