Friday, December 5, 2008

Wake Forest 83, Indiana 58.

I'll hopefully get a Gonzaga preview up before tomorrow's game, but first thing's first. Here's the box score from the latest of IU's blowout losses. I didn't see much of this one (operator error by my wife re: Tivo, although that 15 minute block of ESPNNews was fascinating). It sounds as if I missed the best part. The game was tied 20-20 after the first 10 minutes of the game, but Wake Forest outscored IU 27-11 for the rest of the half, and that was that. I was hoping that perhaps IU took good care of the ball during that stretch, but I count 8 turnovers in the first 10 minutes. Mostly, it seems that Wake was even sloppier, with nine TOs in that stretch. Indeed, Wake was nearly as sloppy, turning the ball over 24 times to IU's 26. Even the rebounding numbers weren't in Wake's favor: the teams had identical offensive rebounding percentages. The difference is that Wake scored at will, shooting 60 percent to IU's 37 percent on nearly identical shot totals. Quite simply, Matt Roth's 12 points on 4-5 from the field were IU's only offensive success story.

There's not much to be said about this one, except that IU still hasn't shown an ability to compete with even a lower tier Big Ten team. And it may not get better soon. IU plays Gonzaga, TCU, and at Kentucky in the next eight days.

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