DETROIT - The No. 5 seed IUPUI basketball team will open 'Motor City Madness' on Sunday night (Mar. 4) when the Jaguars face No. 4 seed Oakland University (18-13) at 7:30 p.m. inside Little Caesars Arena. Sunday's game will be broadcast on ESPN3 and can be heard in Central Indiana on Fox Sports 97.5 as Morgan Adcock (pxp) is on the call. In addition, his call will be heard on iHeartRadio as well. 

IUPUI (11-18) split the regular season series with Oakland with each team collecting wins on their respective home floors. Oakland won in Rochester, 82-74 on Feb. 2, and the Jags won in Indianapolis, 74-67 on Feb. 19. The winner of Sunday's game will face either top-seeded Northern Kentucky or either Cleveland State or Youngstown State. 

Head coach Jason Gardner's team closed the regular season well, winning four of it's final six contests, which included the victory over Oakland as part of a season-ending three-game homestand.

Gardner's squad was shutout of the league's postseason awards, but Aaron Brennan and D.J. McCall were voted among the league's five All-Academic honorees. Brennan closed the season averaging a team-high 12.3 points per game and is joined in double-digits by T.J. Henderson (10.9 ppg) and Ron Patterson (10.7 ppg). Junior Evan Hall leads the team at 6.1 rebounds per game to accompany 7.8 points per game while sophomore Nick Rogers has a team-high 81 assists. 

As a team, IUPUI improved immensely over the course of the season, particularly in Horizon League play. The Jaguars yielded just 31.5 percent from three-point range in 18 league games, while shooting nearly 38 percent offensively. Freshman Jaylen Minnett (42.9 percent) and Brennan (42.6 percent) paced the team in league play while Patterson made a team-high 35 treys in 18 games. 

QUOTABLE
"This is time of year that we kind of turn to what we call a third season. We break it up into three seasons with the non-conference, conference and now the postseason. I thought we played pretty well at the end of the Horizon League season to get up to the No. 5 spot and now we hope to continue to play well in the tournament. We know it's not going to be easy and a lot of it is going to be new to us with a new facility and a new setup, but that's been a big part of our season overall. We're excited for the challenge," Gardner said. 

SCOUTING OAKLAND
Oakland, the league's preseason favorite, finished the regular season at 18-13 overall and 10-8 in league play to earn the No. 4 seed in the Horizon League Tournament. The Golden Grizzlies are led by league Player of the Year Kendrick Nunn and he was joined on the first team by senior forward Jalen Hayes. 
  PROBABLE STARTERS:
    G- #1 Kendrick Nunn (6-3, Sr.) 26.4 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 3.9 apg, 44.6 FG%
    G- #2 Nick Daniels (6-1, Sr.) 8.6 ppg, 2.6 rpg, 3.9 apg, 36.8 FG%
    G- #12 Stan Scott (6-3, Fr.) 2.4 ppg, 1.7 rpg, 1.1 apg, 47.5 FG%
    F- #4 Jalen Hayes (6-7, Sr.) 19.0 ppg, 8.1 rpg, 2.0 apg, 52.5 FG%
    F- #10 Isaiah Brock (6-8, Soph.) 5.4 ppg, 8.0 rpg, 0.6 apg, 71.7 FG%
 
INSIDE THE SERIES
Oakland leads the all-time series, 27-16. The series began in 1975 and the two schools met 36 times from 1998-2013 as Mid-Continent Conference/Summit League foes.
IUPUI is 3-1 all-time in conference tournaments against Oakland, eliminating the Golden Grizzlies in 2002, 2006 and 2008. Oakland defeated the Jaguars for The Summit League title in Sioux Falls in 2010. 

HORIZON LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL
Click here for links to pertinent information about this week's Horizon League Tournament

GAME NOTES (click here for PDF of the full games notes)
LAST TIME OUT
IUPUI closed the regular season with a 75-56 home loss to Northern Kentucky as the Norse clinched the outright regular season title on the Jaguars' home floor. NKU surged out to a double-digit lead in the opening eight minutes and never looked back in the win.
IUPUI shot just 30.2 percent from the floor while NKU connected on 51 percent for the game. Ron Patterson and T.J. Henderson scored a team-high 14 points each in the loss while Lavone Holland II had 17 points and Drew McDonald added 15 points and 11 boards. 

OLD FOE
Despite the move to the new league, IUPUI will face a familiar foe in the opening round of the Horizon League Tournament on Sunday night (Mar. 4) when the Jaguars take on No. 4 Oakland. The two teams hooked up four different times in the postseason as Summit League foes with IUPUI winning three of the four matchups. 

NO. 5
IUPUI has been the No. 5 seed in a postseason tournament exactly one time in program history - that being 2001 in the program's first season of postseason eligibility. That year, the Jaguars upset No. 4 UMKC in the opening round before falling to top-seeded Valparaiso in the Mid-Continent Conference Tournament, held in Fort Wayne. 

AB & DJ
Aaron Brennan and D.J. McCall were voted All-Academic Horizon League by the league's faculty athletic representatives. The two were picked to the five-man team, along with Drew McDonald and Carson Williams from NKU and Parker Ernsthausen of Wright State. 

FOUR GRADS
The IUPUI roster boasts four graduates this season as Maurice Kirby completed his degree at Loyola (Ill.) and is pursuing his master's in sports journalism. In addition, junior guard D.J. McCall completed his undergraduate work in three years and is now pursuing his master's degree at IUPUI. Aaron Brennan and Ron Patterson completed their degree requirements during the fall semester. 

