HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. - The IUPUI basketball team will begin its inaugural season of Horizon League play on Thursday night (Dec. 28) when the Jaguars take on reigning league champion Northern Kentucky (7-5, 0-0) inside BB&T Arena at 7:30 p.m.. The game will be broadcast on ESPN3 and can be heard on iHeartRadio and Fox Sports 97.5 as Morgan Adcock (pxp) is on the call. IUPUI (3-8, 0-0) stopped a six-game skid just before the holiday break with an 87-76 win over IU Kokomo inside the on-campus Jungle. After the win, head coach Jason Gardner opted to give the team two full days off from practice before returning to work on Christmas night. 

Gardner and his squad are eagerly anticipating a year filled with new foes, new arenas and new cities. 

"You can tell the guys are excited," Gardner said. "The season has gone as well as expected so far, but now it's a completely new season. We talk about that a lot about breaking it up into three seasons. This starts a new season for us and a brand new record for us. These teams don't know us and we don't know them, but we know it's going to be a challenge for us. That's fun and exciting though."

IUPUI needed a second half surge to fend off a pesky IUK squad on Dec. 22, fueled by a career-high 19 points from T.J. Henderson and 16 from Ron Patterson. Junior Evan Hall chipped in 13 points as well. Henderson is averaged 18.5 points and 6.0 rebounds per game last week, setting back-to-back career-highs at Gonzaga and against IUK. He is one of three Jaguars scoring better than 11 points per game, alongside senior Aaron Brennan (11.8 ppg, 3.7 rpg) and Patterson (11.6 ppg, 27 3's). The Jaguars will need to tighten up defensively in league play as IUPUI is yielding 50.1 percent shooting and 40.3 percent from three-point range for the year. 

The Jaguars will be tested early in league play, opening with three straight road games in a six-day stretch. In fact, Horizon League play opens hot and heavy as the Jaguars will play four league games in an eight-day span, capped by the Jan. 4 home opener against UIC inside Indiana Farmers Coliseum at 7:00 p.m.. That game will be sponsored by IMCU and the K9 Crew is scheduled to perform at halftime of that game. For tickets, contact Lauren Gronke at lgronke@iupui.edu or click here on the Ticketmaster link. 

SCOUTING NORTHERN KENTUCKY
Northern Kentucky is 7-5 on the season and 5-0 on its home floor. Included in the home wins are victories over East Tennessee State, Morehead State and Eastern Kentucky. The Norse also boast neutral site wins over James Madison and Iona. NKU defeated Milwaukee in last season's Horizon League Championship game to earn the program's first-ever NCAA Tournament berth at the Division I level before ultimately falling to Kentucky in the first round of the Big Dance in Indianapolis. 
    PROBABLE STARTERS:
    G- Lavone Holland II (6-1, Sr.) 13.8 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 5.2 apg, 41.3 FG%
    G- Jalen Tate (6-5, R-Fr.) 6.1 ppg, 1.8 rpg, 1.8 apg, 50.0 FG%
    F- Jordan Garnett (6-5, Sr.) 8.3 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 2.1 apg, 50.0 FG%
    F- Carson Williams (6-6, Soph.) 14.9 ppg, 5.3 rpg, 1.3 apg, 68.9 FG%
    F- Drew McDonald (6-7, Jr.) 16.1 ppg, 7.6 rpg, 1.8 apg, 44.3 FG%

INSIDE THE SERIES
NKU leads the all-time series 4-1 and is 3-0 in the three meetings in Kentucky. The two teams played five times from 1981-84 and will meet for the first time as league foes on Thursday night.  

UP NEXT
IUPUI will continue the two-game road trip at Wright State on Saturday (Dec. 30) with a 4:00 p.m. tip inside the Nutter Center.

GAME NOTES (click here for PDF of the full games notes)
SERIES BREAKDOWN
    IUPUI is 1-4 (s/o to Don Owen for the accurate info) all-time against Northern Kentucky with the teams playing five times between 1981-84. IUPUI's lone win was an 83-71 outcome on Dec. 15, 1982 in Indianapolis. IUPUI is 0-3 in games in Kentucky.
    
