Top 6 Takeaways from Indiana’s 79-74 win over the Purdue Boilermakers

Hoosiers win

The Hoosiers beat the number one team in the country on Saturday afternoon and now look to be sitting in great shape to make the NCAA Tournament. The Hoosiers achieved their first victory over a number-one team in a decade. TJD is proving he might go down in history as a top-10 Indiana Hoosier. Next up will be the Rutgers Scarlett Knights for the Hoosiers and make sure you tune into Steve Risley’s Indiana Basketball Weekly show Monday night at 7!

Indiana Basketball🏀 Weekly W/Steve Risley: Indiana vs Purdue Recap

1. Tale of 2 halves

In Saturday’s upset win, Indiana was hot off the bat. With 2:28 left in the second, Indiana led by 16 points. They were up 46-30. At the half, it would be 50-35. Considering that Purdue had not allowed more than 70 points throughout the season, IU’s first-half score of 50 was quite remarkable.

The Boilermakers won the second half, as expected. The defense tightened and knocked down the Hoosiers’ 100-point pace. You knew a team like Purdue would make a run, and they did in the second half.

Purdue won the second half 39-29. Matt Painter’s team was not able to win.

IU didn’t so much play poorly in the 2nd half. Instead, the #1 team in the country remembered they had a virtually unstoppable force and seemingly runaway player of the year candidate in the paint and they rode him to get started and then started connecting from a distance. At the same time, IU simply regressed to their mean after playing almost flawlessly in the first half. (They hung 50 points on the #1 team in a single half!!) IU missed their first three shots from 3pt range and didn’t attempt any more, and things got a bit mucky on offense.

No. 21 Indiana STUN No. 1 Purdue In Big Ten THRILLER [FULL GAME RECAP] I CBS Sports

2. Big men are big on the scene

The Zach Edey vs Trayce Jackson-Davis matchup lived up to its hype.

Edey scored 33 points, shooting 15-of-19 from the floor and 3 of 4 at the line for Purdue. Edey made it a double-double by scoring 18 rebounds and led the Boilermakers to a strong start to the second half. This helped reduce the deficit of 15 points to just single digits.

Jackson-Davis led the Hoosiers scoring 25 points with 9-of-19 field goal shooting and 7-of-9 at halftime. Jackson-Davis could not achieve the double-double, but he was Indiana’s best rebounder, with seven boards.

Race Thompson made some key plays down the stretch, and the Hoosiers as a team limited the Boilermakers to just 6-18 from deep as they closed out well all night on Purdue’s outside shots.

3. Turnovers and free throws

Turnovers are the key to winning games, and the Hoosiers capitalized on Boilermakers’ mistakes to fuel Indiana’s early double-digit advantage. The Hoosiers out scored Purdue 10-2 in transition.

Purdue’s final score shows that they have turned the ball over 16 against Indiana, Purdue averages ten turnovers a game and Indiana forced that many in the first half alone. The points-off-turnover battle was won by the Hoosiers 20-8.

It was a five-point game at the last buzzer despite Purdue’s 38-22 rebound advantage. However, the Boilermakers were only 10-of-17 at the foul line. Indiana was 15 of 18 at the stripe, making five more free throws.

4. Home-court advantage

“We fed off of that, especially in the first half,” Jackson-Davis said. “That was the most electric crowd I’ve been a part of since I’ve been here.” The crowd at Indiana had not been like this since the upset of Kentucky a decade ago, and it really boosted the Hoosiers at the start of the game and then again when things got tight at the end of the game. This was Pudues’ first road loss of the season, and the crowd seemed to affect them in the first half.

Indiana fans STORM the court as they upset No. 1 Purdue | ESPN College Basketball

5. A Freshman steps up

After a poor performance last time out, Jalen Hood Schifino asked for the ball in the final minutes and even wore the jersey as a cape at the post-game press conference. He was inconsistent as Freshman can be and sometimes tried to force the offense, but when the game was on the line, Schifino came through to help guide the Hoosiers to a huge win.

The Hoosiers React: Purdue

6) Indiana is headed in the right direction

When Coach Woodson took over the program, a culture change was needed. A little over a year later, that culture is changing. We saw the progression of this team last season as they made a run in the conference tournament and won an NCAA play-in game. This season we saw expectations, and for a time, this started to look like Archie Miller’s Hoosiers. That time is dead, and in the past, the Hoosiers showed precisely how tough a team they are under Coach Woodson.