'That's just Conor': Enright's defense defines Indiana's statement win over Kansas State

On Kansas State’s first possession Tuesday, as the Wildcats tried to feed P.J. Haggerty at the top of the key, Conor Enright slid a half-step into the passing lane and brushed the ball just enough to send it skidding off course. Five seconds later, Lamar Wilkerson rose in transition and buried a 3-pointer, and the tone inside Assembly Hall was no longer speculative. It was set.

But that moment didn’t start with the opening tip. For Enright, it had been playing out in his head for nearly 72 hours. He had been talking about the matchup since the weekend, studying Haggerty’s tendencies, imagining the angles, the counters and the pickup points. By the time Tuesday night arrived, this wasn’t a reaction. It was a culmination.

“He had been talking about it [since] three days ago. He was excited for this game,” guard Tayton Conerway said postgame. “He wanted all the smoke … He wanted to show what he could do.”

What Enright showed was a disciplined, suffocating defensive performance that powered Indiana’s 86-69 win over Kansas State, the Hoosiers’ most complete defensive showing of the season and a defining moment in their 6-0 start to the Darian DeVries era.

Haggerty, college basketball’s leading scorer entering the night at 28 points per game, came in as the engine of a Wildcats offense averaging 92.8 points per contest. No opponent had solved him. Indiana didn’t overcomplicate it. The answer was Enright.

With Enright as the primary defender, Haggerty finished with a season-low 16 points on 7-for-17 shooting and committed six turnovers. The Wildcats made just one of their first 11 field goal attempts, and Indiana held them to 27 first-half points — their lowest scoring half of the season.

Enright’s work never felt frantic. He funneled drives, anticipated counters and disrupted rhythm without gambling. Even when he wasn’t directly involved in a deflection or turnover, the offense bent around him, drifting away from its normal comfort.

Conerway noted how that steadiness simplified the game for everyone else around on the court.

“I told him on the bench, man, ‘You’re one of my favorite players to play with. You make basketball so much easier,’” Conerway said.

Offensively, Enright scored just seven points and finished sixth on the team in scoring. But his value had little to do with the box score and everything to do with subtraction — removing Kansas State’s biggest advantage.

“He doesn’t care about scoring. He can score but he doesn’t care. He just wants to win. That’s why he’s the ultimate team guy. I love having him out there,” DeVries said. “You can see why watching him against a guy that was averaging 28 points, coming into it, he did an unbelievable job.”

DeVries, who coached Enright for three seasons at Drake, has built much of Indiana’s emerging defensive identity around that familiarity. The guard’s approach isn’t situational. It’s foundational.

“He’s so valuable to a team and that’s all he cares about,” DeVries said. “He loves that challenge. He’s been that way his whole life. Just let me go guard him. Let me dive on the floor. Let me take charges. Let me do all the scrappy things that impact winning.”

From the outside, Enright’s shutdown of the nation’s leading scorer may read like a breakthrough performance. Inside the Indiana program, it looked like continuity — preparation meeting opportunity, just as it had in Enright’s head for three days before tipoff.

“A lot of people just see it during the games and stuff, but he’s like that in practice. He’s like that everywhere,” Conerway said. “That’s just Conor.”

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