My Two Cents: Trayce Jackson-Davis Didn't Let Slow Start Keep Him Down
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Trayce Jackson-Davis was horrible in the first half Monday, and that was a unanimous opinion. Even Jackson-Davis himself weighed in.
"It wasn't good. You're missing shots and you're just not able to have easy ones fall,'' Jackson-Davis said. "You start to get lackadaisical when they don't go in. It was like in the first half, we couldn't do anything. We couldn't even score.''
His coach, Archie Miller, concurred.
"I didn’t think he could have played any weaker around the rim in the first half,'' Miller said of his best player.
Ouch.
Thankfully, college basketball is a 40-minute game, and when Jackson-Davis got it going, his teammates came along for the ride, erasing a nine-point second-half deficit to beat Maryland 63-55 on Monday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
Jackson-Davis' first half was bad. He was just 2-for-9 from the field and not only seemed a bit confused, but he also missed some open shots at the rim. Indiana had just 21 first-half points.
"Our first half, we worked hard coming in against the zone and I thought we weren't as sharp against the zone,'' Miller said. "To be honest, we have to get Trayce moving more. He has to get going earlier in the game for us to be successful in the first half. He is such an important guy. When he goes 2-for-9 and we go 0-for-9 from three in the first half, we can't do much worse, but it was a 27-21 game, so it was OK. ''
Miller thought Jackson-Davis was overthinking things early, and that's not always a good thing. But what is a good thing is that he has this unusual level of maturity. He knew a bounce-back second half was coming.
"He is a guy who really thinks about the game coming in, and he was worried about the double teams a few times,'' Miller said. "He told me a few times that he felt it was coming, but it didn't come, so he was able to finish off quickly.
"At halftime, he was fine. He looked at me and said he was ready to go. That's just who he is. He's a guy who has the ability to respond because he cares a lot. He was a much different player in the second half and he had a big impact on the game. Moving forward, hopefully we can get him going earlier, especially around the basket. I think that is what frustrated him the most. He had a lot around the rim that did not go in.''
The second half was a completely different story. It was 34-25 Maryland with 15:55 to go when the script flipped. Indiana simply took over the game, and they did it on the boards, with Jackson-Davis and Race Thompson dominating. Both had double-doubles, with Jackson-Davis going for 22 points and 15 rebounds and Thompson having 13 and 11.
"Really, my shots just weren't falling in the first half, but at halftime, coach just put the emphasis on continuing to attack the basket. He told me those shots are going to start falling like every day in practice, so just never lose your confidence. We got going to get that rhythm, and that's what we ended up doing in the second half.
"I thought in the second half, after I saw a few drop, it helped, especially going into the offensive glass and being able to get a few easy ones, I thought it really helped me get into a rhythm, and made being able to score over top of them easier.''
Jackson-Davis was 7-for-9 in the second half and made 3-of-4 free throws. He had nine rebounds in the half, four of them on the offensive end that led directly to baskets. Indiana won the rebounding battle 43-33, which doesn't happen often with this team.
"Trayce Jackson-Davis took over the game on the offensive end, especially with his offensive rebounding,'' Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said. "That really got him going, got their team going. We just weren't physical enough on our box outs in that game, and he just took over that way. ''
Miller called it "a big-man rebounding game,'' and Jackson-Davis and Thompson definitely answered the bell. They helped Indiana get a lead, and when it was 47-45 with eight minutes to go, their defense and rebounding helped close out the game. Maryland went more than six minutes without a point, going 0-for-7 with three turnovers on nine consecutive possessions.
"The second half is when we really turned it up, so props to our guys,'' Jackson-Davis said. "Coach told us it was time to lock in and I thought we did really well. We did a really good job guarding the ball and just keeping some of their guys in check. We made them take some tough shots, and I thought we did a pretty decent job with guarding.''
Jackson-Davis tweaked his knee late in the game on a drive to the basket, and it was obvious he was in pain. But he also wasn't coming out. He's a warrior.
"Yeah, I hurt my knee. There was just a lot of time left in the game. I just knew that at this point in the game, I could not come out,'' he said. "I was just trying to play as hard as I can. I think getting hurt even made me more focused on my area of play. I was just trying to help my teammates get this win. Coach looked at me, and I said 'I'm good, do not take me out.' ''
Indiana is a completely different team when Jackson-Davis and Thompson are both having big games simultaneously.
"Race and Trayce really started to get after it there (in the second half. We were able to break the game open with a couple of big swings, move the ball, made a couple of big opportunistic shots and drives,'' Miller said. "When Trayce and Race rebound like that offensively and defensively we are a much better team.
"Tonight was a big-guy rebounding game. Our big guys did a good job. Those two guys got 18 defensive rebounds between the two of them, and that was really important. Trayce was big, he obviously flipped it around in the second half, which is what good players do. In the second half, he was much more himself jumping, rebounding, offensive stick-backs, he got fouled and really has a great second half for us.''
During those final 15 minutes, Indiana outscored Maryland 38-19, and it might have been the best 15-minute stretch of the year. Jackson-Davis carried them offensively, but it was that six-minute stretch where Maryland didn't score that made the difference.
Indiana had blown leads in three straight games, and they talked about that for four straight days in practice. That had to change, and it did.
Now Indiana is back to .500 in the league and 7-4 overall. They are, without question, still an imperfect team. There are missing pieces, especially now that Armaan Franklin went out with an ankle injury early in the game and Joey Brunk is out for a while now after back surgery.
But they found a way to win Monday, and they'll now need to continue doing it. Wins are hard to come by in the Big Ten, so they're all big.
This one was big, too. Leaders lead, and that's exactly what Jackson-Davis did Monday night. It took a while, but he dominated when it mattered the most.
