Hoosiers win, 68-55. Instead of coming off of an embarrassing loss, the Hoosiers came into College Park after a convincing win over Penn State. The bigger news of the day was Rob Phinisee and his leg injury. Rob was seen in a boot during the game, despite no official time-table on when his return will be. Taking over much of his minutes this afternoon was Tamar Bates and Khristian Lander. It was a combined effort from the backup guards to take the minutes Rob had seen the past few games.
The Hoosiers started out a little weak by letting Maryland go on an 8-0 run. This time, the Hoosiers quickly responded with their own 13-0 run to take their first lead just over 5 minutes into the game. The game started to settle down at 15-11 Hoosiers after the under-12 timeout mark.
Khristian Lander came in for the first time since December 22, 2021 against Northern Kentucky. Lander, Galloway, and Bates were the backup guards that came in as Rob was injured. An interesting lineup was used as those three played with Geronimo and Thompson. That was the first time this lineup was used this season. Later in the game, Trayce would replace Race for the same result.
The rest of the first half was a lot of back and forth between both teams. 9 lead changes between the two teams for the half, with 46 seconds of a tied game. Hoosiers led for 10:12 and Maryland led for 9:02. Xavier Johnson had 7 assists in the first half while Trayce had 12 points and 6 rebounds in only 20 minutes of play. Indiana finished the half with their largest lead of the game to this point, 33-26.
The Hoosiers are -42 in the second half against Big Ten opponents. They did not start out the half trying to add onto that statistic. A couple of 3’s made by Miller Kopp and some nice defense extended Indiana’s lead to 11 by the first TV timeout. Hoosiers kept extending the lead as the media timeouts passed. Race Thompson made his 2nd three-pointer of the game, adding to his three-game streak of scoring a three-pointer. Maryland’s success beyond the arc was a different story. The Terps finished the game 6-26, a 23.1% clip.
Maryland continued to fight, not letting Indiana pull away completely. For a while, the game stayed at a 10-15 point lead for the Hoosiers. The referees began to call a closer game, to the pace compared to the first half started to slow down. This only happened for a little before everything began to break Indiana’s way.
