ALBANY, N.Y. (WDRB) —The Big Ten basketball universe howled when Indiana backed up its second-place finish in the regular season by losing in the conference tournament semifinals last weekend in Chicago.
Another IU underachievement, which has become a tradition for a long stretch.
Every important Big Ten trophy was bound for Purdue. The Boilermakers cruised to the regular-season title by three full games. Conference tournament champs with ease. National player of the year (Zach Edey) in the middle of the lineup.
Somebody call rewrite.
Look who’s howling now?
And look who’s moving on in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. That’s what March can do to narratives.
On a night when the Indiana basketball team learned that Purdue, a No. 1 seed, lost to Fairleigh Dickinson, a 16-seed, less than an hour before they bounced onto the court at MVP Arena, the Hoosiers swiftly dispatched Kent State, 71-60, in a game that ended at 12:43 Saturday morning.
Indiana (23-11) advanced to the Round of 32 for the first time in seven years. They will play Miami, regular-season co-champions of the Atlantic Coast Conference here Sunday at 8:40 p.m. The winner will be rewarded with a spot in the Sweet Sixteen at the Midwest Regional in Kansas City.
Indiana looked like the team that was a fashionable pick to win the Big Ten — and not the fashionable pick to be upset by a 13-seed like Kent State.
Trayce Jackson-Davis, Indiana’s player of the year candidate, needed it. He won’t win national player of the year, primarily because the narrative was set that Edey was the game’s best player in January and because most of the major awards collect their ballots before the NCAA Tournament begins.
Against Kent State, Jackson-Davis did something no college player has done since blocks became an official category in 1986. He was the first player to have at least 20 points, 10 rebounds, 5 blocks and 5 assists — as Jackson-Davis actually delivered 24 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists and 5 dunks. Jackson-Davis also did not commit a foul.
Trayce Jackson-Davis of @IndianaMBB is the first player to have at least 20 points, 10 rebounds, 5 assists and 5 blocks in an NCAA Tournament game (since blocks became an official stat in 1985-86).
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) March 18, 2023
Kent State never saw anybody like him in the Mid-American Conference.
People who do not tune into college basketball until March will wonder why Jackson-Davis lost the player of the year award to Edey, a guy from a team that Indiana defeated twice and became only the second No. 1 seed to lose a first-round NCAA game.
“I just try do whatever to help my team win because I know they feed off my energy,” Jackson-Davis said. “So it was big, and then after that, I feel like everything was kind of smooth from there on out.”
Mike Woodson, the Hoosiers’ coach, needed it. After winning a First Four game last season, Woodson got the Hoosiers to a spot in the bracket the program has not seen in seven seasons.
A primary reason that Woodson replaced Archie Miller as the IU coach two years ago is that unlike the last four full-time Hoosier coaches Woodson played for Bob Knight. In other words, defense matters.
Against Kent State, Indiana defended the way that Bob Knight’s team regularly defended. Kent missed 47 of 69 field goal attempts.
That is 31.9%. That was Indiana’s best defensive field goal percentage this season. It was also Kent’s second-worst shooting percentage this season as well as the fewest points Kent scored since Feb. 4.
“At the end of the day, it was us against them, and someone's got to go home,” Jackson-Davis said. “We kind of shut them down, and that's what we had to do.”
“(Coach Knight) made it very clear when we played for him, and all the years that I've watched him coach, that defense wins championships,” Woodson said. “What better person to know that? He won three.
“I've seen it done at the highest level in the NBA, when we were at the Pistons, when we won it that year. So I know defense wins championships. I know if you commit yourself and you rebound the ball along with the defensive end, you'll put yourself in position to be in every game and have an opportunity to win.
“We knew coming in tonight we had to defend this team because they could score the ball. I thought for the most part we were solid all the way through, and we're going to need that the rest of the way.”
Woodson also was rewarded for his intense loyalty to Race Thompson and Miller Kopp, his senior forwards whose performances were erractic as IU split its last eight games.
Thompson scored four of IU’s first six field goals, while finishing with a season high 20 points. He made a pair of shots from distance after going 1 for 12 since Dec. 17.
“Really, I'm just thankful for my teammates always keeping me locked in,” Thompson said. “I’ve been banged up a lot this season, and if I can't practice, they always tell me it's going to be all right, just stick with it.”
Kopp showed up in a headband with the Adidas logo turned upside down for the first time this season — and you can be certain he will do it again against Miami.
He made 3 of 6 shots from deep after going 3 for 13 in the previous four games. His 13 points were the most Kopp scored since IU beat Purdue in West Lafayette.
But most of all, the Big Ten needed Indiana to win after the league started this tournament with Illinois, Iowa and Matt Painter’s once top-ranked Boilers pushed to the sidelines.
Northwestern, Michigan State, Penn State, Maryland and IU will play on — with the Hoosiers, a 4-seed, serving as the highest-ranked team in the group.
“We're hoop junkies,” Kopp said. “So we see all the games and upsets and stuff.”
And the tournament saw Friday night into Saturday morning was an Indiana team determined to avoid the Big Ten discard pile.
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