Ohio State women fall to unheralded Indiana

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Indiana shut down Jantel Lavender and upset No. 4 Ohio State.

Jori Davis scored 19 points and Danilsa Andujar added the go-ahead basket with 3:45 left to help the Hoosiers beat the Buckeyes 67-62 on Sunday.

Andujar also pulled down a career-high 12 rebounds and helped hold Lavender to just three second-half points.

“[Andujar] made a great difference,” Indiana coach Felisha Legette-Jack said. “She was really focused on the defense.

“To hold down somebody as fantastic as this kid, Jantel Lavender, you’ve got to do it as a committee, and we decided to gang up on her and it worked.”

Hope Elam added 15 points, including a pair of game-clinching free throws with 1.8 seconds left, for Indiana (12-10, 5-6 Big Ten), which won for just the second time in the last 13 meetings against the Buckeyes. It was the Hoosiers’ first win over a Top 10 team since beating No. 7 Purdue in 2002.

Trailing 65-62 with 7.3 seconds left, Ohio State’s Brittany Johnson missed a long 3-pointer and Indiana grabbed the rebound to seal the victory.

Lavender paced the Buckeyes (21-3, 9-2) with 20 points and 15 rebounds, but had just three points in the second half. Andrea Walker added 15 points, Samantha Prahalis 14 and Johnson 11 for Ohio State, which lost for the second time in three games.

“Our ball reversal stopped a little bit, so getting the ball in a good position where they weren’t able to double-team was becoming difficult, and we just got out of the flow of our game,” Lavender said.

Ohio State was in the flow during the first half as Samantha Prahalis dished out eight assists, mostly to the 6-foot-4 Lavender and 6-5 Andrea Walker, as the Buckeyes enjoyed a lead of as many as nine points en route to a 42-35 halftime lead.

But Prahalis did not record an assist in the second half as the Buckeyes scored just 20 points.

“This is the second game in a row where Sam has had a lot of assists in the first half and not in the second,” Ohio State coach Jim Foster said. “We’re just not in that flow.”

Andujar had seven of her rebounds after the break and scored four of her six points in the final 81‚Ñ2 minutes. Her put-back gave Indiana a 59-58 lead — it’s first since it was 2-0.

The Buckeyes regained the lead at 60-59 when Jantel Lavender made one free throw at the 4:14 mark, but Andujar put Indiana back on top to stay with a turnaround hook from the left block.