BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — After a week off for finals, it looked like Indiana's basketball players were excited to get back on the court on Saturday afternoon. They exploded right out of the gate, hitting 14 three-pointers in the first half and cruising to an easy 78-58 win over Chicago State at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. 

With that hot start, you'd think some records would have gotten broken on Saturday, but the Hoosiers went stone cold in the second half, making just 1-of-20 threes. They got a lot of the same good looks as they did in the first half, but couldn't get anything to go in.

It didn't affect the outcome in any way for the 9-3 Hoosiers — Chicago State (2-11) never got closer than 19 points — but it certainly made for a weird blazing hot then ice cold shooting day. 

"Yeah, I agree the shots we got in the second half were the same ones in the first half. We were getting really good, clean looks by some of our best shooters, so it was one of those halves where you go 1 for 20,'' Indiana coach Darian DeVries said. "The easy thing to do is say hey, let's get more paint touches, go drive it. The hard thing to do is when you got a guy that if he's wide open he's making 7 out of 10 threes. I don't want them to hesitate, so you want them to stay confident. 

"For us, it's always been that you've got to stay confident as a shooter. ... Guys kind of feed off one another. I thought that second half, you could definitely feel it go in another way for us of and we kind of lost a little bit of our confidence. They weren't shooting it with the same swagger that they're accustomed to.''

Indiana guard Lamar Wilkerson, who set an Assembly Hall record with 44 points last week against Penn State, led the Hoosiers again on Saturday. He had 21 points and five made threes. Nick Dorn also hit five threes off the bench and scored 15 points. Reed Bailey had 17 points inside, on 6-of-9 shooting, with 5-of-6 made free throws.

The Hoosiers hadn't played since losing last Saturday at Kentucky. It was finals week, but DeVries said they still got a lot done in practice.

"I thought our practices were pretty good. We put a huge priority on taking care of the basketball and then defensive rebounding,'' DeVries said. "It was our main focus the entire week of how do we get better in those two areas? I thought, to be quite honest, we were just OK again tonight on that. It's something we're going to continue to prioritize every night.

"Overall, we've been pretty good on the turnover department most of the year, so it's been just a little bit recent that gotten a little careless with it. You just can't beat good teams turning the basketball over and giving them live ball turnovers. But I think this group, I would say they're unselfish. You see the assists and the turnovers and things. At halftime, we were in a really good spot. Just the second half, we just weren't very clean on either one of those areas.''

Indiana has a quick turnaround, playing again on Monday night when it takes on Siena at Assembly Hall. It's their last nonconference game of the year, and then they have nearly two weeks off before re-opening Big Ten play on Jan. 4 at home against Washington.

"We'll do our kind of walk-through and practice (on Sunday). It has to be fairly light with the minutes and things,'' DeVries said. "You don't get a lot of live reps, guarding them, them guarding us so you have to rely a lot on your principles and things and shoot around on Monday before we play the game.

"After the game, the guys are basically free until they get back for practice on the 27th. So get a nice little break here in college basketball world at least, to go see some friends and family for a few days, so I know they're excited about that. Like I told them, the main thing is we have to make sure before we do that, we've got a game we have to get ready for and make sure that we leave for a good Christmas. That's our No. 1 goal, to make sure we come out ready to play on Monday.''

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