FAIRBORN, Ohio - The IU Indianapolis men's basketball team was unable to keep pace with a hot shooting Wright State squad in the opening round of the Horizon League Tournament on Tuesday night (Mar. 4), falling on the road 98-85.
Jarvis Walker paced five Jaguars in double-digits with 20 points in his final collegiate game and
Sean Craig closed with 17 points, seven rebounds and five assists.
Freshman
Keenan Garner finished with a career-high 14 points on a perfect 6-of-6 from the floor.
"It stinks that the season is over," head coach
Paul Corsaro said. "Credit to Wright State, they really shot the heck out of the ball. They're a good team - we had three hard fought games with them. I'm proud of my guys. I thought we came out ready to go today. We threw a great first punch and ultimately we just ran out of gas."
Jack Doumbia paced Wright State (15-17) with 23 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists off the bench, making all eight of his field goal attempts. Brandon Noel finished with 17 points and Alex Huibregtse and Keaton Norris combined on eight threes and tallied 16 points apiece.
Wright State finished the game at 63.2 percent from the floor and 14-of-30 (46.7 percent) from three while the Jaguars shot 53.4 percent overall and 14-of-24 (58.3 percent) from three. However, the glass was the Jaguars ultimate undoing as IU Indy (10-22) was outrebounded by a 35-19 margin, helping WSU to 17 second chance points.
The Jaguars surged out to a 24-9 lead, thanks to hot shooting from the entire roster. Five different Jaguars combined to make the Jags first five three-point attempts of the game, including rare connections from both Garner and
Timaris Brown. A Garner three-point play created the 15-point lead before Wright State's offense began chipping away. The Jags remained in front 38-24 when
Ron Rutland III splashed a three before the Raiders outscored IU Indy 19-4 over the final seven-plus minutes to take a 43-42 halftime advantage.
The Raiders connected on 10-of-21 from three in the opening half, offsetting the Jaguars 55 percent overall and 7-of-13 work from long distance.
Wright State used an 8-0 run to build a 69-60 lead with 10:54 to play, capped by three straight Noel buckets at the rim. Walker and
Paul Zilinskas stopped the bleeding momentarily with four quick points before WSU later scored 10 in succession to put the game away. Huibregtse and Noel spearheaded the run with back-to-back threes, extending the lead to 16.
Zilinskas finished with 12 points in his final collegiate game and
Alec Millender chimed in with 10 points, four rebounds and three assists. Rutland added nine points off the bench on three threes.
"The two stats that were important to us that we didn't fulfill was winning the rebounding battle and defending the arc," Corsaro said. "Ultimately, that was our demise.
"We felt like we needed to win the rebounding battle and they beat us by 16. And our goal was to hold them to six or less from three and we were far from that."
The Jaguars will conclude the campaign at 10-22 overall, marking the program's most wins since 2019. Wright State will advance to face top-seeded Robert Morris on Thursday night (Mar. 6) in the quarterfinals round of the league tournament.
