ODDSMAKER Rick McColley says “it’s been a long time since the glory days of IU basketball’. Think Bobby Knight. These days Kentucky Wildcat coach John Calipari doesn’t want anything more to do with Assembly Hall on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. He won’t even play there. Now Roy Williams understands why. The North Carolina coach brought his remade Tar Heels to this historic on-campus arena and took a historic beating late Tuesday. The game was the marquee matchup of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. In actuality, it was a mismatch. Final score: No. 1 Indiana 83, No. 12 North Carolina 59. And it really didn’t feel that close because Indiana led by as many as 32 in the second half.
“It was a huge statement. … You saw the score,” said Indiana junior Will Sheehey. “We played hard. We played well. We played together.”
It basically boiled down to one team looking like a roster full of talented veterans playing in front of a raucous home crowd while the other looked like a group of mostly inexperienced players still trying to find their identities after losing four teammates who were top-20 picks in last June’s NBA Draft.
“It wasn’t a very good night for us,” Coach Williams said. “I have to congratulate Indiana, and, boy, I would have loved to have watched them play if it wasn’t against my team.”
The Hoosiers took a contest that was once tied at 31 — the score really was tied with five minutes remaining in the first half, if you can believe that — and made it a blowout by scoring 52 of the game’s next 72 points. They did it with terrific perimeter defense from Yogi Ferrell and Victor Oladipo. There were some explosive IU fastbreaks that multiple times led to easy dunks for Cody Zeller who finished with 20 points, eight rebounds and four blocks in 28 minutes.
“Cody out-ran us a couple of times, and I thought I was watching his middle brother Tyler Zeller”, the former Tar Heel, currently playing in the NBA for the Cleveland Cavaliers, “because that’s what he used to do for us,” Williams said.
“I even told the guys at halftime, ‘That’s what I’m trying to get you to do.”
When asked if IU is the nation’s No. 1 team. “I think they are,” Williams answered. “The thing I like about them is that they really are a team. They don’t have one guy that beats you up. They beat you up so many different ways.”
They certainly do. Welcome back Hoosiers!
