DAYTON, Ohio - The IUPUI basketball team will cap a two-game Horizon League road trip as part of three consecutive road games to open league play when the Jaguars face Wright State (9-5, 1-0 Horizon) on Saturday night (Dec. 30) at 4:00 p.m. inside the Nutter Center. The game will be aired on ESPN3 and can be heard on iHeartRadio and Fox Sports 97.5 as Morgan Adcock (pxp) is on the call. 

IUPUI (3-9, 0-1 Horizon) opened Horizon League play with a 77-59 loss at reigning league champion Northern Kentucky on Thursday night. Junior D.J. McCall led IUPUI with 11 points and seven boards and Evan Hall and Ron Patterson finished with nine points apiece in the loss. IUPUI led 21-12 near the midpoint of the first half, but yielded a 19-0 run to the Norse as NKU rolled from there. IUPUI shot just 34 percent from the floor and allowed NKU to knock down 57.4 percent overall and 40 percent from three-point range in the victory. Horizon League Preseason Player of the Year Drew McDonald finished with 27 points, 10 rebounds and three assists on 11-of-16 shooting. 

IUPUI is 0-8 on the road, albeit against stiff competition that has included losses at Gonzaga, Purdue, Ball State, Bradley and Washington State. Defense has been the primary issue as IUPUI's opponents are shooting 50.7 percent from the floor and 40.3 percent from three-point range. At the other end, graduate transfer Maurice Kirby is the lone IUPUI regular shooting better than 50 percent from the floor, connecting on 52.7 percent of his attempts. 

Patterson leads the Jaguars in scoring (11.4 ppg), threes made (29) and minutes played (28.8 mpg). Behind him, senior Aaron Brennan checks in at 11.4 points and 3.8 rebounds per game while junior T.J. Henderson scores 11.0 points per game, primarily off the bench. 

McCall has emerged as one of the Horizon League's top defensive players, having claimed a team-high 21 steals. McCall also leads the Jags with 26 offensive boards. 

The Jaguars will be well tested 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 WRIGHT STATE
After starting the season 0-3, Wright State is 9-2 in the past 11 games and 7-1 at home this season. The Raiders are coached by a familiar face to IUPUI fans as longtime South Dakota State leader Scott Nagy is at the helm of the WSU program. WSU won their own tournament earlier this season with successive wins over Tiffin, Gardner-Webb, Jacksonville and Fairfield. More recently, the Raiders claimed a road win at Georgia Tech and then opened Horizon League play with a 65-61 win over UIC. 
    PROBABLE STARTERS:
    G- Justin Mitchell (6-4, Sr.) 11.7 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 3.1 apg, 43.3 FG%
    G- Mark Hughes (6-4, Jr.) 10.1 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 3.4 apg, 43.1 FG%
    G- Grant Benzinger (6-3, Sr.) 14.0 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 1.2 apg, 37.7 FG%
    F- Loudon Love (6-9, R-Fr.) 9.6 ppg, 8.4 rpg, 0.4 apg, 48.3 FG%
    C- Parker Ernsthausen (6-11, Jr.) 4.1 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 0.9 apg, 41.1 FG%

INSIDE THE SERIES
IUPUI is just 2-9 all-time against Wright State as the two schools met 11 times from 1976-1987. Today's game marks the first-ever meeting in the program's Division I-era.   

UP NEXT
IUPUI will be back on the road at Green Bay on Tuesday, Jan. 2 at 8:00 p.m. in Horizon League play. 

GAME NOTES (click here for PDF of the full games notes)
LAST TIME OUT
IUPUI fell in its Horizon League opener at Northern Kentucky on Thursday night, 77-59. Junior D.J. McCall had a team-high 11 points and seven boards, but IUPUI had no answer for league Preseason Player of the Year Drew McDonald, who finished with 27 points and 10 boards on 11-of-16 shooting. NKU shot 57 percent from the field and held IUPUI to just 33.9 percent overall.
IUPUI led 21-12 near the midpoint of the first half before NKU reeled off a 19-0 run, holding IUPUI without a field goal over the final 10:48 before the break.  

STARTER NOTES
In the early portion of the non-league slate, head coach Jason Gardner continued to tweak the Jaguars' starting five, using six different quintets. For the year, senior Aaron Brennan is the lone Jag to have started all 12 games and Ron Patterson and Evan Hall have each started 11 times. Eight different players have at least one start this season.
That said, the group of Brennan, Patterson, Hall, D.J. McCall and Nick Rogers have started IUPUI's last five games. 

HOT BENCH
As a result of the shuffling lineups, the IUPUI bench has been especially strong, averaging nearly 26 points per game, including a season-high 42 on two different occasions. 
Since coming off the bench the last seven games, Henderson is averaging 12 points per game. 

LEAGUE OPENERS
Head coach Jason Gardner is now 3-1 in league openers, having won all three of his Summit League openers before losing his Horizon League opener at NKU on Thursday.
1/4/15 - at Fort Wayne (63-58)
1/1/16 - at South Dakota (77-66)
12/31/16 - Western Illinois (89-71)
12/28/17 - at Northern Kentucky (59-77)

CHECK THE PERCENTAGES
In IUPUI's three wins, the Jags have shot 49.1 percent from the field and held foes to 37.1 percent overall and 26.9 percent from deep.
In the Jaguars' nine losses, IUPUI has shot just 40.4 percent overall and allowed opponents to shoot a staggering 55.6 percent from the field and 45.3 percent from beyond the arc. 

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 3-59 (.048) when being outshot. 

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 21 steals in nine games, averaging 2.33 pilfers per contest.
By comparison, McCall had just 22 steals all of last season. 

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 and the team's leading scorer, Ron Patterson, is next in line with six. 

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 2-2 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.    

FIVE KEY NUMBERS
Below are five key numbers from the Jaguars' loss at NKU.
65-38: Margin in which NKU outscored IUPUI over the final 29+ minutes of the game  
13: Minutes that junior Evan Hall was limited to due to foul trouble. Hall scored nine points in his limited action.  
66.7%: NKU's second half shooting percentage, making 18-of-27 attempts
8-11: Combined shooting performances for Hall and D.J. McCall
13-51: Combined shooting performances for the other nine Jaguars, closing at 25.5 percent