By Mark Bennett
A sharp pass by Indiana State freshman point
guard Lamar Grimes inside finds 6-foot-8, 245-pound senior teammate
Djibril Kante, who sinks a layup. The visiting Sycamores were
hanging tough with Butler in Hinkle Fieldhouse, trailing just
42-39 with a little more than 13 minutes to play in Sunday's
college basketball game.
A seemingly perfect scenario for ISU.
But there were complications. Lots of them.
That basket was Kante's only one all afternoon.
In fact, the Bulldogs limited the Sycamores' two four-year starters
- Kante and guard Kelyn Block - to four points combined. Together,
Block and Kante hit just two of 14 field goal attempts. The entire
Sycamore team made just 28 percent of its second-half shots.
And ISU turned the ball over 19 times, compared to nine Butler
turnovers.
That Grimes-to-Kante play was Indiana State's
last gasp. The Bulldogs (4-0) routed the Sycamores (0-3) by a
lopsided 69-49 final score.
"We squandered what could have been a pretty good effort,"
ISU Coach Royce Waltman said.
And it happened for the second straight game.
On Wednesday, the Sycamores had a 32-29 halftime lead on Valparaiso,
but got overwhelmed in the second half and lost 71-54. And on
Sunday, when Butler reserve forward Lewis Curry answered Kante's
lone basket with seven unanswered points of his own, ISU couldn't
retaliate. In fact, sophomore guard Matt Berry was the only Sycamore
to score the rest of the game.
"We've got great kids, but right now
they lack the confidence to weather the storm," Waltman
said. "And when it got bad, they caved in."
Sunday's circumstances were a little different
than the Wednesday's loss. Against Valparaiso, the Sycamores
got little scoring beyond the points from seniors Kante, Block
and senior center Terence Avery. At Butler, two reserves - Berry
and freshman forward Jake Sams - outscored the entire ISU starting
lineup.
Berry finished with a career-high 15 points
and five rebounds, which equaled his career best. Sams had 13
points and five rebounds in his best game as a Sycamore. Avery
was the only starter to score in double figures, getting 11 points
and a game-high nine rebounds.
"Kelyn goes 1 for 9 and had some wide-open
looks. Djibril's 1 for 5 and three of them were layups,"
Waltman said. "[The Bulldogs] play good defense, don't get
me wrong. But the two guys with the most experience didn't finish
any plays at all."
Even so, the first half still held promise
for ISU. The Sycamores held leads of 6-0, 11-8, 15-10, 17-12
and 20-16 before Butler's veterans went on a 10-0 run to take
the lead at 26-20. That run began with a baseline dunk by senior
Rylan Hainje that stirred a noisy Hinkle crowd of 5,670, and
ended with senior guard Thomas Jackson hitting a 3-pointer and
then a layup.
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| Tribune-Star/Joseph
C. Garza |
| Trapped: ISU freshman forward
Jake Sams drives against Butler's Joel Cornette and Rylan Hainje
during the Sycamores 69-49 loss to the Bulldogs Sunday in Hinkle
Fieldhouse at Indianapolis. |
The Bulldogs were still recovering from a
rigorous trip to Alaska, where they won the Top of the World
Classic last weekend.
"We thought there would be some fatigue
and some emotional drain, and the people in the fieldhouse picked
us up," Butler Coach Todd Lickliter said.
And yet the Sycamores stayed close. Sams hit
two 3-pointers in the last 46 seconds, the second of which came
six seconds before halftime, cutting Butler's lead to 31-28.
And the early moments of the second half were solid too. A basket
by Avery trimmed the deficit to 31-30, and after a layup by Bulldog
forward Joel Cornette, a 3-pointer by ISU's Matt Broermann tied
the game at 33-33.
But a three-point play by Jackson restored
Butler's lead for good, thanks to 54-percent shooting from the
field by the Bulldogs in the second half.
"The first half it just seemed like we
were fighting a lot more. We were getting all the loose balls.
It just seemed like we wanted it more than they did, and that's
why we were right there with them," Sams said. "The
second half, we came out and they hit some shots, and it just
seemed like they kept hitting shots no matter what we did."
By game's end, Hainje had 16 points, Jackson
15 and Curry 12. Curry was a perfect 5 for 5 from the field and
hit both of his 3-point attempts. "Obviously, Lewis Curry
came in and gave us an incredible boost," said Lickliter,
who became the first Butler coach to start his career with a
4-0 record.
Now the Sycamores will try to avoid their
first 0-4 start since the dark days of the 1993-94 season, when
Tates Locke's ISU team started 0-6 and finished 4-22. Indiana
State plays at 8:10 p.m. Wednesday at Eastern Illinois.
The Panthers are one of several non-conference
ISU opponents predicted to finish at or near the top of their
conferences. Valparaiso is a favorite in the Mid-Continent, and
Butler is as well in the Horizon League. "And we have done
nothing to dispel those rumors," Waltman said.
The Sycamores can reverse the trend, Sams
said.
"We've got to want it for 40 minutes.
It doesn't matter if the tide changes in the middle of the game,"
the freshman from Mount Zion, Ill., said. "We've got to
want it and play for 40 minutes. And I think if we do that, we
can play with anybody on our schedule."
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