Illinois Fighting Illini upset No. 1 Indiana Hoosiers

• Illinois beat No. 1 Indiana%2C 74-72
• Tyler Griffey scored the winning basket at the buzzer
• The Illini were down 12 at the half

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – It was a basic out-of-bounds play. An equally basic curl cut.

When Tyler Griffey started to break for the basket both Cody Zeller and Christian Watford were in front of him. Two steps later he had left them both behind.

Griffey took a pass from Brandon Paul underneath the Illinois basket with 0.9 seconds to play and kissed it off the backboard at the buzzer Thursday night to lift the Illini to a stunning 74-72 victory over No. 1 Indiana.

The Illinois students stormed the floor and another No. 1 team had gone down. It was the second time IU has been defeated as the No. 1 team in the nation this season. The other was Dec. 15 against Butler at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

D.J. Richardson had a game-high 23 points, Brandon Paul had 21 and Tyler Griffey came off the bench to score 14 points in 31 minutes. In his previous five games, Griffey had scored a total of 14 points.

Indiana's two big men on the floor for the final play were at a loss to explain what happened.

"It's just frustrating,'' Watford said. "(Cody and I) both had our defensive responsibilities, or at least we thought we did. Just a busted play."

Zeller said he had yet to see the replay so it was difficult to explain what happened.

"I guess it was just some miscommunication," he said. "We'll get it fixed."

Illinois (16-8, 3-7 Big Ten) will be credited with the victory but this was one that Indiana simply gave away. It was of the gift wrap variety.

The Hoosiers (20-3, 8-2) led by 10 with 4:23 to play. Make a few defensive stops, hit your free throws and you're still undefeated on the road this season.

Get careless with the ball, over help a little too much on defense and have a communication breakdown at the end and your shot at winning a Big Ten title just got much more difficult.

IU coach Tom Crean stated the obvious when he said his team isn't good when it turns the ball over. It's really not good when it turns it over 14 times and that leads to 28 points. That's the most points IU has allowed an opponent to score off turnovers all season. The previous high had been 25 against Michigan State.

Indiana has four road games left against Ohio State, Michigan State, Minnesota and Michigan and it has to win at least two of those two have a realistic shot at claiming a share of the conference crown. It may need to win three of them. Sunday's game against Ohio State just got that much more important.

IU led 70-62 with just over 3 minutes to play. Watford missed a 3 and IU got the rebound. Jordan Hulls missed a runner in the lane.

That's when Richardson took over. First he hit a 3 from the left corner and then after Watford had an inside shot blocked, Richardson hit another 3 from the right corner. Quickly it was 70-68. After Will Sheehey missed a 3 from the left corner, Richardson knocked down a 17-foot jumper to tie the score with 1:17 remaining.

"There's no question we over helped and you can't do that,'' Crean said. "That's what it came down to. There's two things that can't happen. You can't get so locked into your man that you leave someone on an island, and you can't over help."

The score was still tied at 72 after Paul made two free throws including the first which he banked in.

Crean went into IU's final offensive possession with two timeouts. There score was a little over a second between the game clock and the shot clock. When Bob Knight was the coach at Indiana he was known for not calling timeout in that situation. Don't let the other team have a chance to set up.

Crean said he opted not to call it because Illinois does a good job on defending sideline out of bounds plays. So Indiana dribbled the ball down to about 9 seconds when Victor Oladipo made a move toward the basket. But in trying to go behind his back with the ball at the right wing 18 feet from the basket, he had the ball stripped and stolen by D.J. Richardson with 7 seconds to play.

The Illini were going the other way for the win when Oladipo made a huge block from behind and the ball went out of bounds with 0.9 seconds remaining.

Crean said the problem offensively at the end was the Hoosiers didn't stay with the movement that they needed to have.

"We wanted to stay in movement and if we didn't get what we wanted we wanted to have something come down the middle of the floor," Crean said. "We went about the right time but we didn't keep the game in movement enough."

Illinois didn't have a timeout for the luxury to design a play. Crean had timeouts but didn't want to give the Illini the chance to design a lob into the middle.

Indiana was supposed to switch on any screen and Watford left Griffey and headed to the sideline to guard Richardson. Zeller stayed with his man and Griffey cut hard to the basket.

He said he thought about dunking but instead just tried to get it up there as quickly as possible.

Zeller led Indiana with 14 points and nine rebounds. Sheehey came off the bench to score 13.

Terry Hutchens writes for the Indianapolis Star, a Gannett property.