Indiana Hoosiers vs George Washington Colonials
INDIANA BRINGS BACK MEMORIES OF OLD IN 108-88 ROUT
Haston Leads Hoosiers in First Round Win Despite Broken Hand
March 11, 1999 - First Round of NCAA Tournament
Orlando Arena - Orlando, Florida
(11)George Washington Colonials 88 (20- 9)
#19 (6) INDIANA HOOSIERS 108 (23-10)
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - This was the way Indiana played back when coach
Bob Knight ruled the NCAA tournament. In the highest-scoring game in
their storied postseason history, the Hoosiers showed off unselfish
offense and tough man-to-man defense to beat George Washington, 108-
88, Thursday night in the first round of the South Regional.
"We got off to a real good start," Knight said.
Freshman Kirk Haston scored 27 points despite playing with a broken
left hand, and A.J. Guyton -- with help all over the court -- slowed
down 5-foot-4 Shawnta Rogers, the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year.
Rogers scored 28 points, though he shot 10-for-31 to do it.
Luke Recker added 20 points as the sixth-seeded Hoosiers (23-10)
moved into the second round to play third-seeded St. John's, a 69-43
winner over Samford.
The Hoosiers had lost five of their last six tournament games, but
this performance brought back memories of better days when Knight led
them to three NCAA championships.
In fact, this was even more than usual for them. Indiana broke the
school scoring record in the tournament, set in a 107-90 victory over
Auburn on its way to the 1987 title.
George Washington (20-9) was denied the matchup it wanted against
former coach Mike Jarvis, who left the school last year to take over
St. John's. Jarvis shook hands with Rogers and several others when
they came out for warmups, but the 11th-seeded Colonials needed more
than merely encouragement.
Guyton shot over Rogers for a 3-pointer that gave Indiana an 8-5
lead, starting a 15-0 burst capped by Recker's dunk. The Hoosiers
led, 48-31, at halftime and were never threatened the rest of the way.
"If you get up early, the motivation is there to keep doing well,"
Rogers said. "We got off to a bad start."
Haston shot 9-for-11 from the field and 9-for-10 from the foul line.
He also had a game-high nine rebounds despite his injured hand.
"We debated for three days whether we would start him," Knight said.
"He was favoring it in practice more than we liked, so we put him out
there to see if he could go, and it worked out pretty well."
Yegor Mescheriakov scored 24 points for the Colonials, who took a
whopping 90 shots and made only 34. They were outscored, 31-11, at
the foul line.
Indiana won despite losing starting center Larry Richardson to back
spasms early in the first half. It was the Hoosiers' highest-scoring
game since a 110-79 win over Iowa in the 1994-95 season.
GEORGE WASHINGTON (20-9)
Iturbe 1-4 0-0 2, Mescheriakov 10-19 2-3 24, Ngongba 1-5 1-2 3,
King 2-10 4-6 8, Rogers 10-31 2-2 28, Roma 2-4 0-0 4, Eyal 3-7
0-0 7, de Miranda 4-7 2-3 10, Sola 0-1 0-0 0, Brown 1-1 0-0 2,
Camara 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 34-90 11-16 88.
INDIANA (23-10)
Gladness 5-7 0-0 10, Haston 9-11 9-10 27, Richardson 0-1 0-0 0,
Recker 7-11 6-9 20, Guyton 4-7 2-4 11, Randle El 1-2 0-0 2, Fife
0-0 0-0 0, Jimenez 1-1 3-4 5, Turner 4-7 0-0 8, Lewis 2-2 4-4 8,
Odle 1-2 3-4 5, Washington 4-6 4-4 12, Geyer 0-1 0-0 0. Totals
38-58 31-39 108.
Halftime-Indiana 48, George Washington 31. 3-Point Goals-George
Washington 9-31 (Rogers 6-16, Mescheriakov 2-4, Eyal 1-4, Camara
0-1, Ngongba 0-1, Sola 0-1, King 0-4), Indiana 1-3 (Guyton 1-2,
Recker 0-1). Fouled out-Ngongba, King. Rebounds-George Washington
41 (Mescheriakov, de Miranda 7), Indiana 40 (Haston 9).
