INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana football’s fourth-quarter comeback at Nebraska on Saturday afternoon served as a pivotal lesson for the Hoosier men’s basketball team.
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IU football, facing its first loss since 2024, rallied from an 11-point deficit with 12 minutes left in the game to score two touchdowns and win by three points on the road. Coach Curt Cignetti said he told his team that “good teams find a way to win games like this.”
That’s exactly the type of mentality IU men’s basketball coach Darian DeVries wants to bring to his own team.
“Ironically, we used our football team to talk about that a little bit, and why have they been successful?” DeVries said following IU's 96-68 exhibition win over Butler. “We use that from last year and this year. Their ability to believe in what they’re doing, stay disciplined in the details, not get emotional with ups and downs, those types of things.”
Sure, it wasn’t nearly as high of stakes as IU football’s 22-game win streak; it was an exhibition game at Hinkle Fieldhouse, and Butler had cut Indiana’s lead to just three points at halftime. But that mentality powered the Hoosiers through a dominant second half.
But the mentality, whether it’s the first exhibition game of the year or the national championship, needs to be the same. That’s how teams stay consistent throughout the year.
“It was what things have they done that have helped them win tight games like that?” DeVries said. “Winning’s winning. The formula is the same in almost every sport. You have to be very disciplined. You have to believe in that discipline, and it has to be consistent. And our guys, we’re getting there. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting closer.”
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IU had 11 scholarship newcomers this year as DeVries largely built his roster through the transfer portal for the second straight season. The starting five DeVries used — guards Darren Harris, Markus Burton, and Jaeden Mustaf along with forward Samet Yigitoglu and Aiden Sherrell — all came to the Hoosiers through the portal this offseason.
“Most of us are new to the program, so we just need to settle in,” Harris, who led the team with 13 points, said. “... We’ve been practicing against each other for it feels like forever now, so once the live ball starts going and we see stuff we haven’t seen before, actions and stuff we’ll talk about, we’ll start to settle in. We did a better job in the second half.”
All of the new Hoosiers, though, subscribed to the Indiana football model: Good teams find a way to win these games.
Butler hung around for the first half, staying within single digits at all times and getting within three points at halftime, but Indiana stepped on the gas in the second half. They forced nine turnovers, held the Bulldogs to 33.3% shooting from the field (18% from 3-point range) and allowed just 27 points in the second half compared to 41 points in the first.
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As a whole, DeVries was especially impressed with his team’s rebounding; when asked, he listed it as the Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 best things he saw on the floor. Indiana collected 53 total rebounds, well distributed across players: Mustaf had eight, Sherrell had nine, and freshman Trevor Manhertz had eight off the bench.
“That’s been our whole focus the whole offseason,” DeVries said. “Coming into the game, we wanted to be built for that. I thought our guys did a great job of just staying after, staying after, staying after. Even at halftime, only having a three-point lead, we had doubled them up in rebounds. There’s plenty of other stuff we can work on, but I thought this, the whole focus coming into this game that we prioritized the whole offseason, played out exactly how we wanted it to.”
The Hoosiers have two other exhibitions coming up: they will play North Carolina at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Oct. 18, then Western Kentucky at Ford Center in Evansville on Oct. 25. Indiana opens the season at Assembly Hall against Eastern Illinois on Nov. 2.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How IU football's winning ways has become teaching tool for Indiana basketball
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