INDIANAPOLIS – Juwan Morgan has just scored 34 points and grabbed 11 rebounds and carried Indiana to an 80-77 overtime victory against Notre Dame, and by carried I mean exactly that. Notre Dame led by eight with 3½ minutes left when Morgan erupted:

He scored 20 of the Hoosiers’ final 25 points, including 16 in a row during a stretch when nobody else on the team seemed interested in shooting. Morgan scored the bucket in the final seconds of regulation that forced overtime, and he scored the bucket in the final seconds of overtime that gave IU this victory.

“Late in the game,” IU coach Archie Miller said, “(we were) able to ride him.”

And Morgan was saddled up against Notre Dame’s Bonzie Colson, a leading candidate for national player of the year.

Understand, as good as Juwan Morgan is, he’s good in a way that defies simple description. At 6-8 and 230 pounds, he’s built like a guy who better shoot 3-pointers these days, only he doesn’t shoot many – and on Saturday he scored 34 points without shooting any. He can play above the rim, but doesn’t exactly hang out up there. He’s not weak, though he’s not particularly strong.

But he just carried, and I can’t stress that word hard enough, Indiana to its biggest win of the season. And this wasn’t a one-time thing, a pretty good player getting hot at the right time and: What do you know? Juwan Morgan scored 34 points. Weird.

No. This wasn’t weird. This was the continuation of a trend that has now become something more lasting. Indiana has found its alpha male, its next Big Ten all-conference player, and his name is Juwan Morgan.

Morgan had averaged 17.5 points and 8.3 rebounds over the previous four games, and then had 34 and 11 against Notre Dame. Do the math, and understand how difficult this class is: In the last five games – against Duke, Michigan, Iowa, Louisville and now Notre Dame – Morgan has averaged 20.8 ppg and 8.8 rpg. This is not weird. This is not a fluke. This is who Juwan Morgan is, and because I’m not entirely clear what I’ve just watched, I ask him:

Why were you so good today?

This is how Morgan responded at first, because I’m not sure he knows either:

“Uhhhhh.”

Then he tried again, another answer that says my guess is as good as his.

“I guess being in the right spot at the right time,” he said, and before he tried a third time – and may have finally hit on something – let me tell you what Archie Miller had said earlier when I had asked him the same question. Miller’s answer was along the lines of what I was expecting, some Ph.D.-level basketball information to help explain what my undergrad basketball acumen wasn’t computing.

“He's got good footwork in and around the basket,” Miller said, then repeated it: “He has good footwork. And I think the thing that he has right now is he has great toughness around the basket. He's not falling away, he's not getting knocked to the ground, there's no flailing.

“I think what he's figuring out is: The more he can get down there and get to the foul line and the more he's offensive rebounding, the better he plays.”

Good footwork? Playing with toughness? Getting to the foul line? That’s not going to get Morgan much time on the ESPN highlight reel, but on Saturday it got him 34 points and 11 rebounds – and the admiration of Notre Dame coach Mike Brey.

“Yeah, he beat us up,” Brey said, and then explained why the Irish never double-teamed Morgan, even as Morgan was beating his team up. “I mean, you're worried about giving up a (3-pointer) eventually. Like, we weren't helping much because I thought maybe, if we didn't give up 3’s, they wouldn't score enough … and we could keep a little bit of a cushion. But, God, did he beat us up, and he was fabulous.”

Better than fabulous, really, and since there aren’t many phrases that accurately describe “better than fabulous,” here’s the one I’m going to use to describe Juwan Morgan in the second half and overtime Saturday:

Almost perfect.

Morgan was 9-for-10 from the floor, scoring 26 points in the final 25 minutes. What Morgan did – I’ve been thinking about it, even while writing up to this point, and now I know how he did it – was beat up Notre Dame with a throwback game, an old man’s game.

Morgan kept getting the ball in the post, working one-on-one with Colson – a long-armed stopper who entered the game among ACC leaders in blocked shots and steals, and had 29 points and 11 rebounds Saturday – and then he started pounding the ball like some dude in the YMCA, turning this way and that, looking for an opening and using that footwork of his to get a clean look.

Now you’re ready to hear Morgan’s third attempt to explain how he was able to score 34 points on 13-for-17 shooting against one of the best players, and post defenders, in the country in Bonzie Colson. Morgan goes back to his childhood, when he was big but not so big that coaches forced him to play in the frontcourt. He was a guard, back then. He still is now, from a skill standpoint, even if he was technically playing center down the stretch. He’s a point-center, is what Morgan is. And here’s how he explained his big game Saturday:

“Growing up, I was a bigger guard, so I always shot the post over little guards,” Morgan said. “As I got bigger, I guess I just kept that skill. We work on it every day, just perimeter post driving in and turn our backs so we can get the good post-up. It's just something I keep working on.”

He is onto something now, no longer hunting 3-pointers as he did a year ago, but demanding the ball in the post and using his footwork to get shots he’s just not missing. And the coach whose team he beat, and whose team he beat up, said it a second time.

“He was fabulous today,” Brey said.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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