Assists-George Washington 12 (Mescheriakov, Rogers 3), Indiana 23
(Lewis, Recker 5). Total fouls-George Washington 31, Indiana 19.
Technicals-Brown.
A-13,011.
Coach Knight's postgame comments
(Courtesy of the Indianapolis Star/News {copywrited})
ORLANDO -- (Following 108-88 win over George Washington on March 11,
in the first round of the NCAA Tournament)
(opening comments)
"We got out to a really good start after a tough start in the first
half. We had six turnovers in four minutes I think. I wasn't sure if
we were going to get six shots in the game. I thought we settled down
a little bit after that. Our position at the half was obviously very,
very important. Because then we were able to play with a lot of
distance in the second half. Offensively, I thought we were pretty
good. Defensively, I thought as the game went on when we had the
score at whatever it was to 60 I thought that we were playing defense
pretty well. When you score a lot of points, the other guy is going
to score more. After that, we didn't play as well defensively as I
would like, but all in all I think it was a really good ballgame for
us."
(Q-Can you talk a little about what you got out of Haston tonight?)
"The guys got him the ball pretty well and Haston completed things.
We debated for three days on whether we were going to start him or
not because of his hand. He's paid a little more attention not to
using his left hand in practice than I would like. So we decided to
start him to see how it would go and it went pretty well."
(Q-Coach can you talk about this lineup of size, three big guys and
two smaller ones. It's quite a change from what IU fans have seen
over the course of the year. When you decide to go with size?)
"I really felt that whether we did that now, or a year from now,
that's the way we have to play. I thought that back in October and we
just didn't do it. We kind of jacked around with three guys. If we
put our five best basketball players on the floor, considering all
the things they can do, there has to be three perimeter players
there. Because there are at least perimeter players among our five
best players. Yet there are some things that we do or we don't do
well with that particular lineup and defense is one of them. And I
think the defensive play in the first half got us in a really good
position by the halftime. I told our coaches a comment to this
effect, that this is the lineup we really need to get in there."
(Q-Coach can you talk about your team's ability to push the ball up
the floor and how that helped you win?)
"I always feel that you have two choices when you're playing against
somebody that really likes to run and GW is a very good running team.
You can either try to take advantage of their running to the
offensive end and hopefully beating them going back to their
defensive end. Or you can really try to slow it down. And we are, as
you could see a little bit at the end, we are not the most patient of
teams. And usually when confronted with that kind of opponent, I've
always felt well lets see if we can run going the other way. Lets see
if we can defend and run in the same possession or sequence of
possessions and that's all we tried to do with this game."
(Q-Coach, what about Richardson, is that a reoccuring injury and how
about Washington's play tonight?)
"I don't know where Richardson is right now relative to being able to
play. He's got a back injury in the Illinois game and he has kind of
been in and out. Al though he practiced with the exception of
yesterday. And like Haston to see what he do with his hand, we
basically started Richardson to see whether he would be able to go or
not and very quickly we determined that he couldn't."
(Q-Coach, the 1-of-3 on 3-pointers in a couple of years might look
unusual just on paper but is that just the way the game went, the
opportunities that were there...?)
"Did we just take three? God, that's great. We didn't shoot three's
at all in practice this week when we worked. We had a tendency at
times to rely too much on 3's."
Pregame breakdown of Indiana vs George Washington in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament
George Washington Colonials Indiana Hoosiers
Averages Per Game
Points 79.4 74.8
Rebounds 35.7 32.8
Assists 15.8 16.7
Blocked shots 3.9 3.7
Steals 11.1 10.0
Turnovers 14.1 13.8
Percentages
Field goal % 39.3% 46.3%
Three point % 27.4% 37.9%
Free throw % 75.4% 67.3%
Pregame stats courtesy of CBS Sportsline
Story and game stats courtesy of the Associated Press
Pictures courtesy of the Indianapolis Star/News
