FORT WAYNE, Ind. - Still riding the program's best start since 2009, head coach
Jason Gardner's IUPUI basketball team will hit the road on Tuesday night (Dec. 18) when the Jaguars head north to face Purdue Fort Wayne (6-7) at 7:00 p.m. inside Allen County War Memorial Coliseum. The game will be broadcast on Comcast Network 81 and can be heard on IUPUIJags.com as Morgan Adcock (pxp) is on the call.
A win on Tuesday would equal the program's best start ever at 9-3.
IUPUI (8-3) comes in having won six of seven and three-in-a-row. The Jaguars dispatched Western Illinois 82-68 on Saturday afternoon behind 20 points from
Camron Justice and 17 from
Ahmed Ismail. The Jaguars trailed by nine early in the second half before hitting the jets and running away from the Leathernecks. Defensively, IUPUI limited WIU to just 32 percent in the second half and outscored the guests 43-28 after the break.
The Jaguars will face a second straight former Summit League foe on Tuesday when they take on Purdue Fort Wayne. The Mastodons come in at 6-7 overall and 4-2 at home on the year. Included in the 'Dons home victories are wins over South Carolina State and Akron. John Konchar leads Purdue Fort Wayne in scoring (17.6 ppg), rebounds (9.2 rpg), assists (4.6 apg) and steals (19).
QUOTABLE: "I thought this was a good team win for us. I think we knew if we stuck with the game plan and continued to do what we do, we would be okay. They made some tough shots in the first half and you have to give them credit for that. I thought they did a really good job on Cam [defensively], but Cam was good about letting the game come to him and trusting his teammates to make plays. Guys like Elyjah and Ahmed stepped up and really got them in foul trouble inside. Once we got their bigs in foul trouble, I thought we could really attack them going downhill and get some good looks and get to the free throw line. I'm proud of the guys for how we closed it out and finished it today. Cam hit some big time shots late in the game and we got a lot of stops down the stretch. That's what winning teams do," Gardner said.
UP NEXT: IUPUI will cap the non-conference slate on Friday, Dec. 21 when the Jags head south to take on Morehead State at 5:35 p.m..
QUICK NOTES (click here to access the full notes for Tuesday's game):
JAGS PICK OFF FORMER LEAGUE FOE WESTERN ILLINOIS
IUPUI used a balanced attack a big second half run to roll past former Summit League foe Western Illinois on Saturday (Dec. 15), 82-68. Junior
Camron Justice paced five Jags in double-digits with 20 points (5-12 FG, 4-6 3's, 6-6 FT) and senior
Ahmed Ismail tossed in 17 (5-7 FG, 1-1 3's, 6-8 FT) off the bench. Sophomore
Elyjah Goss had his second double-double of the year with 13 points and 10 boards and
Grant Weatherford also had 13.
IUPUI trailed 48-39 early in the second half before outscoring WIU 20-4 over the next six-plus minutes to take a 59-52 lead. Western Illinois proceeded to reclaim a 62-61 lead with 6:59 left, but the Jags finished in style, outscoring the Leathernecks 21-6, which included the final 12 points of the ballgame. Justice made two critical threes during the run and assisted
Evan Hall on the punctuation mark with 1:42 to play.
IUPUI committed a season-low seven turnovers and outscored the opposition 18-9 in points off turnovers. WIU shot just 32 percent in the second half while IUPUI finished at 47 percent overall and 37 percent from deep.
Here are some more tidbits from the Jaguars' latest win.
-IUPUI was whistled for a season-low 13 personal fouls, resulting in a 31-12 advantage in free throw attempts. The Jags outscored WIU 21-9 at the charity stripe as Weatherford (7-8), Justice (6-6) and Ismail (6-8) all did major damage at the line.
-Weatherford was +23 on the day, easily tops on the Jaguars' roster. Both Justice and Ismail were +16.
-Justice finished with a career-high seven assists, including six in the first half. He scored the Jags' opening five points of the game, but then went the remainder of the first half without a field goal.
-Goss matched his career-high with 13 points as part of his second double-double of the season. The Illinois-native hit 6-of-9 attempts from the field and also blocked two shots.
-IUPUI improved to 18-3 all-time against Western Illinois in games played in Indy.
-Ismail connected on his first three in an IUPUI uniform, putting the Jaguars ahead 51-50 with 12:25 left. It was just the second trey of his Division I career as he also made a three against Iona on Jan. 17, 2017 during his season at Manhattan.
FREE MONEY
IUPUI enters play ranked 33rd in the country in free throws made (186) and 35th in free throw attempts (263).
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).
HE GO, WE GO - JUSTICE NOTES
-In this instance, he being
Camron Justice. IUPUI is 6-1 this season when Justice scores 20-or-better and Justice is averaging 22.1 points per game in the Jaguars' eight 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 nine of 11 games after being held to just nine points in the season opener. In that game, he had just nine points before he was ejected midway through the first half for tripping an opponent, which was called a flagrant 1 foul.
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 five IUPUI games, but is since averaging 12.7 points and 6.2 rebounds in the past six games while shooting 26-of-38 (68.4%) from the floor.
BEST START SINCE...
The Jags' 8-3 start is the program's best 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.
A win tonight would equal the best 12-game start in school history, matching 9-3 starts in 1991, 1995, 2007 and 2009.
IN THE FORT
IUPUI is 2-1 under Gardner in Fort Wayne, having won two-of-three meetings inside Gates Center. The latter of the two wins came courtesy of a
Marcellus Barksdale layup at the final horn on Jan. 23, 2016 in the Jaguars' 84-82 victory.
In Gardner's first season, the Jaguars rolled past the Mastodons' 63-58 for his first-ever Summit League win. Barksdale scored 19 in that victory and
Aaron Brennan added 12. IUPUI held Fort Wayne to just 36 percent shooting in that game.
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 55, 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 nine different players have hit for 10-or-more points at least once this season.
Nick Rogers became the most recent player to tally double-digits, joining a group that includes
Elyjah Goss,
Evan Hall,
Jack Hansen,
Ahmed Ismail,
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 101 of 136 games (74.3 percent), including 10 of 11 games this season. All total, the IUPUI bench is averaging 30 points per game this season and outscoring opponents' benches by more than 12 points per game. The Jags' bench scored a season-high 66 points in the win over IU Northwest.
