National Basketball Association
Indiana 89, Northwestern 57
When: 12:00 PM ET, Saturday, January 23, 2016
Where: Assembly Hall, Bloomington, Indiana
Officials:
# Lewis Garrison, # Terry Wymer, # Paul Szelc
Attendance:
17472
By The Sports Xchange
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- There are plenty of reasons why Indiana is on a 12-game winning streak since last losing on the road at Duke early in December.
The Hoosiers are shooting the ball better and playing a much higher level of defense. But a big key has been IU's ability to share the ball. In the last two games alone, Indiana has 48 assists on 67 baskets.
Senior guard Yogi Ferrell scored 17 points and dished out six assists Saturday as No. 25 Indiana continued its dominance in Big Ten play with an easy 89-57 victory over Northwestern at Assembly Hall.
With the victory, the Hoosiers (17-3) improved to 7-0 in Big Ten play. The last time that Indiana opened the Big Ten winning its first seven games was the 1992-93 season when the Hoosiers went 17-1 in conference play.
Indiana is also 12-0 at Assembly Hall.
Indiana Tom Crean said he has just seen his team look more and more confident with each game it plays. And he said the sharing of the basketball has been an area where he has seen that the most.
"The more simple we can be in our passing and the more active we can be in our cutting the better that we are," Crean said. "In the last week we've been really good at being on time and on target and that's so crucial. It's one thing to have a passing mindset but it's something else to have that level of accuracy."
Northwestern coach Chris Collins said Indiana is playing as confident as any team in the Big Ten.
"I love the way their confidence is high," Collins said. "You couldn't really tell but sometimes when you lose some games early in the year you aren't as confident. You can see it when they walk out when they're warming up that they are really confident right now. They seem to have a great chemistry. I can't speak for what it was like early in the year because I wasn't around but I love the way they share the ball. They are very unselfish and they don't really care who gets the shots. The ball is moving."
Senior forward Max Bielfeldt, a transfer from Michigan, agreed that it is a product of players feeling comfortable with each other.
"We're moving the ball and we're making simple plays," said Bielfeldt, who had 13 points and four rebounds. "We're finding shooters, and with that movement guys are getting open more."
Bielfeldt, who is averaging 8.2 points per game, had his third game in a row in double figure scoring and his 11th for the season.
The game also marked the third consecutive home game when Indiana had at least a 30-point lead. Indiana also posted back-to-back wins of 30 points or more in Big Ten play for the first time since the 2001-02 season.
Forward Collin Hartman had 11 points and forward Troy Williams had nine points, seven rebounds and four assists.
Center Alex Olah scored 19 points and Tre Demps added 17 for Northwestern (15-6, 3-5 Big Ten). The Wildcats have dropped three games in a row.
One game after the Hoosiers broke the school record with 19 3-pointers on Tuesday against Illinois, the Hoosiers were 13-for-28 on 3-pointers against Northwestern. That makes 32 3-point field goals out of 64 attempts in the last two games alone.
"They're a hard team to guard especially in this building," Collins said. "It's a special environment. They have five guys who can put it on the floor and if you can't control the dribble and you're constantly in rotation, they can expose any defense and ours just happened to be the next one in line."
Northwestern came into the game ranked second in the Big Ten in offensive rebounds at 12.9 per game. The Wildcats had outrebounded 11 of their last 13 opponents overall. Against Indiana, Northwestern had five offensive rebounds. Indiana held a commanding 40-23 edge in rebounds.
Another surprising statistic is that none of those five offensive rebounds led to points. Indiana had a 14-0 edge in second chance points.
Indiana jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first three plus minutes as both Hartman and guard Robert Johnson knocked down 3-pointers. A jam by center Thomas Bryant made it 10-0 and forced Northwestern to call timeout.
The closest the Wildcats would get from that point on was four at 13-9 following an inside shot by Olah.
Indiana used an 11-0 run late the half to take its biggest lead of the first half at 19 points at 41-22. Demps hit a contested shot at the shot clock buzzer with 4.3 seconds to play to cut the Indiana lead to 17 at the break, 43-26.
Indiana shot 53 percent from the field which marks the 13th time the Hoosiers have surpassed 50 percent shooting from the field this season.
NOTES: On Tuesday, G Yogi Ferrell broke the Indiana career assists record by passing Michael Lewis, who had the previous record from 1997-2000. Before the game began, Lewis appeared via a video on the message board congratulating Ferrell on the feat. Lewis is now an assistant coach at Butler. ... Indiana has now made at least 10 3-pointers in a game in 12 games this season. ... The last time Indiana won back-to-back Big Ten games by at least 20 points was the 2006-07 season when the Hoosiers beat both Michigan State and Purdue by more than 20. ... Northwestern had defeated Indiana in three of its previous five trips to Assembly Hall before losing on Saturday.
Top Game Performances
Northwestern |
|
Indiana |
Alex Olah 19 |
Scoring |
Yogi Ferrell 17 |
Bryant McIntosh 6 |
Assists |
Yogi Ferrell 6 |
Bryant McIntosh 6 |
Rebounds |
Troy Williams 7 |
Dererk Pardon 1 |
Free Throws Made |
Max Bielfeldt 6 |
Sanjay Lumpkin 1 |
Steals |
Robert Johnson 2 |
Alex Olah 1 |
Blocks |
OG Anunoby 1 |
Team Stats Summary
Team |
Points |
FG% |
3PM-3PA |
FTM-FTA |
Assists |
Rebounds |
Blocks |
Steals |
Turnovers |
Northwestern
|
57 |
45.5 |
5-15 |
2-8 |
12 |
19 |
2 |
3 |
12 |
Indiana
|
89 |
52.6 |
13-28 |
16-20 |
21 |
38 |
3 |
6 |
10 |