SMU basketball season officially ends with NIT loss to Indiana St.
Now the SMU basketball season is over officially over.
Another double-digit second half lead slipped away from the Mustangs on Wednesday night in Terre Haute in the first round of the NIT against Indiana St.
SMU took a 15-point lead just under two minutes into the second half and led by 10 until the 10:32 mark. That’s when the Sycamores took over and never looked back.
The Mustangs lost six of their last seven games, including three-straight, to end the year.
Score: No. 1 Indiana St. 101, SMU 92
Record: 20-13
Player of the Game: When the SMU offense was working it was through Ja’Heim Hudson. He was almost unstoppable in the first half, scoring 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting including 3-for-3 from beyond the arc. Unfortunately foul trouble limited his minutes in the second half as he finished tied for the team lead with 21 points.
Leading Scorers: Hudson (21), Zhuric Phelps (21, seven rebounds), Chuck Harris (19, four assists), Tyreek Smith (11).
Sequence of the Game: As Indiana St. started to chip away at SMU’s lead, the Mustangs were able to hold them off for a bit. Keon Ambrose-Hylton hit a 3-pointer to go back up by 10, Smith ended a 6-0 run with a basket and Harris delivered a 3 to make it a 10-point game again with 10:50 to play.
From there, the Sycamores went on a 12-0 run, started by back-to-back 3-pointers, to take a lead they would never give back up. A Phelps free throw ended that run, but ISU would score five more to make it a 17-1 run and a six-point lead.
The rest of the story: Just about everything was going SMU’s way in the first half, including an overturned goaltending call that took two points away from ISU at halftime. The Mustangs shot 61% from the floor and 60% from the 3-point line, going 6-of-10. It even carried over into the first part of the second half, but they couldn’t sustain it.
Instead, it was the hosts getting hot from the 3-point line and everywhere else on the floor. The Sycamores would go on an 8-0 run, all at the free throw line, to put the game away until Jalen Smith delivered a 3 to make it a single-digit final.
Notable Stat I: Indiana State made their first five 3-point attempts of the second half, finishing 5-of-6 in the half and 9-for-23 on the night. It wasn’t just from beyond the arc, though. The Sycamores shot 70.4% from the floor and were 18-for-20 from the free throw line in the second half.
Notable Stat II: In a nine-point game, Indiana State had a 10-point advantage at the free throw line. The Sycamores finished 30-for-35 (85.7%) while SMU was 20-for-27 (74.1%).
Notable Stat III: Three SMU players fouled out — Ambrose-Hylton, Smith and Emory Lanier — while Hudson had four fouls. Three Indiana St. players finished with four fouls as 48 were called on the night.
Final Word: The Mustangs put together a great first half, to lead 49-40 at the break, and about 3-6 minutes of the second half. Then it all fell apart.
Indiana State switched to a zone defense and SMU didn’t have an answer. Twice the Sycamores went on shooting streaks. The first was six in a row, followed by a couple of misses, then made nine-straight before a miss and then three more makes, going 18-for-21.
Over that same stretch, SMU went 4-for-14 including a run of seven-straight misses. That took it from a 69-56 SMU lead to a 91-81 lead for the Sycamores.
Unfortunately, it was a story SMU played out too many times this season with another second-half double-digit lead squandered in an underwhelming final 15-or-so minutes.
