BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- It turns out, Illinois' high-pressure defense has a few weaknesses. And Romeo Langford exploited them often.
The IU freshman guard poured in a game-high 28 in the Hoosiers' 73-65 win over the Fighting Illini Thursday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, setting a new career high.
"I just started seeing more driving opportunities and that's what I'm best at right now doing," Langford said. "With the way they played, like I said earlier, they like to play passing lanes, which leads for wide-open driving lanes for me to either score or pass to other teammates."
Langford managed to do a little bit of both.
He shot 8 of 13 from the floor, his 13 attempts a team-high. He also shared for the team lead in assists with three.
It was his scoring, though, that offered the strongest impact and gave IU a boost when it needed it most.
Sophomore forward Justin Smith's tip-in to beat the halftime buzzer knotted the contest at 32, then Langford proceeded to score Indiana's next 10 points by himself as IU jumped out to a 42-34 lead in the first 5:09 of the second half.
"We wanted him to be more aggressive (in the second half)," IU head coach Archie Miller said. "Sometimes you have to get the ball in his hands against a team like this because he's traditionally not bringing it up. But we allowed him to bring it up a lot more. Get the ball before we crossed halfcourt a lot more, which allowed him to play with it in his hands.That was a big change for us, just having a different guy coming off the screen -- a different guy coming downhill on their big guys, and he was fantastic I thought in that role."
Langford also excelled at attacking the basket and getting to the free throw line much like he's done all season. His 15 attempts not only exceed the total accumulated by Illinois' starters (8) but also set a season-high. He made 11 of them.
Overall, the New Albany native felt it was his most complete game thus far.
"I am getting a lot more comfortable and now that Rob (Phinisee) is out for a while with his little injury he has, that caused for me to have the ball more in my hand and I'm comfortable with doing that," Langford said.
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