Column: Fitting ending to the season

INDIANAPOLIS - With just more than two minutes left in the game, IU still had a chance.

The Hoosiers trailed Illinois 53-52. A contested Austin Etherington layup cut the deficit to just one with three minutes 13 seconds remaining. Illinois and IU traded missed jumpers, and the Illini had the ball with two minutes 31 seconds left.

IU was originally in a man-to-man defense. Tom Crean and his assistants yelled out “two!” and held up two fingers. Crean wanted his team to switch to a 2-3 zone on the fly.

But there was miscommunication. 6-foot Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell was trapped down low. 6-foot-10 Noah Vonleh was out on the top on the zone. Ferrell was defending another Illini player closer to the baseline. Vonleh was checking the man at the top of the key.

“That was somebody else’s spot to be in,” Vonleh said after the game.

That left a gaping hole on the left wing. Illini guard Tracy Abrams, who finished with a game-high 25 points, pumped-faked one pass to get Ferrell’s momentum going away from him and had plenty of time to set up the most important shot of the game — virtually unguarded.

“It was a defensive mistake,” Crean said. “It’s something that we practiced. It was just a mistake. We didn’t get into that rotation as quick as we needed to. We’ve done it all year. I mean, we’ve played that kind of defense all year.”

As Abrams’ three fell through the net, it served as the perfect microcosm for this IU season.

IU had the talent to compete against Illinois, but silly mistakes like defensive miscommunications on the game’s most crucial play and committing 16 turnovers stymied the Hoosier attack.

Abrams’ three spurred an 11-2 run by Illinois to close out the game and ended the Hoosier regular season. When the buzzer sounded, Illinois won 64-54.

Shooting haunted the Hoosiers in the second stanza. In the first half IU went 6-for-10 from behind the arc. In the second half, the Hoosiers again shot 10 threes. But none went in.

The leaders, the best players on this team, struggled. Ferrell and Vonleh combined to go 6-for-22 from the field for 20 points — six of which came from Ferrell free throws.

Ferrell and Vonleh were the lynchpins IU needed to have success this season.

Ferrell’s long-range shooting stretched the defense, and Vonleh was a rebound monster and a defensive enforcer in the paint, always challenging shots.

But Vonleh hasn’t been the same lately. He sat out two games with foot inflammation. He hasn’t recorded double-digit rebounds in more than a month. He hasn’t scored in double digits since the loss at Wisconsin on Feb. 25.

Is he hitting the freshman wall? Has he just been hurt for the last five games?

“I don’t know if you ever see a proverbial wall where they just run up to it and smack it,” Crean said. “They can hide it pretty well. You can hide it with your practices and not going as long. But there’s no question that missing the games that he missed and those type of things bothered him.”

To me, Vonleh hasn’t looked healthy. He lacks that explosiveness that was present in the beginning of the season. Not explosiveness in a conventional meaning, but Vonleh was always getting a hand on almost every ball that came into the paint. He was the Roy Hibbert for this IU team — the defensive anchor patrolling the middle of the lane.

Maybe the load of carrying the team wore on him too much. Maybe the load of the other premiere player on this team, Ferrell, was too much to bear also.

The last time Ferrell shot more than 50 percent from the field was Superbowl Sunday, on Feb. 2, when he lit the world on fire against Michigan.

This team is Young with a capital “Y”. Troy Williams, Stanford Robinson, Devin Davis — these are all freshmen who needed their leaders to step up.

Will Sheehey has stepped up. He has played with brilliant enthusiasm and efficiency. In the last five games he’s had 30, 19, 13, 17 and 13 points.

But the overall team talent never coalesced into something sustainable this season. One day IU beats No. 10 Michigan by double digits, and the very next three games IU looses to Minnesota, Penn State and Purdue.

This team could have been a darling of IU fans. One fans could’ve gotten behind. They could have been the tough, scrappy, athletic, hard-nosed kids who played great defense and left everything on the floor.

IU fans will tell themselves it’ll be OK.

Five-star recruit James Blackmon is coming; that’ll shore up the shooting troubles. This young crop of freshman will get a full summer to practice; they’ll get better. Hell, Vonleh might even come back to school, and IU could do some real damage next year.

But until this current crop of players matures into a consistent unit, the expected success won’t happen.

They had 32 games to figure it out, and couldn’t.

Now let’s see if they can figure it out in the eight months leading into next season.

ehoopfer@indiana.edu