Indiana’s role players played the roles of their lifetime Saturday night.
Forty-one points. Add the contributions of Jeff Newton (19), Donald Perry (10), A.J. Moye (9) and George Leach (3) together and the Hoosier reserves outscored Oklahoma’s bench 41-12. That’s what you call support.
So what else is new, senior forward Jarrad Odle said after fifth-seeded Indiana had beaten the Sooners 73-64 to move into Monday night’s NCAA championship game at the Georgia Dome.
“It gets more unreal every win we get,” Odle said. “We’re going to sit back tonight and realize we’re 40 minutes away from a national championship. We knew if we kept at them, eventually they were going to bust. It took a lot of effort on our part but that’s nothing new for this team. That’s what we preach every night: poise. We make up a game plan and follow it.”
Or improve on it, as the case may be.
Coach Mike Davis expected his bench to play well, but even he had to be a little surprised at how well his reserves performed. Junior forward Newton had six rebounds and four blocks to go with his career-high point total. Perry’s career-best 10 points included five clutch free throws in the last 1 minute 4 seconds. Add the contributions of Moye and Leach (three blocks) and the Hoosiers basically wore down the Sooners with their depth. And oh, yeah, with their poise.
“Poise. Poise. Poise,” Moye said, warming to the topic. “You look at our bench, our first three guys gave us 38 points. Why? Because most of our bench players were starters at the beginning of the year. That gives us versatility. For our bench, playing 30 or 40 minutes is nothing new.”
Nobody came up bigger than Newton, who scored nine points in the last 7:28, including a layup that broke a 60-60 tie with 2:47 to go. He made two free throws that increased Indiana’s lead to 66-60 at the 1:45 mark, and one more free throw with 36.5 seconds remaining to put the Hoosiers up by 10 (72-62).
“He couldn’t have picked a better time to get his career high,” Odle said. “Jeff has been picking up his play all season. If he keeps it up next year he’s going to wind up in the NBA.”
Newton also did a defensive number on Oklahoma forward and Aurora native Aaron McGhee, who wound up with a game-high 22 points but got only eight after the break and fouled out with 4:40 to go. With Indiana struggling from three-point range in the first half and star Jared Jeffries held to eight points and in foul trouble, Indiana needed every boost it could get.
“The reason we play so hard is a reflection of our coach,” Moye said. “I was always a tough kid, but he has pushed me to my limit. And Newton–before you could knock him over with a feather. But tonight he was tenacious. He really took it to McGhee.”
Perry rose to the moment, too, hitting 5-of-6 free-throw attempts down the stretch to ice the victory. With starting point guard Tom Coverdale hampered by a sprained ankle and limited to three points while making five turnovers in 29 minutes, Perry pretended it was just a playground game in his hometown of Tallulah, La.
“I just tried to approach it like it was a normal game,” Perry said. “I tried to think of it as a pickup game so as to not put pressure on myself. I just wanted to go out and be aggressive.”
As the coach of the second No. 5 seed in history to reach the championship game, Davis said he felt humbled–and proud. Proud of Newton. Proud of Perry. Proud of his bench.
“This is the best game I’ve seen Jeff play,” Davis said. “He has been playing great for the last month and a half, but he was really big for us tonight.
“Like I said before, it’s the players. They’re playing unbelievable. I mean, they could easily have given up. We could have lost by 10. But they kept fighting, kept fighting, kept fighting.”
