‘Our biggest thing is really trying to focus on competing and staying in the moment’: Indiana basketball steals first quad one victory on road against Ohio State

After one of their worst halves of the season on Saturday against Penn State, Indiana basketball followed it with another appalling display in the first half against Ohio State. They found themselves trailing by 13 points to a Buckeye team that had lost seven of their eight games.

The deficit ballooned up to 18 early in the second half before the Hoosiers began to chip away. Indiana found themselves trailing 65-53 with 7:42 left in the game and from there they took full control of the game. An 18-4 run gave them a two-point lead with just over two minutes to go.

Ohio State would take the lead back at 73-71 with less than forty seconds, giving Indiana one final chance. With 25 seconds left, Trey Galloway drove to the basket and found Anthony Leal open in the corner and the Bloomington native buried the go-ahead three giving Indiana the lead.

The Hoosiers would hold onto the lead en route to a 76-73 win over Ohio State, their first quad-one victory of the season. Before the win, Indiana basketball was 0-7 in quad-one games on the season.

At halftime, Indiana looked like a team that had completely given up on their season after a brutal home loss against Penn State the weekend before, but something flipped and the Hoosiers were able to turn it on in the second half and rally back for the win.

“When I played, Coach [Knight] always put it on the senior guys to lead and do the things that help us win,” Mike Woodson said about the comeback. “… I thought tonight [Trey Galloway] was huge.”

There were many opportunities for Indiana to throw in the towel and quit, but they never wavered and continued to fight back.

“I think sticking together because we could have easily gone the other way,” Galloway said postgame about the mindset during the comeback. “I think our biggest thing is really trying to focus on competing and staying in the moment. The first half was rough, but there are a lot of ups and downs. It’s a full 40-minute game so I thought we did a great job of sticking together and fighting and having some resiliency.

A big reason for the deficit was Indiana’s offensive performance in the first half. Indiana scored only 29 points in the first half while shooting 33.3 percent from the field. The Hoosiers averaged .806 points per possession, only having one more made field goal (nine) than total turnovers (eight) in the half.

In the second half, Indiana scored 47 points while shooting 55.2 percent from the field and averaged 1.567 points per possession. Trey Galloway played a huge role in the second-half improvement. Galloway played the entire second half and had 19 points, 4 assists and 4 rebounds in the half. He finished the game with 25 points on 9-of-15 from the field.

“[Galloway] stepped up, he wanted the ball,” Woodson said. “We put him in a lot of situations where he could have the ball in his hand and run pick and rolls and make plays. He delivered.”

Watch: Extended highlights of 18-point comeback win for Indiana basketball over Ohio State

The two-man game between Galloway and Malik Reneau sparked the offense for Indiana basketball. Galloway consistently made the right reads with the ball in his hands and found Reneau often. Reneau had 16 points and 5 rebounds in the second half while shooting 6-of-8 from the field.

He finished the game with 26 points on 8-of-15 shooting and 10-of-15 from the free throw line. He also added 14 rebounds in the win.

With Indiana trailing by two, Woodson gave the ball to Galloway and he delivered the game-winning assist to Anthony Leal who made the go-ahead three.

“I trust him and he trusts me,” Galloway said about Leal’s three. “I think that combination and that trust we have for each other is special and I trusted him with the shot. … I want him to shoot that 10 times out of 10.”

Leal’s only field goal attempt of the game wound up being the biggest of the game as Indiana stole this game from the Buckeyes.

“Keep chipping away, chipping away, chipping away,” Leal said postgame. “And eventually if we keep doing that the momentum will swing in our favor and we’ll figure out how to win.”

Indiana’s defensive improvement was another huge aspect of the second-half comeback.

“Our defense was solid the second half, you hold this team to 31 points,” Woodson said. “That was the difference in getting back into the ball game.”

After scoring 42 points on 50.0 percent shooting in the first half, Ohio State’s offense stalled in the second half. Indiana turned the intensity up and held them to 32.0 percent from the field and .969 points per possession.

When Indiana basketball shows up on the defensive end, they have proven they can compete with anyone, but the lack of consistency has been the issue. In games Indiana has allowed less than 80 points, they are 12-4 on the season. The Hoosiers are 2-5 when allowing at least 80 points.

“Trusting in each other, that was a huge thing. Taking it one possession at a time and getting those crucial stops down the stretch,” Malik Reneau said. “Cutting into the lead and setting goals through those media timeouts like ‘cut it to 10 (points), cut it to six, tie the game now. Okay we have a chance to win the game now’ and then we did.”

In the past, defense had been the calling card of Mike Woodson’s Indiana teams, but that has not been the case this year. If Indiana basketball is going to make a late run, they are going to have to string together more defensive performances like the one in the second half against Ohio State.

They’ll get an opportunity to do so when they travel to West Lafayette to face Purdue, where they will be looking to avenge the 21-point loss they suffered earlier this year.

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