Indiana Basketball's Season Met its Inflection Point. Resilient Hoosiers Survived UCLA

LOS ANGELES — Trent Sisley pushed his right toe against the foul stripe, dribbled once, bent his knees and launched the biggest free throw of his young Indiana basketball career.

To his right, on the Hoosiers’ bench, Sisley’s teammates locked arms and leaned forward, the weight of a blown 10-point lead lingering on their shoulders and their hopes of survival resting in the freshman forward’s hands. Score even. Crowd loud. Clock down to 0.3 seconds.

Swish.

Indiana’s entire bench posse rose to its feet. Some swung their arms. Others flexed their muscles. No matter the manner, all celebrated after the Hoosiers faced their biggest inflection point, over 2,000 miles away from Bloomington, and emerged victorious.

Sisley’s free throw pushed Indiana (15–7, 6–5 Big Ten) to a 98–97 win over UCLA (15–7, 7–4 Big Ten) on Saturday at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles.

Indiana danced with death and came out unscathed. Better yet, the Hoosiers stared into the soul of defeat, rallied together and replaced a potential season-wrecking loss with a ceiling-raising win.

“Throughout the whole summer in practice, we've been taught to be resilient, to fight through everything and keep fighting,” junior guard Nick Dorn said postgame. “We came too far to slip away like that. I feel like that's our biggest advantage.”

After Dorn gave the Hoosiers a 71–61 lead with a 3-pointer inside of two minutes remaining, the outcome hardly appeared in doubt. Indiana, fresh off its first Quadrant 1 win of the season Tuesday against Purdue, seemed destined to get its second in less than a week.

Indiana coach Darian DeVries said he felt the Hoosiers had the game in their control.

But amid missed free throws and turnover-related struggles navigating UCLA’s press defense, the Hoosiers’ lead fell apart. The Bruins scratched back, and sophomore guard Trent Perry buried a contested 3-pointer at the top of the key with 1.1 seconds remaining to send the game to overtime.

Indiana’s situation could’ve easily spiraled. Fans inside Pauley Pavilion erupted louder than they had all day. UCLA held all the momentum. The Hoosiers were without starting point guard Conor Enright, who fouled out late in regulation.

Instead, Indiana rallied.

Senior guard Lamar Wilkerson hit a pair of key shots inside to erase a 3-point deficit with less than two minutes remaining, and senior forward Sam Alexis made a reverse layup with six seconds left to force double overtime.

After a back-and-forth stretch created three lead changes inside of the final minute, Indiana had 1.5 seconds and a baseline out-of-bounds play between itself and the glory of a road victory. Sisley, who hadn’t scored entering double overtime but made 2 free throws earlier in the period, drew a foul and knocked down his first free throw.

With it, Indiana’s lone in-state scholarship player sealed a dramatic, chaotic, nerve-wrenching, gut-checking win for the Hoosiers — one driven by seniors and finished by a freshman.

“I thought we had a bunch of veteran-type moments in there where it'd been really easy to just kind of give into it and (say), ‘It just wasn't our day, everything went wrong and poor is me,’” DeVries said postgame. “And they didn't do that.”

Indiana’s huddles, DeVries said, were great. Senior forward Tucker DeVries preached a mindset to focus on the next play, flush the horrors of the final two minutes of regulation and try to reset their minds after a stretch that didn’t end how Indiana wanted.

The Hoosiers knew they couldn’t go back in time and fix the mistakes that led to their blown lead. But they knew time, and chance, existed to right their wrongs.

But Indiana had to do it shorthanded. Junior guard Jasai Miles and senior forward Reed Bailey, who scored 24 points and made several big plays in the second half, both fouled out in the first overtime. The Hoosiers only gave minutes to eight plays Saturday, and three were ineligible in double overtime.

DeVries said Indiana had to put players in spots they’d never been before. There were different roles, different positions, different responsibilities — but an unrelenting desire to keep fighting and a prepration to respond when opportunity called.

“Incredibly proud of them,” DeVries said. “They're just playing their guts out right now, and that's what I love about them. They're just giving us everything they got and they left it all out there. Fortunately, we were able to come away with a win.”

After losing four straight games in the middle of January, Indiana has won three consecutive games. The Hoosiers, Sisley said, are starting to bond together. They’ve made strides on and off the floor over the past week-and-a-half, and they’ve significantly boosted an NCAA Tournament resume that desperately needed quality wins.

Indiana had its character and togetherness tested Saturday. Sisley feels the Hoosiers aced it.

“Everyone just did a good job of sticking together,” Sisley said. “It's really just that — sticking together and then having confidence in each other.”

The Hoosiers played without starting guard Tayton Conerway, who’s battling an ankle injury, for the second consecutive game. Their depth was challenged. They rose to the occasion.

Dorn led the team with 26 points, his third straight game with 18 or more points. Wilkerson matched Bailey with 24 points, while Tucker DeVries nearly recorded a triple-double with 9 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.

Indiana, Darian DeVries said, needed everybody Saturday afternoon. The Hoosiers have their stars, but they’ve morphed into a collectively strong organism — one that keeps building the more it stacks wins.

“From top to bottom, everybody had a significant part in the game, and I feel like that just shows how connected we are as a team and how we're growing as a team,” Dorn said. “We also learned to play with each other even more. It's just getting even more crisp every time we step out on the court.”

Indiana has an experienced roster. The Hoosiers played six seniors and two juniors Saturday, while Sisley was the lone underclassmen who saw the floor. With experience comes wisdom and poise, necessary traits to win on the road and prevent mistakes from compounding into an untenable abyss.

But Indiana is young in time-on-task. Apart from Enright and Tucker DeVries, none of the Hoosiers had played with each other before last summer.

And after blowing a 16-point second-half lead against Nebraska on Jan. 10 and allowing a 28–7 run run to Michigan State on Jan. 13, Darian DeVries noted he was surprised his senior-heavy team wasn’t better at preventing games from spiraling.

Saturday in Los Angeles, the Hoosiers crumbled again — but this time, with lessons learned from past defeats, they recovered. Perhaps more importantly, Indiana added another diamond to its armor and another piece of evidence it can withstand anything, no matter the crowd, scenario or stakes attached to it.

“I think for a group that hasn't been together a long time in these moments,” Darian DeVries said, “it's one more thing we have to draw back from that we can learn from.”

Indiana won’t soon forget Saturday in Los Angeles, a day the Hoosiers had a road upset secured, then appeared poised to lose a heartbreaker. A day the Hoosiers had every reason to quit, but never let themselves.

Saturday, the day Indiana basketball proved it has a strong chance at the NCAA Tournament — and has, by and large, matured to a new level.

“We're serious,” Dorn said about what Indiana proved. “Some people could talk in the media and things like that, but we don't pay attention to that. We just go to work every day, put our heads down, and keep grinding.”