The 11-game losing streak finally ends

Verdell Jones thumped his chest. Malik Story went stomping down the court, his face alight with victory. Even Tom Pritchard smiled.

The common denominator was that for the first time, each player knew how winning a Big Ten game felt.

Tom Crean kissed his wife before taking a microphone and reiterating one message to the 14,247 fans assembled inside the storied building: “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

“This is your win,” he said. “This is your win. There’s no way we could have done it without the greatest fans in America.”

The celebrations were as varied Wednesday night as the previous 11 losses had been, but the elation across Assembly Hall was uniform. A taut, yellow nylon rope kept students from flooding out of the south bleachers and onto the court after the final buzzer sounded.

So the IU players rushed to them instead.

“I saw the little yellow rope,” Story said after the game, “so we came over there.”

One by one, each player on IU’s roster went from one end of the students’ section to the other, thanking them for the support Story called “amazing.”

And what about the locker room after the game?

“All smiles,” Story said, sporting a grin of his own. “It looked like a winning locker room.”

Perhaps sweeter still was the way the victory came about. So many of the shortcomings and bugaboos that have plagued IU this season – free-throw shooting,
turnovers, momentum swings – finally broke their way.

The Hoosiers shot 15-of-25 from the charity stripe, and turned the ball over just 11 times – they average 18 per game.

Just as importantly, they held a 20-9 advantage in points off turnovers and gave the ball away just three times in the second half.

And even when Iowa cleavered a 20-point lead down to just three with 1:30 left, a team that so often had seen victory pulled from their grasp like a carrot on a stick persevered, as Devan Dumes delivered his fifth and final 3-pointer of the night.

It was symbolic: The Hoosiers finally learned how to come up in the clutch.

Asked after the game if he liked the look from Dumes, who earlier in the season took flak for a late-game misstep in the loss to Michigan, Crean didn’t hesitate.

“The way he was feeling tonight, that was a great shot,” Crean said. Dumes did not miss from behind the arc, and led all scorers with a career-high 27 points.

Kyle Taber set a personal record in minutes (37) and tied another in points (7). Two late layups that helped hold off Iowa runs were perhaps the senior’s biggest contribution.

Unlike the rest of his teammates, Taber had enjoyed plenty of Big Ten victories in this building before Wednesday night, including defeats of top-10 teams like Wisconsin and Illinois.

Given the context, Taber said Wednesday’s win was “one of those.”

“It’s up there with some of those games,” Taber said. “This was our game. It had to be.”

In the world of college basketball, there is never time to dither on one game too much. Michigan State comes next, a team Crean described as one of the best, not just in the conference but also the country.

But even the coach gave himself time to pause on Wednesday’s victory, smiling at the thought that “tomorrow will be a little bit different feeling going in to work.”

“As I said to the players late in the game and in the locker room, this will be the toughest win they ever get,” Crean said with a note of relief. “I am really proud of them.”

Maybe that’s why, almost two hours after the clock hit zeroes and Jones tossed the ball down the court in triumph, the final score still shone on the scoreboards inside Assembly Hall.

On this night, everyone deserved to soak it in just a little bit longer.