INDIANAPOLIS - The IUPUI basketball team will continue its five-game homestand on Wednesday night (Dec. 12) when the Jaguars host IU Northwest (9-4) at 7:00 p.m. inside Indiana Farmers Coliseum. As part of Faculty & Staff Night, IUPUI employees can purchase discounted tickets by contacting the ticket office at 317-278-2530. In addition, Wednesday night's game is sponsored by
Dave & Busters.
On the court, IUPUI (6-3) continued the program's best start since 2009 last week with a resounding 95-64 win over IU Kokomo. Junior
Camron Justice led four Jags in double-digits with 18 points in 21 minutes and senior
Ahmed Ismail tossed in 14 points and eight boards off the bench. Sophomore
Elyjah Goss finished with a career-high 13 points and classmate
Jaylen Minnett added 10. Senior
D.J. McCall just missed his first career double-double with nine points, 10 boards and five assists and freshman
Brandon Kenyon tallied eight points, all in the final 11 minutes.
IUPUI led by 14 at the break and broke the game open with a 17-0 run early in the second half to blow the game open.
QUOTABLE: "It was a little bit hard for the guys to get up early and I think it showed with some of our intensity early in the game, especially defensively. Coming off emotional games against Bradley and Ball State and with finals coming up, we've been trying to give the guys some time to recover and focus on the books. I think that affected our pace and then [IUK] just came out and hit shots to stay in the game in the first half. We knew they'd play us tough, but we stuck with what we do and I thought we did a good job of getting some stops defensively and getting out in transition in the second half. It was nice to give the starters some rest and give some guys some minutes that haven't gotten a lot of run early in the season," Gardner said of the win over IUK.
UP NEXT: IUPUI will cap the five-game homestand on Saturday afternoon (Dec. 15) when the Jaguars host former league foe Western Illinois at 1:00 p.m. inside Indiana Farmers Coliseum.
Fans who bring a new, unwrapped toy can receive a FREE ticket to Saturday's game as part of Holiday Hoops Day.
QUICK NOTES (click here to access the full notes for Wednesday's game):
JAGS ROAR PAST IU KOKOMO
IUPUI made quick work of IU Kokomo just less than a week ago, rolling past the NAIA foe 95-64 inside Indiana Farmers Coliseum. The Jags led 49-35 at the break and unloaded a 17-0 run early in the second half to breeze past the Cougars.
Camron Justice led four Jaguars in double-digits and
Ahmed Ismail turned in 14 points and eight boards off the bench.
Elyjah Goss tallied a career-high 13 points on 4-of-6 shooting and
Jaylen Minnett tossed in 10.
D.J. McCall ended his night with nine points, 10 boards and five assists.
IUK was held to under 36 percent shooting and was outrebounded by the Jaguars, 52-33. IUPUI ended up at 50 percent from the field and scored 44 points in the paint.
Here are some more notes about the Jaguars' win.
-No IUPUI player played more than McCall's 23 minutes as Gardner began emptying the bench with 11 minutes remaining.
-McCall just missed his first career double-double with nine points and 10 boards. The Fort Wayne-native grabbed 10-or-more boards for the fourth time in his career and the first time since grabbing Jan. 5, 2017 when he grabbed 11 at North Dakota State.
-McCall's +/- for the night was +31, tops among the Jaguars' roster.
-Justice's 18 points (7-11 FG, 3-6 3's, 1-2 FT) came in just 21 minutes.
-Goss hit for double-digits for the third time this season after doing so just once as a freshman last season. Goss was a perfect 5-of-5 at the free throw line as part of the Jaguars' 19-of-25 (76 percent) effort.
-Freshman
Brandon Kenyon had a career-high eight points in just 10 minutes off the bench, including a pair of dunks. Sophomore
Jakoby Kemp tallied his first career points with seven points in seven minutes.
VERSUS NON-I's
Dating back to the start of IUPUI's Division I era (1998-99 season), the Jaguars are 37-0 all-time against non-Division I opponents, winning those games by an average of 27.2 points per victory.
Head coach
Jason Gardner is 6-0 against non-Division I opponents, winning those six games by an average of 23.5 points per game.
HE GO, WE GO - JUSTICE NOTES
-In this instance, he being
Camron Justice. IUPUI is 4-1 this season when Justice scores 20-or-better and Justice is averaging 22.5 points per game in the Jaguars' six victories. In the three losses, Justice is averaging 17 points per game.
