Illinios Romeo Langford — Credit - IU Athletics

Indiana 73 Illinois 65: Three Keys | Final Box Score | Specialty Stats

January 3, 2019 Mike Schumann IUBB 0

Eleven days off didn’t change much.

The broken record plays on, as Indiana once again falls behind early, only to flip the script and pull away from Illinois as Big Ten play restarts.

The Illini were able to make it interesting late, but a 47-25 run by Indiana after falling behind by 10 was too much to overcome.

Indiana moves to 12-2 overall and 3-0 in the Big Ten.

The Hoosiers will play at Michigan on Sunday at 4:30 eastern. That would appear to be a game where Indiana would be unable to recover from a big early deficit.

See also:

Archie Miller, Juwan Morgan and Romeo Langford post-game comments
Brad Underwood post-game comments

THREE KEYS TO THE GAME

1. Romeo creates when the offense stalls. If there is one reason why this team is better than last year, it is the ability of Romeo Langford to create something from nothing. If all else fails with this Indiana offense, Langford has the ability to beat just about anyone off the dribble. He did that on multiple occasions on the evening on his way to a career high 28 points on an efficient 8 of 13 from the field.

2. The defense clamps down. Indiana looked like a team that hadn’t played in a while early on in this one. The Hoosiers struggled with Illinois’ ball screens as the Illini scored 23 points in the first 9:40 of the game. Indiana made the adjustments and amped up the energy. In total IU forced 21 turnovers including six shot clock violations as Illinois struggled to get anything going.

3. Zach is back. Zach McRoberts’ contributions don’t always show up in the stat sheet. But even with that, there seemed to be something missing with his level of energy this year. Of course, the senior co-captain has been struggling with back issues, which is almost certainly the explanation. Well rested, the McRoberts’ energy from 2017-18 was back against Illinois, and it showed up in the box score with four steals. There were countless other deflections, tips and other hustle plays as well.