Hoosiers Hold Off Irish
Prior to Saturday’s Crossroads Classic game against Indiana at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey told ESPN announcers that the Irish’s defensive gameplan would give the Hoosiers room to shoot and if they hit 10 threes, he would just get back on the bus and grab himself some eggnog.
The Hoosiers didn’t hit 10 threes, they hit five, but Amaan Franklin’s triple with 15.7 seconds to play was the biggest play of Indiana’s 62-60 win over the Irish.
Notre Dame dropped to 8-4 on the season while Indiana improved to 11-1.
Much of the game was ugly for Notre Dame and Brey probably would have gone for something stiffer than eggnog as he watched his own squad’s effort from behind the arc, at least until Dane Goodwin swished a three with nine minutes to play.
The Irish made just 3 of 22 three-pointers before Goodwin’s make, which helped key a huge second-half surge that saw Notre Dame overcome a 17-point deficit.
Notre Dame led by five, 59-54, with under four minutes to play before Franklin cut that to two with a three-pointer. A dunk by Indiana’s Trayce Jackson-Davis a minute and a half later tied the game 59-59. The Irish moved back ahead when Prentiss Hubb made a free throw with 35 seconds left before Franklin’s corner three 20 seconds later.
Goodwin and John Mooney led the Irish with 15 points apiece while Juwan Durham added 11 and Nate Laszewski 10. Mooney and Laszewski grabbed 10 rebounds apiece.
Trailing 34-23 at intermission, the Irish started the second half the way they started the first half, cold. They didn’t score a point in the first 3-plus minutes as Indiana stretched its lead to 17, 40-23.
Notre Dame didn’t fold, though, going on a 13-6 run that included five points by Goodwin and four from Laszewski. A jumper by Hubb made it 46-36 eight minutes into the half. Goodwin swished a three with nine minutes to play and then converted a fast break layup a minute later to cut that lead to 48-45.
The Hoosiers stretched that advantage back to seven, but the Irish responded with a 12-0 run, including a three-pointer from Mooney that brought them within two and another triple from Goodwin that gave them their first lead of the game, 55-54, with five minutes to play. A layup by Hubb and a pair of free throws from Mooney stretched that lead to five with under four to play.
But the Irish would be outscored 8-1 in the final couple minutes.
Franklin finished with 17 points, draining four of his five three-point attempts, to lead Indiana. Joey Brunk was a force on the inside for the Hoosiers along with Jackson-Davis. Brunk scored nine points and grabbed 14 rebounds while Jackson-Davis scored 14 points and pulled down seven boards.
Both teams started the game sloppy, combining to miss their first seven shots, but it was the Hoosiers who snapped out of the funk first, scoring the game’s first seven points, including an inside hoop by Jackson-Davis and a three-pointer by Devonte Green.
The Irish scored six of the next eight points, three apiece by Mooney and Laszewski, to cut Indiana’s lead to three, 9-6, with 14:22 to play in the first half.
After the Hoosiers stretched the lead to seven on a dunk from Justin Smith, it was Durham who scored seven of the Irish’s next 10 points to cut it to a one-point game, 17-16, with just under eight minutes remaining in the half.
That’s when Franklin came alive, draining a triple and then swishing three free throws on back-to-back possessions. Brunk made a pair of hoops inside to cap the 10-0 Hoosier run. TJ Gibbs brought the lead to single-digits twice with two buckets, but another Franklin three made it 32-20 with less than three minutes to go in the half.
Laszewski drained a three-pointer out of a timeout to bring it back down to single-digits, but his two first-half threes were the only ones the Irish made of 15 attempts in the first half.
A layup by Indiana’s Jerome Hunter with 90 seconds to play was the final bucket of the half as the Hoosiers took a 34-23 lead into the break.
In addition to shooting 2-for-15 from behind the arc, the Irish were just 6-for-14 from two-point range for an overall 27.6 field goal percentage.
Indiana made a third of its threes (3-for-9) and shot 46.7 percent overall in the first half. The Hoosiers also outrebounded Notre Dame 26-14 in the opening stanza.
Durham had seven points while Mooney and Laszewski had six apiece to lead the Irish in the first half. Franklin had nine for Indiana while Brunk scored and eight and grabbed 10 rebounds.
