By Mark Bennett
In retrospect, Evansville Coach Jim Crews
sounded like Nostradamus on Friday afternoon.
"Everyone's always a bad sprained ankle
away from disaster. So you never know. That's what makes it interesting,"
Crews said.
At 8:30 that night, he found out his 6-foot,
10-inch leading scorer and rebounder Dan Lytle would miss at
least the next four weeks of the Missouri Valley Conference basketball
season, and maybe more, with a knee injury and faces surgery
Monday. And then Saturday evening, disaster manifested itself
in historic proportions on the Hulman Center court.
In a shooting display that, at times, seemed
like two Titanics steaming toward each other, a gritty defensive
performance by Djibril Kante and his teammates rescued Indiana
State and sank Crews' Purple Aces on Saturday. The Sycamores
beat Evansville 45-40. No ISU opponent had scored fewer points
since Dec. 2, 1950, when St. Joseph's lost 64-38 in the since
burned down State College Gym at Seventh and Chestnut streets
during the Truman administration.
And for a Sycamore team that had lost five
straight games and its leading scorer -- Kelyn Block -- to a
knee injury earlier in the week, just plain winning felt good.
"I'm proud of the guys," Kante said.
"I mean it wasn't a pretty win. We didn't hit any shots
or hit any free throws. But our defense held and it won for us."
As for the shooting, Kante was exaggerating
a little. The Sycamores (3-9 overall, 1-2 in the MVC) did hit
16 field goals out of 48 attempts, or 33 percent. And just 12
of their 25 free throws dropped in, giving ISU its lowest point
total since a 53-36 cover-your-eyes loss to Bradley on Feb. 17,
1993.
But the Aces (3-9, 0-3) were even less accurate,
sinking just 16 of their 57 shots. That's 28 percent. In fact,
at one point in the first half, Evansville went 9 minutes and
4 seconds without scoring.
Crews attributed the teams' scoring problems
to hustling defensive play and lineup shuffling in the absence
of the two leading scorers -- Lytle for the Aces and Block for
the Sycamores.
"Both teams played extremely hard. I
think both teams made it difficult to get good looks. And there
were times that both teams had good looks and didn't complete
the good looks," he said.
And the results didn't look too good, except
in ISU's win column.
"A W's a W," said Sycamore freshman
guard Lamar Grimes, who led ISU with 11 points, matching Evansville
reserve forward Clint Cuffle as the game's only two double-figure
scorers.
"Pretty or ugly, babe," Kante said,
laughing as he patted Grimes on the shoulder, "whether it
looks like me or like Lamar, it's still pretty."
There was indeed a blue-collar beauty to the
Sycamores' victory that could turn Saturday's ugly-duckling statistics
into a swan by the end of their MVC schedule. Their shooting
from the field has struggled all season, and in the last two
games those problems have spread to ISU's shots from the foul
line, where the Sycamores are 29 for 61 during that stretch.
But the Sycamores also held Evansville -- statistically, the
MVC's best shooting team -- under 30 percent from the field,
something ISU hadn't done since 1998-99. And during Evansville's
scoring drought the Aces had seven straight possessions without
getting a shot off.
"We're not going to shoot the ball great
every night," Kante said, "but our defense has to be
pretty good every night for us to win."
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| Tribune-Star/Joseph
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| No!: Indiana State's Djibril
Kante (3) goes up over teammate Matt Berry to block a shot Saturday
by Evansville's Adam Seitz. Kante had four blocks in the game. |
He helped make that formula work Saturday.
The 6-foot-8, 245-pound senior blocked four Evansville shots.
And the Sycamores turned a few into big plays.
After Evansville erased ISU's 23-22 halftime
lead on a 3-pointer by Adam Seitz, the Sycamores went on a 9-0
run. Marcus Howard, who was 0-for-6 from the field in the first
half, banked in a layup to tie the score, and then Kante delivered
a three-point play after rebounding a missed shot. Seconds later,
Kante smacked down an Evansville shot, teammate Matt Berry rebounded
it and passed to Grimes who whipped the ball to Howard for a
basket. After a pair of free throws by Grimes, ISU led 32-22.
"I was just going over and trying not
to give them any shots," Kante said. "We couldn't give
them any points. Our offense wasn't scoring, so we had to stop
them any way we could."
It was vintage Kante. He finished with eight
points, 13 rebounds, four blocks, three assists and a steal in
26 minutes. "He's just been that way for four years,"
Sycamore Coach Royce Waltman said. "He tries to get every
rebound. He was very good tonight."
After that surge, the Sycamores never trailed
again. But the teams' shooting problems produced the interesting
finish Crews had predicted.
With less than five minutes left, Evansville
had a chance to pull within a point when Larry Ferguson pulled
up for a 3-pointer. Instead, Kante swatted the shot down before
it ever had a chance. The Aces' only other points came on a three-point
play by Ian Hanavan with 1:13 left, slicing ISU's lead to 41-40.
Kante wasn't done. After Hanavan's play, he
flicked a pass through a crowd, finding Howard on his way to
a layup. Kante had a chance to ice the game, but missed two free
throws with 11.4 seconds left. But with the other Sycamores already
playing back, ready to defend, the Aces initially turned to run
upcourt before realizing Kante's second miss needed to be rebounded.
Cuffle stepped back, grabbed the ball, and Evansville later called
timeout with 7.4 seconds left, trailing 43-40.
ISU quickly fouled Mark Allaria before the
Aces could get a 3-pointer off. Allaria missed the first of a
one-and-one free throw situation, Sycamore Matt Broermann rebounded,
drew a foul and sank both of his free throws.
ISU playing without Block, who is expected
to return to action in three weeks after Friday's knee surgery,
was "weird," Kante said. But Grimes played 39 minutes
and got four rebounds, four assists, a block and a steal in support
of Kante and Howard, who had nine points, five steals and four
rebounds.
Those numbers amid the missed shots were positive
signs. But the most positive, with 15 more MVC games ahead beginning
with Thursday's 7:05 p.m. home game with surprising Northern
Iowa, was the final outcome, Waltman said.
"There was nothing about our play today
that indicated we're going to turn things around," Waltman
said. "But just winning can do an awful lot."
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