No. 13 Indiana rallies past No. 2 Ohio St. 74-70

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP)—Indiana is starting to make a habit of beating these highly ranked teams.

On Saturday, they didn’t need a buzzer-beating shot to win, and they didn’t even storm the court afterward.

Victor Oladipo scored the go-ahead basket on a fast-break layup with 36 seconds left Saturday and No. 13 Indiana upset

No. 2 Ohio State 74-70, the first time Indiana has defeated the nation’s top two teams in the same season.

“They’ve been punking us the past couple years and we realized that,” Oladipo said after scoring 15 points. “This

year we had to go toe-to-toe with them.”
Instead of backing down, the Hoosiers (13-1, 1-1 Big Ten) added another chapter to the program’s rapid re-emergence.

The 12-0 start was the fourth in school history and the first since the 1975-76 Hoosiers wound up as the last undefeated

national champions.

The win over Kentucky three weeks ago was only the second time the Hoosiers had beaten a No. 1 team at Assembly Hall.

Now, Indiana becomes the ninth team since 1996-97 to beat both a No. 1 and a No. 2 in one season, and it joins Kansas in

2007-08 and Louisville in 2003-04 as the only teams over that span to achieve the feat in the same month. Only Louisville

did it during the regular season.

But Saturday’s celebration paled in comparison with the storm-the-court stampede following the Kentucky upset.

Part of the explanation was that the students were still on holiday break. The other reason: It wasn’t as big a

surprise.

“They (the players) just kept giving us (coaches) confidence,” Indiana coach Tom Crean said. “They came to every

timeout, they were totally locked in and at the 7:38 mark, you could just see it in their eyes they were so locked in.

They matched the Ohio State toughness and energy.”

The Hoosiers were far from perfect.

They shot 45.8 percent from the field, about 5 percentage points below their season average. They got outrebounded 35-28

and missed the same number of free throws (seven) as Ohio State. Foul trouble limited freshman center Cody Zeller, the

engineer of Indiana’s turnaround, to only 21 minutes, and he fouled out with 2:24 to go.

But Indiana was still good enough.

The Hoosiers forced 17 turnovers and even with Zeller sitting out, somehow managed to outscore the bigger Buckeyes 38-34

in the paint.

“It came down to us not being able to get a stop,” Ohio State guard Aaron Craft said. “Give them credit, they just

kept coming back and coming back and knocking down big shot after big shot.”

Craft led the Buckeyes (13-2, 1-1) with 16 points. Jared Sullinger had 15 points and nine rebounds, and William Buford

finished with 12 points but missed a possible go-ahead 3-pointer with about 5 seconds to play.

Ohio State, which spent most of the game in foul trouble, never really looked like itself.

Sullinger, Buford and Deshaun Thomas combined to play only 29 minutes in the first half after each picked up their second

fouls. Buford picked up two more in the first 3:32 of the second half, and Thomas picked up his third with 17:21 left in

the game.

That forced coach Thad Matta to mix-and-match his rotations in hopes of keeping a five-game winning streak alive.

“It was obviously a difficult challenge,” said Matta, who won a school-record six straight over the Hoosiers before
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Saturday. “I thought we put ourselves in a pretty decent position.”

Jordan Hulls, who had 17 points, and Verdell Jones, who had 14 points, just wouldn’t let Ohio State pull away.

When the Buckeyes rallied from a 33-32 halftime deficit to take a 44-41 lead, it looked like they might get rolling.

Instead, the Hoosiers fought back. And when Lenzelle Smith Jr. made Ohio State’s first 3-pointer of the game, to give

the Buckeyes a 51-47 lead with 10:39 to go, Indiana answered with four straight points to tie it.

It was that kind of night.

In the final 5 1/2 minutes, there were 10 ties or lead changes, including the three-point play from Sullinger that gave

Ohio State a 68-67 lead and sent Zeller to the bench for good.

“It had the same effect as Kansas,” Sullinger said. “You walk off the floor, they hang an `L’ on you and your ears

are ringing because the fans are so loud.”

Jones answered with a layup for the Hoosiers, and Thomas countered with a 15-footer to give Ohio State a 70-69 lead.

From that point on, it was all about defense.

The Hoosiers didn’t give up another point and took advantage after forcing another Buckeye turnover. Hulls deflected the

pass, Jones picked it off and tossed it to Oladipo for the layup with 36 seconds left to make it 71-70.

Indiana closed it out with a free throw from Hulls, Watford’s rebound of Buford’s errant shot and two more free throws
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from Watford.

“They gave us pumpkin heads the past few years,” Jones said. “To finally to get over that hump and get the `W,’ that

’s huge for this team.”