-Justice was recently the first IUPUI player to score 20-or-more in three straight games since
Darell Combs did it three times from Feb. 20-27, 2016.
-The Kentucky-native has led IUPUI in scoring in each of the past eight games after being held to just nine points in the season opener. In that game, he had nine points and was ejected midway through the first half for tripping an opponent, which was called a flagrant 1 foul.
-Justice ranks 40th nationally in scoring (20.7 ppg), 39th nationally in free throw percentage (88.9%) and 45th in total free throws made (45), tops in the Horizon League.
JUSTICE FOR FREE
Junior
Camron Justice has done unprecedented damage at the free throw line already this season, boasting a pair of games with double-digit makes and no misses. He went 13-for-13 at Boston College, tying for the fourth most makes in a game in program history without a miss. He upped the ante against Bradley, hitting 15 without a miss, giving him the third highest total in school history without a miss (tops in the D1 era).
CALL ME ISMAIL
After a slow start to his IUPUI career, senior center
Ahmed Ismail is now making his presence felt off the Jaguars' bench. Ismail scored just 10 points total in his first IUPUI games, but is since averaging 12.5 points and 6.3 rebounds in the past four games while shooting 18-of-26 (69.2%) from the floor and 14-of-18 (77.8%) from the foul line.
BEST START SINCE...
The Jags' 6-3 start is the program's best nine-game start in head coach
Jason Gardner's five seasons and best start since the 2009-10 season. That squad finished 25-11 overall and earned a spot in the CBI that season. This marks the first time Gardner has had IUPUI above .500 beyond the fourth game of any of his five seasons.
ROLLING ON DUBS
IUPUI has points-rebounds double-doubles from three different players this season as
Elyjah Goss,
Evan Hall and
Ahmed Ismail have all pulled the trick. For perspective, IUPUI is the only team in the Horizon League to have three different players with points-rebounds double-doubles this season and IUPUI hasn't had three different players get double-doubles in a season since 2013-14 when four different players registered at least one (
Marcellus Barksdale, Donovan Gibbs, Khufu Najee & Mitch Patton).
BLOW OUT THE CANDLES
Head coach
Jason Gardner celebrated his 38th birthday in style, collecting his 50th career head coaching win at Boston College on November 14. The win was the Jaguars' first over an ACC opponent since 2001 and first over a Power 5 school since winning at Seton Hall in 2009.
Gardner is third on the program's all-time wins list at 54, but is a far cry from the top two in program history. Current Georgia State head coach Ron Hunter (275) and IUPUI Hall of Famer Bob Lovell (195) own the top two spots in program history.
SHARING THE WEALTH
IUPUI has had eight different players have hit for 10-or-more points at least once this season.
Ahmed Ismail became the most recent player to tally double-digits, joining a group that includes
Elyjah Goss,
Evan Hall,
Jack Hansen,
Camron Justice,
D.J. McCall,
Jaylen Minnett and
Grant Weatherford.
700 DAYS
IUPUI junior guard
Camron Justice was 700 days removed from his last competitive basketball game when the Jags took the floor against Xavier. Justice played just more than a season at Vanderbilt before joining the IUPUI program prior to last fall and sitting the full season as a transfer. Prior to Xavier, Justice last played in a game on Dec. 6, 2016 when the Commodores defeated High Point.
Justice and
Evan Hall were high school teammates at Knott County Central (Ky.) High School, helping the Patriots to four straight state tournament appearances. Justice finished his high school career with 3,588 points and 393 treys before being named the 2015 Kentucky Mr. Basketball.
OTHER NEWBIES
While Justice is nearly two full years removed from his last Division I game, others in the Jaguars' rotation are in similar spots. Junior guard
Grant Weatherford entered the year having never appeared in a Division I game, despite graduating from Hamilton Heights High School in 2015. Weatherford redshirted at Purdue in 2015-16, played a full season at Midland (Texas) College in 2016-17 and sat out all of last season.
HOT BENCH
A staple under head coach
Jason Gardner has been his teams' bench scoring as the IUPUI leader likes to play 9-10 players and use his bench frequently. Gardner's teams have matched or outscored the opposition's bench in 99 of 134 games (73.9 percent), including eight of nine games this season. All total, the IUPUI bench is averaging better than 26 points per game this season and outscoring opponents' benches by eight points per game.
