IU basketball ended its four-game losing streak with a 77-47 win against Minnesota on Wednesday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
Here are five takeaways from the win against the Golden Gophers:
Indiana dominates the interior against Minnesota’s zone
With an extremely limited rotation, Minnesota plays zone almost out of necessity.
The Gophers have had some success with the strategy, most recently with a 78-73 win against UCLA at Williams Arena on Saturday.
Indiana, however, picked the zone apart for a full 40 minutes on Wednesday night.
The Hoosiers had excellent ball movement and spacing, which led to a ton of easy opportunities in the paint. Indiana was patient, content to move the ball around until it got into the paint, where the Gophers lack rim protection.
The end result? A blistering 21-for-30 performance on 2s in the IU win, good for 70 percent.
It was the third-highest shooting percentage on 2s for the Hoosiers this season in Big Ten play, trailing only the Penn State game on December 9 and the Oregon victory on February 9.
Rather than giving Minnesota hope late in the first half, Indiana created separation with a late run
A Cade Tyson 3-pointer with 1:47 to play in the first half cut Indiana’s lead to 35-28.
As well as the IU had played at times – it built a 14-point lead less than eight minutes into the game – the habit of letting an opponent hang around was ever-present.
But rather than giving Minnesota hope heading into halftime, Indiana created separation and momentum.
A Lamar Wilkerson 3-pointer with 1:21 left in the first half stretched the lead back to double figures at 38-28 and after a missed 3-pointer by Tyson, Tucker DeVries splashed another triple to make it 41-28 with 43 seconds left.
On Minnesota’s final possession of the half, Langston Reynolds missed a layup and Indiana raced in transition as Lamar Wilkerson grabbed the rebound and found Reed Bailey, who dished the ball to a streaking DeVries for a dunk to make it 43-28.
Holding a 15-point halftime lead, Indiana never let Minnesota get closer than 14 in the second half in one of its most dominant victories in conference play.
Indiana contained Langston Reynolds, the key to Minnesota’s offense
In its best wins of the season, Minnesota’s Langston Reynolds has been a key for the Gophers.
Reynolds had 17 points, five rebounds and four assists in the first meeting in Minneapolis. He also had 22 points, five rebounds and four assists in a win against Iowa, 14 points, eight assists and three rebounds in a win against Michigan State and 21 points, six assists and three rebounds in a victory against UCLA.
On Wednesday in Assembly Hall, the Hoosiers never let Reynolds get going.
The 6-foot-4 senior guard shot just 2-for-8 from the field and committed four turnovers while dishing out three assists and grabbing two rebounds in 35 minutes.
Reynolds is great at using his size and physicality to get to the rim and finish, but Indiana did a great job of forcing him into contested looks at the rim.
Holding Reynolds to just five points, his lowest output since the Farleigh Dickinson game on December 29, was a major reason Minnesota never seriously challenged IU at Assembly Hall.
The win was IU’s 10th straight against Minnesota in Bloomington.
Sam Alexis had his way in the paint and at the rim
Indiana continues to lean more heavily on Sam Alexis for offensive production and on Wednesday, the senior big man delivered his first game with 20 or more points this season.
Alexis scored a game-high 23 points, his highest output since scoring 26 points as a freshman at Chattanooga against Mercer on February 11, 2023.
The 6-foot-9 forward shot 9-for-11 on 2s and was 5-for-8 from the free-throw line. He also had nine rebounds, two blocked shots and just one turnover in 27 minutes.
Alexis earned KenPom Game MVP honors for the fourth time this season.
With one Big Ten regular-season game remaining, Alexis is shooting 71 percent on 2s in conference play, the second-best mark in the league. He’s also sixth in the Big Ten in block percentage and 10th in offensive rebounding percentage.
“Sam was great. He was someone when there’s zone we wanted to really try to focus in on trying to throw it in there,” Darian DeVries said postgame. “Let him play on an island one-on-one because they hadn’t doubled much on the interior, so we thought we could get in there and let Sam go to work a little bit and then space our shooters out around it.”
The threat of Alexis in the paint did indeed open up better opportunities for IU on the perimeter. The Hoosiers shot 10-for-24 on 3s (41.7 percent). It was the highest 3-point shooting percentage in a game for IU since the Rutgers win on January 23. IU shot 42.9 percent from deep in that win.
Wilkerson closing in on IU basketball single-season milestones
While it was a relatively quiet night by his standards – 16 points – Lamar Wilkerson is closing in on several single-season milestones as a Hoosier.
Wilkerson made four 3-pointers, giving him 101 on the season. He needs six to tie Steve Alford, who made 107 in 34 games in the 1986-87 season, IU’s last national championship season and also the first season with the 3-pointer in college basketball.
Wilkerson already has the single-season mark for 3-pointers made by a Hoosier in Big Ten games and the four makes last night upped his total to 68.
The 6-foot-6 guard moved into third place in program history for single-season points in Big Ten play, passing Trayce Jackson-Davis, who had 436 in the 2022-23 campaign. Wilkerson is now at 446, just eight behind Jimmy Rayl (454 in 1961-62) and 13 behind Don Schlundt (459 in 1952-53).
With one regular-season game to go, Wilkerson is averaging 21.1 points and is shooting 38.4 percent on 3-pointers.
“We all knew he could shoot it,” Darian DeVries said of Wilkerson postgame. “We knew that would translate at any level, but the other things that he’s been able to do with being a really big featured part of the scout every night has been pretty impressive.
“You go through this league for 20 games and put the numbers up with the time of attention that he’s getting every night, I think that says a lot about his versatility as a scorer.”
See More: Five Takeaways, Lamar Wilkerson, Minnesota Golden Gophers, Sam Alexis