CRAWFORD | Phantastic Phinish: Phinisee's buzzer beater boosts Indiana past Butler

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WDRB) – In this young season, the scouting report on the Indiana University basketball team should have this nugget in bold print, all caps, underlined (twice): When you have the Hoosiers down, you’d better not rest.

The heart-attack Hoosiers attacked again in the late going against in-state rival Butler, erasing an nine-point deficit in the final nine minutes and prevailing on a 35-foot buzzer-beater by point guard Rob Phinisee to stun the Bulldogs 71-68.

As Phinisee’s shot swished through, teammates mobbed him at midcourt and swallowed him up, dragged him in a scrum to the opposite free-throw lane, dogpiled on him in a corner, and smiled all the way back to Bloomington with their fourth consecutive win of three points or less.

“Our guys, for whatever reason, keep finding ways to muddy it up,” Indiana coach Archie Miller said. “We keep feeling the same ways in these huddles late in games. Some days it’s the same guys, sometimes it’s different. . . . Rob obviously will be the hero, but Juwan Morgan had as good a game as I’ve been involved in in a long time.”

Morgan was unstoppable inside and out. He finished with a career-high 35 points, was 12-14 from the field, 4-6 from three-point range and 7-7 from the line. He was the main reason Indiana was in the game after being outscored 14-3 off turnovers through the first 34 minutes. Oh, and he also became the 53rd IU player to cross the 1,000-point threshold.

Butler coach LaVall Jordan, asked about Morgan, decided understatement was the way to go.

“If he’s hitting threes, he’s a real problem,” Jordan said. “We know how good he is inside. He got a lot of work done in there. But if he’s hitting free throws, and then he stepped out and hit some threes. I think it was just his competitive will, and you love to have guys like that.”

Indiana came up short on three straight chances to take the lead with around six minutes to play, and finally went ahead on a Morgan layup, the last of six straight points he scored, to go up 66-64 with 3:05 to play.

Still, it came down once again to the final possession. In a timeout with 18 seconds left, Miller drew up a play to set a screen and get freshman Romeo Langford the ball. Butler wasn’t about to allow it.

“They definitely blew the play up,” Miller said. “We weren’t strong enough to execute it and couldn’t get the ball where we wanted to, and that’s something we’ll have to keep working on.”

From his standpoint on the court, Phinisee’s analysis was a bit more blunt.

“Obviously, it wasn’t drawn up like that,” he said. “ . . . Just threw it up, and prayed to God it went in.”

Prayers do sometimes get answered. In fact, they’ve been answered quite a bit lately where the Hoosiers are concerned.

“We’d like to get some that don’t come down to the last 10 seconds,” Morgan said. “Gut at the same time it’s these that you grind out that feel the best.”

Langford finished with 13 points and a team-best seven rebounds in the game. Phinisee finished with nine.

Butler was led by Sean McDermott with 20 points and Kamar Baldwin added 16.

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