Lamar Wilkerson’s record night highlights Indiana basketball win vs Penn State
Lamar Wilkerson was brilliant, and Indiana’s offense pushed through whatever struggles it showed last week. IndyStar IU insider Zach Osterman offers his thoughts.
- Lamar Wilkerson set an Indiana program record with 10 made 3-pointers in a single game.
- Wilkerson scored an Assembly Hallf-high 44 points in the Hoosiers’ 113-72 victory over Penn State.
- The Hoosiers’ 30 assists as a team were just one shy of the program’s single-game record.
BLOOMINGTON — The hoop, Lamar Wilkerson said afterward, look as big as the ocean.
Wilkerson’s words were hardly hyperbole, at least not based on his record-setting performance. They — like that all-timer of a game the Sam Houston State transfer delivered in a 113-72 win Tuesday night against Penn State — were most welcome.
For both Wilkerson and his team, this was the ultimate palate cleanser. After the frustration of an 0-2 week, leading into Darian DeVries’ first Big Ten home game at Indiana, it would have been difficult to imagine a result more beneficial than this one.
On a night when the Hoosiers (8-2, 1-1 Big Ten) washed all their frustrations off onto Penn State, they reminded themselves of what they can be at their best.
“We put a ton of time here this last week on just getting more actions, more movement,” DeVries said. “The guys did a really good job tonight keeping the ball as we like to say ‘hot,’ keeping it hot, keeping it moving. Player and ball movement I thought was really good tonight.”
Obviously, this won’t happen often. Wilkerson’s Assembly Hall-record 44 points and program-record 10 made 3s paced one of the largest offensive outbursts in Indiana’s conference history. The last time they scored this many against a Big Ten team in regulation, Bob Knight was coaching against Tom Davis, then at Iowa.
Penn State (8-2, 0-1) offered no resistance because it had none. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Indiana’s avalanche of offense Tuesday was that the Hoosiers actually lasted roughly three minutes without scoring at one point in the first half.
Then the shots started going in. Nittany Lions coach Mike Rhoades called a timeout at 23-12 to stop a run it turned out was only getting started.
Rhoades called another timeout just two baskets later. It was not so much the points his team had given up between those breaks, but the cheap and easy way the Nittany Lions had done so.
That, it turned out, was a harbinger of things to come, the dam opening just before it burst.
Indiana averaged 1.57 points per possession. The Hoosiers hit 17 3s as a team. Four of his teammates joined Wilkerson in double figures. IU’s 30 assists landed them just one shy of a single-game program record.
“That’s just credit to everybody moving the ball around,” Reed said of the assists number, “trying to find the open teammates, playing unselfish basketball.”
On this most get-right night, nobody got righter than Wilkerson.
He had been struggling from the field, just 17 of 44 from the field and 5 of 23 from behind the arc in his last three games. Even with teammates and coaches efforting to keep his head up, and his confidence with it, Wilkerson admitted postgame Tuesday was heaven-sent.
“Coach told me today was going to be the day that I got hot, because I’ve been having a rough couple games,” Wilkerson said. “He fed me the ball. I saw one, two, three go in, then after that (teammates) were just like, find the hot hand. They kept feeding me. The shots kept going in.”
His coach’s words turned prophetic, as shot after shot went up, and far more of them than not went in.
Wilkerson finished a remarkable 16 of 22 from the floor, and 10 of 15 from behind the 3-point line. Most remarkable of all, he achieved what he did in just 24 minutes.
It ranks surely among not just the most productive but the most efficient single-game performances in Indiana basketball history. A claim made confidently, and not at all casually.
“It’s great for him. I think even for really good shooters, sometimes if you overthink it, you can start to pressure a little bit in your own mind,” DeVries said. “When he gets one or two down, you can just see it was a relief for him tonight.
“Then after that it was just fun.”
Wilkerson deserved the flowers he got late in the game, when he reacted sheepishly to the crowd’s roar as his record-setting performance was recounted during a timeout by public-address announcer Jeremy Gray.
Teammates hearing his numbers and achievements spelled out swarmed Wilkerson with back slaps and hugs. He smiled, and wiped his face with a towel. He’d earned the rest of the evening off.
But while he was on the floor, Wilkerson epitomized what Indiana needed.
The Hoosiers will not always be able to count on such prolific offense. There will be nights like Minnesota, and afternoons like Louisville, again. This team is not perfect.
Nevertheless, after a frustrating week, and with what now looms as a crucial trip to Kentucky coming into view, DeVries’ Hoosiers needed a night like this, if for no other reason than to remind themselves it is what they are capable of.
That’s certainly true of their free-scoring transfer guard. And it is in many ways equally true of his team more widely.
Offense comes and goes. For this team, Tuesday night and the slate it wiped clean after last week’s losses served as a reminder that confidence cannot.
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