Indiana University Indianapolis men’s basketball leading scorer Paul Zilinskas doesn’t always use his days off the court to go shopping, but yesterday was different, and not just because of all the tweets and text messages.
Though he lost a pricey pair of compressions boots and his jacket in a fire that erupted–pictures on X revealed a window- and roof-less shell of a bus when it was all said and done–right after the team evacuated their wheels near Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on the Sunday ride home from a 71-67 loss at Northern Kentucky, Zilinskas took a drive the next day to Walmart with teammate Jarvis Walker in the search of some basics: soap, a toothbrush, some vitamins. It was inconvenient, but Zilinskas felt lucky: others who had made the trip lost technological devices, keys, wallets, and credits cards.
As a team, they lost jerseys, basketballs, a film projector, coaching iPads, and team shoes. Head coach Paul Corsaro estimated the financial loss to be around $20,000.
“Adidas was one of the the the first emails we sent,” Athletic Director Luke Bosso said, “…and their response has been fantastic. They’re going to help us.”
Zilinskas had been sitting in the back of the bus with his AAU teammate from high school, Alec Millender. Around 4 p.m. they heard a pop below them. A flat tire, Zilinskas assumed. Within moments, he remembers multiple voices and instructions; he wasn’t sure who was first or the loudest, but there was a common refrain: “Get off the bus immediately!” He quickly followed the order and the teammates in front of him.
Corsaro had a closer look at what was going on, and he credited Keith Oddo–who finished his playing career in 2019-2020 on the roster at Louisville and is now listed on the IU Indy athletics website as “Special Assistant to the Head Coach”–with stepping off the bus to assess the situation with the bus driver and then issuing the first command to the team.
The fire extinguisher was under Corsaro’s seat, and he brought that with him off the bus, but the fire was spreading too quickly in the direction of the fuel tank.
“I made the decision,” Corsaro said. “I was like, hey, we need to get as far away from the bus as possible, you know, and the guys were like, ‘Well, you know, our items.’ I’m like, ‘We don’t have time, guys’…we kind of backpedal, trying to watch it at the same time but we’re moving pretty quickly, (and) we get about a a football field’s distance away from the bus and at that point the entire thing’s up in flames.”
A little farther down the road, and the team was seeing and hearing explosions. No one was injured.
“Mechanical issues” is the phrase the school has used for the cause of the fire. “It was no one’s fault,” Corsaro said.
Zillinskas said the team was on the side of the highway like that for 45 minutes to an hour. They were eventually picked up by a public school bus, which took them to LaRosa’s Pizza for dinner. A different bus took them back to Indianapolis, where they arrived at about 8:15 p.m.
The Jaguars did not practice on Monday, but Zilinskas insisted that was planned before the incident. “If we had a very quick turnaround,” he said, “we would probably practice. You know, have a light of practice and then play our next game. But if we have a gap, like today, we’ll usually have the day off.”
“The sun came up today,” Corsaro said, putting things in perspective. “We’re all here.”
The Jaguars play two home games later this week, starting with Robert Morris on Thursday, who Zilinskas said the team has “had circled for a little while” after the Colonials hammered them 106-53 in Pennsylvania less than a month ago. He was confident the team will “prepare better than (they) did last time.”
Maybe so, but they’ll have to do it while tracking down toiletries and school supplies and new debit cards.
Still, Bosso echoed Zilinska’s sentiment: “We want to get as many people to The Jungle to show our guys who are, you know, all within a 5-hour drive of Indianapolis…how much this community rallies behind folks…We would love for you all to get out to The Jungle at 6:30 on Thursday night to help cheer on the guys.”
