After a thorough shellacking at the hands of Robert Morris, with a 106-53 loss that has to rank up there in terms of embarrassment for the program, the Jaguars had little time to lick the proverbial wounds as this past Saturday, they had to go to Youngstown, Ohio and face off against the Youngstown State Penguins, who are fighting for position as we are just weeks away from the Horizon League tournament. Of all the programs IU Indy struggles with (and really, it’s pretty much the entirety of the league bar Green Bay and technically Purdue Fort Wayne), the Penguins are bizarrely their greatest foe, with them only having won two games prior to Saturday’s win against YSU, and both of those victories happened when the Jaguars were the visitors.
In what’s probably Paul Corsaro’s first statement win for the West Michigan Street university (you had to beat Green Bay twice and Detroit Mercy was undermanned), IU Indianapolis managed to earn their third ever win against Youngstown with an 84-79 victory, surprising the Pens and throwing the Horizon League standings into a bit of turmoil.
During the first half, both teams shuffled positioning in the early phases of the game, with IU Indianapolis managing to break out of the doldrums to get ahead by 7 around the 8-minute mark in large part due to Paul Zilinskas and DeSean Goode. EJ Farmer, who led the Penguins in scoring off the bench with 22 points, managed to get the game back close for Youngstown State at around 2 minutes left in the half, before Jarvis Walker and Sean Craig hit the basket to get the Jags away from trouble and into halftime with a 39-32 lead.
However, a key problem with the team has always been maintaining those leads. One cold snap in shooting and they are suddenly down double digits, which is not a good recipe for success. This almost seemed to be the case when the Pens made it 53 all in the second half with 11:09 to go in the game, before IU Indy was bailed out by DeSean Goode and Sean Craig nailing threes to securely put Indy back on top for good. More importantly than bouncing back from a 50+ loss was the team realizing that it has the potential to keep a game competitive and not panic when things get tense.
DeSean Goode led the team with 23 points and 10-13 shooting, with Paul Zilinskas at 20.
As far as shooting percentages went, IU Indianapolis managed a meh 11 out of 23 from the arc, compared to Youngstown State’s pitiful 4 out of 27, and it wasn’t exactly a fun time at the charity stripe for either team; IU Indy missed 7 out of 22 attempts, and the Pens only had 7-9. Fouls were a bit of an issue for the Jaguars as Ron Rutland III managed to amass 5 fouls in the span of four minutes, all in the first half. That’s the second time this season Rutland has fouled out, with the win against Detroit Mercy being the first.
Although it would be nice to celebrate an unlikely victory, the postseason draws near, and with it, the Jaguars are in an outside position to finally host a home game in the first round for the first time since 2018. It won’t be simple, as they play Milwaukee, who has bested IU Indianapolis 9 times in a row, on Wednesday at the Jungle. Anyone who’s a student and going will get to celebrate their favorite professor as it’s, well, Favorite Professor Night.
