Indiana Basketball: Hoosiers use strong second half to pull away from Princeton

The Indiana basketball program improved to 5-0 on the season with a win over the Princeton Tigers on Wednesday night.

It was another opportunity to get better for the Indiana basketball program, and while not necessarily playing great from the tip, the Hoosiers came away with a 79-54 win.

At 5-0, the one negative for the Hoosiers this season has been starting slow in the first half, and that once again was the issue for Indiana. Only up four at the half, the Hoosiers’ defense was lackluster at times, in addition to going through many different scoreless droughts.

The second half was a different story though as the depth of Indiana’s front court players just simply wore down Princeton, led by Joey Brunk. Brunk finished with a season-high 16 points and eight rebounds offensively and was a force on the defensive side of things against Princeton’s Richmond Aririguzoh. Coming into the matchup averaging 17.3 points per game, Aririguzoh was held to just four points.

Indiana stretched the lead up to as many as 25 points in the second half, mainly by its defense, holding the Tigers to just 28 percent from the field in the second half, and just 38 percent for the game.

While the majority of the points for Indiana came in the paint, due to the fact that they were just 3-of-10 from deep, the free-throw shooting remained a positive, going 14-of-17.

Devonte Green played just his second game of the season and started to regain his rhythm throughout the game, as he finished with 16 points on 5-of-8 shooting. One part of his game that was on full display was his playmaking for teammates, as he added four assists, but could have had four more if it weren’t for blown layups by his teammates.

Justin Smith and Trayce Jackson-Davis added 14 points and 11 points respectively for the Hoosiers.

Jaelin Llewellyn paced the Tigers all night, leading with 16 points.

Indiana returns to action on Monday when playing host to Louisiana Tech.