ONE HALL OF A NIGHT LEADS TO HL POTW
Junior Evan Hall had one of the best games of his career at Milwaukee, finishing with 20 points (10-of-15 FG), 10 rebounds and a career-high four blocked shots in the victory. It was Hall's fourth career double-double and he closed one point shy of his career-high in the scoring column. It was his eighth career game with at least 10 rebounds and the first time this season he's led the Jaguars in scoring.
Hall was later named Horizon League Player of the Week, becoming the first IUPUI player to ever earn the award.  

HALL GOES BACK-TO-BACK
Junior Evan Hall recently posted back-to-back double-doubles for the first time in his career and became the first IUPUI player to post back-to-back double-doubles since Marcellus Barksdale had three-in-a-row from Dec. 18-23, 2013 (Nicholls State, at Indiana State, at SEMO).

BENCH NOTES
The IUPUI bench has been especially strong, averaging 25.1 points per game, including a season-high 43 at Oakland on Feb. 4. The past four years, the IUPUI bench has outscored opponents in 85 of 124 (68.5 percent) of its games, going 42-43 in those contests. Coming into today, the IUPUI bench has outscored the opponents' in eight straight games. 

BENCH NOTES, PART II
For the year, IUPUI is getting 36.6 percent of its points from reserves, primarily keyed by T.J. Henderson and Jaylen Minnett. The Jags bench has hit for 40-or-more points in a game six times this season. 

BENCH NOTES, PART II
IUPUI's top scorer has been a reserve 12 times this season. Four different players have contributed to those seven occasions.
Patterson (1): at Ball State (14 pts)
Kirby (1): at Purdue (16 pts)
Minnett (3): at Wright St. (11 pts), at UDM (12 pts), at Oakland (16 pts)
Henderson (7): at Gonz (18 pts), IUK (19 pts), at GB (13 pts), CSU (19 pts), YSU (22 pts), WSU (12 pts), NKU (14 pts)

SINCE OAKLAND
Since the second half of the Oakland game (Feb. 4), junior T.J. Henderson has been on a tear. He scored 14 points in the second half at Oakland and followed with back-to-back career-high efforts of 19 against Cleveland State (Feb. 8) and 22 against Youngstown State (Feb. 10). The past seven games, Henderson is averaging 14.7 points and shooting 48 percent (30-of-62) from the field and 88.9 percent (32-of-36) from the foul line. 

FREE MONEY?
IUPUI is shooting just 65.9 percent from the foul line this season, which would threaten the program's lowest mark in the Division I-era. The current lowest mark is 65.4 percent from 2008-09. The lowest single-season on record was a 62.7 percent mark in 1976-77.  

NO. 1 FOR 6TH
Henderson made a compelling case for Horizon League Sixth Man of the Year honors, leading the league in scoring (10.6 ppg) among those who didn't start a game in league play. However, UIC's Godwin Boahen was voted the award winner. 

THEFT ALERT
Junior D.J. McCall is currently second in the Horizon League with 1.54 steals per game. The junior guard has 43 steals this season, surpassing his career total of 41 entering this season in 63 games. 

ROSTER CHANGES
The IUPUI program had a few roster changes at the turn of the semester as one player departed the program and two others joined the Jaguars. Little used sophomore Noah Thomas left the program after having appeared in just two games in the first semester. Thomas, a 6-foot-9 center, totaled four points and four rebounds in eight total minutes.
On the flip side, the Jaguars brought in a pair of transfers as Mike Sagay (Boston College) and Trevor Johnson (Mesa [Ariz.] C.C.) joined the program. Sagay, a 6-foot-7 forward, comes to IUPUI with two-and-a-half years of eligibility, after having played 15 games at Boston College last season. A 3-star recruit, Sagay was ranked among Connecticut's top players as a senior at St. Thomas More High School.
Johnson, a 6-foot-2 guard, comes to IUPUI with two years of eligibility remaining. Johnson was an All-State performer while at Flagstaff [Ariz.] High School before attending Mesa Community College.
Both are able to begin practice with the team immediately.   

STARTER NOTES
In the early portion of the season, 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 29 games and Evan Hall is next with 28 starts. Nine of the Jaguars' 11 players have one start this season with freshman Evan Borgman getting the nod at Oakland. 
The group of Brennan, Hall, Ron Patterson, D.J. McCall and Nick Rogers started 15 straight games (5-10) before Gardner inserted Borgman for Patterson at Oakland on Feb. 4. 

WIN/LOSS SPLITS
In IUPUI's 11 wins, the Jags have shot 46.7 percent from the field and held foes to 39.5 percent overall and 28.6 percent from deep. In addition, the Jags have outrebounded opponents by 3.5 boards per game in the 11 wins.
In the Jaguars' 18 losses, IUPUI has shot just 40.2 percent overall and allowed opponents to shoot a robust 52.1 percent from the field and 40.9 percent from beyond the arc. In addition, IUPUI has been outrebounded by 2.4 boards per game in the 18 losses. 

WINNING THE ARC
IUPUI defended the three well in Horizon League play, yielding a league-low 31.5 percent from deep. On the flip side, IUPUI shot 37.9 percent from deep in league play, led by Brennan (42.6) and Minnett (42.9). Patterson tops the team with 35 made 3's in league play while Minnett has 33. 
IUPUI made as many or more threes than their opponents in 14 of 18 league games. 

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 44-8 (.846) in games in which the Jaguars have shot a better percentage than opponents and just 4-68 (.056) when being outshot.
The Jan. 10 Milwaukee win is the only time this season IUPUI has been outshot and won the game. 

GETTING LOOKS
Two areas where IUPUI has excelled this season are offensive rebounding (72nd nationally - 12 rpg) and forcing turnovers (60th nationally - 14.8 to/g).
Because of those numbers, IUPUI has attempted 110 more shots than their foes for the year, good for 3.8 shot attempts per game.