Indiana came into Wednesday's game against Penn State needing a win. It was a two-game losing streak and a win against Penn State was a crucial one moving forward.
The play of the veteran backcourt for Indiana has been the main talking point for most of the year and while that remained the case on Wednesday, it was for much different reasons.
Al Durham and Rob Phinisee have a combined 175 games played in college and 133 starts. Despite that experience, the inconsistencies of that duo have been evident and will be a critical part of Indiana's success, or lack thereof, moving forward. On Wednesday they showed why.
The duo combined for 29 points on 11-of-21 from the field and 5-of-12 from three.
"Al Durham and Rob Phinisee tonight, both kids played their butts off for us. There is a big difference in our team when our older guys, our guys that have been most experienced are playing with confidence like they did tonight," IU head coach Archie Miller said. "Al shot the ball in tonight and Rob made big plays including the game winner basically for us. Hopefully that is going to be a trend we can continue to count on because we are going to need those guys to continue to play that way."
Indiana not only needed all of those points, but that duo also hit big time shot after big time shot down the stretch for IU.
