Shortly after the Indiana University Indianapolis women’s basketball team knocked off Detroit Mercy, 74-67, to clinch the #7 seed and an upcoming, coveted 1st-round home game (against Oakland) on Tuesday, senior guard Logan Lewis basked among an entourage of hugs and laughs and pictures.
It turns out that Lewis is one of those rare collegiate athletes these days who played four seasons at one institution. She had grown up in Indianapolis, and her mother worked at what was then Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis for 20 years. But then they moved, and it was a surprise when former IUPUI coach (now at Butler) Austin Parkinson was the first to offer her a scholarship while she played her high school ball in Michigan.
“Honestly, it was bigger than basketball for me,” she said about her last 4 years at IU Indy. “Like, I love Indianapolis. I have so much family here. I was actually in a sorority as well, so I joined multiple organizations on campus. It was more of like a family thing.”
Lewis guessed that about 30 people from her “support system” were at the game. “My mom, my aunts, cousins, my friends, my family friends, my distant uncles, just a lot of people,” she explained.
Though Lewis’s numbers didn’t jump off the stat sheet on the day she was honored for senior day, her coach, Kate Bruce, was pleased with the 21 minutes she logged and the 4 points and 3 rebounds fellow senior Camron Blank contributed to the victory. “They’re always our calming force,” she said. “They’re exactly what you need a senior to be. They’re poised, their balanced under pressure.”
As for the team’s 3rd senior, well, she was out there Katie Davidson-ing: 30 points on 8-for-11 shooting from the field, 4-for-5 from 3-point range, and 10-for-10 from the free throw line. And 7 rebounds while playing in foul trouble for much of the way. She played 1 more minute than she had points, and when her team jumped out to a 16-4 lead to start the game, she had half of those points.
It was that kind of day at Corteva Coliseum with Indianapolis mayor Joe Hogsett sitting courtside.
Not to be outdone by the women’s squad, the IU Indy men trailed Wright State by as many as 10 in the 1st half before completing the comeback win, 91-84.
Part of the appeal of high-level athletic competition is its capacity to pull at the attention of large groups of people, both those who are playing and those coaching or officiating or even just watching. What’s going to happen next? Steals, fast breaks, tight passes, dunks, and three pointers–what feat of greatness might be missed if one looks away? There’s an energy to it, and the 2nd half of the men’s game was like that if you were there for the Jags. And lots of people were.
On a day when freshman starter DeSean Goode was on the sideline in a boot after a play in Thursday night’s loss to Robert Morris, fellow freshman Keenan Garner scored 9 points while heroically grabbing 13 rebounds in 32 minutes on the court.
And yet, it was seniors Paul Zilinskas and Jarvis Walker who really carried the group, scoring 21 and 18 points, respectively. In the 2nd half. Good for 39 of the team’s 54 points in the period.
Zilinskas would finish with 31 in the game while Walker added 25, and the duo combined to shoot 7-for-13 from 3.
All of this was after head coach Paul Corsaro got on Walker a bit for the 2nd game in a row. “(Jarvis) knows I love him, first and foremost, and I’m really proud of how he responded both games, because when I did it, he came in and just elevated…I think everyone saw that, and I was just trying to get him to reach another gear…a player that isn’t as mature as Jarvis wouldn’t respond the way that he did…The ball wasn’t going in early. So what I was trying to do was get him to focus on the other aspects of his game: defending, rebounding, you know, making plays for others…he really, really listened, and…he carried us down the stretch.”
Walker interpreted the situation similarly: “(Coach) always knows when I have more in the tank, and he’s always on me because he respects the world of me, and he wants me to do my best. That’s all that was.”
Meanwhile, Zilinskas had a crowd of supporters that rivaled Lewis’s 30 in the first game. In from a basketball academy in Chicago, many of them wore green Lithuania gear. Zillinskas’ mother, Vilia, is a former professional basketball player in Europe and provided the halftime entertainment by running a mini-basketball clinic for all the kids in attendance at the game.
“I came to America,” she said, “so my son would play Division I basketball. This is the top. I wanted him to play basketball in America…Mom played for Lithuania, and if you have kids, you always want your kids to do better. I wanted my son to do better, 10 times, than Mom.”
The IU Indy men will play Wright State again in 3 days, this time in Dayton, in what will basically be a Horizon League Tournament rubber match between the two teams.
“That’s the first 10-win season in, what, 6 years?” Corsaro said. “…It means we have this thing going in the right direction.”
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