The Minute After: SIU-Edwardsville

  • 12/17/2010 9:40 pm in

Thoughts on a 88-54 win over SIU-Edwardsville:

When you win by 30-plus and your opponent doesn’t hit a field goal until the 7:05 mark in the first half — which, yeesh — sometimes there’s not much to say.

A dominant win is a dominant win.

But there were a few Hoosiers given more opportunity to shine this evening, and hopefully they gained a little confidence heading into this next stretch, where, including tonight, Indiana will play four games in the seven days.

A quick look:

+ Derek Elston blazed out to a quick 10 points to start the game, and finished with a season-high 14 (5-of-8 from the field, 1-of-2 from three, 1-of-1 from the line) to go along with five rebounds in 19 minutes of play. He also made a couple nice passes.

Good to see. When he gets the minutes, he’s shown he can produce.

With the Hoosiers often struggling to get scoring production out of the frontline, hopefully Elston can build on tonight’s performance.

+ Matt Roth played a season-high 20 minutes and though he didn’t get a ton of looks, he converted on his opportunities (1-of-1 from the field, 1-of-1 from three, 2-of-2 from the line).

This team likes the 3-point shot, and it’s Roth’s strength. With the amount of fouls the Hoosiers often rack up, his name may be called at some point this season, so getting some game experience tonight is a plus.

Two other points of note:

+ I know SIU-Edwardsville didn’t match the Hoosiers’ talent level, but Indiana shooting 61.5 percent from the field (32-of-53), 56.3 percent from three (9-of-16) and 75 percent from the line (15-of-20)  is an impressive showing no matter the opponent. This team continues to shoot the ball well, and it should hopefully be a key part of their repertoire heading into Big Ten season.

+ But of course, as we’ve seen many times this season, turnovers were again at issue. Seventeen of them tonight against an opponent of this caliber isn’t anything to write home about. But it looks like it’s a weakness of this team we’re just going to have to live with if they can’t right the ship on it soon.

Filed to: