Baby Hoosiers face challenging road trial

IU travels to Winston-Salem, N.C., Wednesday for the first road test of the season, taking on No. 15 Wake Forest in the annual Big Ten-ACC Challenge.

The Hoosiers (4-2) will be facing a red-hot Demon Deacon squad coming into tonight’s contest at a perfect 6-0 and fresh off being crowned champions of the 76 Classic Tournament in California.

Among the many challenges facing the Hoosiers tonight will be trying to contain Wake Forest’s sophomore guard and Indianapolis native Jeff Teague. In its last game, IU struggled to stop Cornell’s Ryan Wittman, who notched a career-high 28 points.

Teague enters tonight averaging 21 points, five assists and four rebounds per game.
IU coach Tom Crean said he has been impressed with Teague, saying Wake Forest as a team has started to play with a “Teague Toughness.”

“He’s playing as well as any guard in the country right now,” Crean said.

Complementing Teague’s backcourt play is a plethora of athletic big men for the Demon Deacons.

Led by 6-foot-9 freshman Al-Farouq Aminu and 6-foot-9 sophomore James Johnson, the smaller Hoosiers will have their hands full against perhaps the deepest front line they will see this season.

“This will probably not only be one of the taller teams we see,” Crean said, “but one of the longer teams that we will play this season.”

Throughout the season IU has improved rebounding. Against Cornell, the Hoosiers had a plus-13 rebounding edge. But given the size and athleticism Wake Forest will have on the court, Crean said his team will need to greatly improve its ability to box out if it is to hold its own on the glass tonight.

“If we stand and wait for the contact to come to us, we might not even feel the contact,” Crean said. “They’ll go up over the top of us.”

Although IU is giving up size and perhaps athleticism to Wake Forest, Crean said the team isn’t going to play more zone defense. Rather, he said the most important thing his team can do is hustle back after its offensive possessions and force Wake Forest to score on all five defenders.

Crean said IU will be in trouble if Teague and the Demon Deacons turn the contest into a track meet of sorts.

“It’s going to be a very tough game,” freshman Nick Williams said. “We know that. We just got to come in, try to execute this week.”

An additional challenge outside of the physical opposition of Wake Forest will be that this game marks the first time the young Hoosiers will be playing in a true road game. As opposed to Maui, where a strong contingent of IU faithful were there to support IU, tonight will be a hostile environment full of Wake Forest diehards.

Freshman Tom Pritchard, who leads IU in points and rebounds, said Sunday the coaching staff hadn’t yet hinted to the team what to expect on the road.

“Coach, I’m sure, has things that he knows and some advice for us,” Pritchard said. “It’s definitely going to be a challenge going in there.”

One thing Hoosier fans can expect regardless of the outcome is a team effort, Crean said.

“We have no Eric Gordon or D.J. White that’s going to be able to go in and carry the load,” Crean said. “As well as some of our guys are playing, there’s nobody that’s going to go in and dominate a road game for us.”