Conference play is here… kind of. With the Big Ten’s patented early conference play it kicks off early for the entire 18 teams. Darian DeVries’ first Big Ten conference matchup took the Hoosiers to Williams Arena in Minneapolis to take on the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
Not only was it the first for DeVries but Minnesota head coach and Gopher alumnus Niko Medved had his first crack at the Big Ten. Also, DeVries was Medved’s predecessor at Drake. What the two will find out in due time — no wins should be taken for granted in this league.
DeVries found out the hard way with a 73-64loss to the Golden Gophers on Wednesday night.
Minnesota has not had a good start to the year entering this matchup 4-4 with losses to mid-majors like Santa Clara and San Francisco and also high-majors like Stanford and Missouri.
But again, something is different in the air in any Big Ten arena hosting a conference game.
It was an evenly matched first half with Indiana starting rather nicely with a 22-19 lead at the third media timeout. It was a very productive opening quarter for Indiana’s Tayton Conerway. The pass-first point guard with 10 points early with two 3-point makes, he entered the contest with just four makes on the season.
Minnesota on the other hand fought its way to a halftime knot at 33, led by its leading scorer Cade Tyson and Langston Reynolds with nine points each.
The second half featured a back and forth 20 minutes. Minnesota reached a lead as large as eight, which forced an Indiana timeout at 53-45. Indiana responded and cut that lead to two with a 6-0 run. Then right out of the Minnesota timeout, the Gophers brought the lead out back to seven and then separated itself from Indiana.
The Golden Gophers needed a low scoring game to win and they got it. Tyson and Reynolds ended up leading the Gophers in scoring with 17 points each.
There was always the hypothetical night where Indiana has a rough shooting game on the road, and this was that game. The Hoosiers only hit eight 3-pointers and missed eight free throws.
While Conerway and Lamar Wilkerson had decent nights with both 18 and 15 points respectively, Tucker DeVries had one of the more forgettable nights of his college career with just nine points on 3-for-13 shooting.
“It was our first road game. We’ve got to learn from it,” Darian DeVries said. “We’ve got ot be better.”
Indiana suffers what today is a Quad 3 loss. It will be interesting to see how Minnesota gets better or worse and if this losses ages accordingly
“You are going to lose games at some point,” DeVries said. “Now your challenge after you lose a game, how are you going to respond?”
The main bad part of this loss is that Indiana officially starts Big Ten play in the hole. Even with a win against Penn State next Tuesday, Indiana will have to wait until January to find itself back above .500 in Big Ten play. The only silver lining of this loss is Indiana now knows how to play on the road in this conference. This was a game of firsts for all the Indiana players, and a road game anywhere else but Minnesota, a loss could’ve been more expected.
This is not a good loss for Indiana and it will most likely have multiple more cold nights like it did on Wednesday.
Indiana finds itself 0-1 already in its toughest stretch of the season so far. Next Indiana will face off against the No. 6 ranked Louisville Cardinals in Indianapolis on Saturday. The stretch continues with Penn State and then another top 25 team Kentucky next weekend.
The matchup with the Cardinals will tip off at 2:15 p.m. on CBS.