LAST TIME OUT
    IUPUI survived a scare against IU Kokomo just before Christmas before picking off the Cougars, 87-76 inside the Jungle. T.J. Henderson scored 17 of his career-high 19 in the second half and Ron Patterson tossed in 16 in the win. After trailing by a point at the break and nine early in the second half, IUPUI closed by outscoring IUK by 20 points over the final 16 minutes for an 11-point victory. It was the first time under Gardner that IUPUI has played in the on-campus facility and the first time since Feb. 22, 2014 that the Jaguars played in The Jungle. 
    
NEW FIVES
    IUPUI head coach Jason Gardner has continued to tweak the Jaguars' starting five, having used six different quintets in non-league play. Senior Aaron Brennan is the lone Jag to have started all 11 games and Ron Patterson and Evan Hall have each started 10 times. Eight different players have at least one start this season. 

HOT BENCH
    As a result of the shuffling lineups, the IUPUI bench has been especially strong, averaging 26.2 points per game, including a season-high 42 on two different occasions (including against IUK).  
    Since coming off the bench the last six games, Henderson is averaging 12.8 points per game. 

CAREER NIGHTS
    The past four games, a different IUPUI player has hit for a new career-high, beginning with Maurice Kirby's 16 (8-12 FG) at Purdue. Ron Patterson hit for 19 (5-13 3's) at Washington State and T.J. Henderson tallied 18 off the IUPUI bench at Gonzaga. Henderson followed up by scoring 19 points and grabbing eight boards against IUK on Dec. 22. 

LEAGUE OPENERS
    Head coach Jason Gardner is 3-0 in league openers, having won Summit League openers each of the past three campaigns, two coming on the road (see below). 
    1/4/15 - at Fort Wayne (63-58)
    1/1/16 - at South Dakota (77-66)
    12/31/16 - Western Illinois (89-71)
    IUPUI's last loss to open league play came at South Dakota State on Jan. 9, 2014, 86-70. 

THEFT ALERT
    Junior D.J. McCall currently leads Horizon League players with 1.9 steals per game, putting him among the nation's top 100 in the category. After not collecting a steal in the season's opening two games, McCall has 19 steals in eight games, averaging 2.38 pilfers per contest.

NEW NIGHT, NEW SCORER
    It's seemingly been a new leading scorer every night for the Jaguars this season as five different players have been the team's top scorer and nobody has scored in double-digits in every game. Junior T.J. Henderson has a team-high nine double-digit scoring games while Ron Patterson is next in line with six. The team's top scorer, Aaron Brennan, has four double-digit scoring games. 

DURING THE SIX
    During IUPUI's six-game losing streak, foes shot at least 53 percent from the floor in all six contests. For the year, IUPUI opponents are shooting 50.1 percent from the floor and 40.3 percent from three-point range.  

DEFENDING THE TREY
    The Jaguars have struggled to defend the three-point line in non-league play, yielding 40.3 percent. Below are some instances of the Jaguars' woes, both individually and collectively:
    at Bradley (57.1%) - Nate Kennell (5-of-9)
    at EIU (45.0%) - Terrell Lewis (7-of-9)
    at WIU (58.8%) - Kobe Webster (5-of-7)
    vs. SIUE (68.8%)
    IUPUI is 1-7 this season when hitting fewer threes than opponents this year and 2-1 when making the same number or more treys than foes. 

TOUGH THREE
    IUPUI endured arguably the toughest three-game stretch in program history with road games at No. 21 Purdue (L, 61-86), at Washington State (L, 59-72) and at No. 12 Gonzaga (L, 71-101). The losses at Purdue and Gonzaga dropped IUPUI to 0-17 all-time against nationally ranked foes.    

MAKE SHOTS, WIN GAMES
    The most telling number of outcomes of games under head coach Jason Gardner has simply been field goal percentages. 
    IUPUI is 37-8 (.822) in games in which the Jaguars have shot a better percentage than opponents and just 3-58 (.049) when being outshot. 

FIVE KEY NUMBERS
    Below are five key numbers from the Jaguars' win over IUK.
    19-8: Career-high points and rebounds from T.J. Henderson in the win  
    43: Season-high rebounds grabbed by the Jaguars including 32 off the defensive glass 
    54: Season-high points in the paint scored by the Jags
    37.9%: Second half shooting percentage for IUK
    29: Team-high minutes played by D.J. McCall as nine different Jags played at least 10 minutes