Candace Buckner

MINNEAPOLIS – The days have started to blend together, the moments seeming like one long blur.

After nearly a week away from home, the Indiana Pacers might not have particularly enjoyed their final test – a back-to-back road game starting an hour earlier Sunday night than normal NBA tipoffs after losing an hour in the time zone – but could not openly use it as an excuse.

When you've lost 10 of the past 11 games, there's no room for otherwise reasonable challenges to justify poor play. No one would listen, anyway.

So, the Pacers overcame the strange scheduling and held on to defeat the Minnesota Timberwolves 100-96 at the Target Center to finally steal a win on this three-game trip.

David West scored 14 points, including the tie-breaking drive and basket with 31.5 seconds remaining. When asked to describe this particular play out of a timeout, Pacers coach Frank Vogel closed his eyes and thought hard to remember which bucket. Road trips must have a way of inducing short-term memory loss.

However, even after the Pacers wasted a 19-point lead in the second half and fell into an uncomfortably close race with the worst team in the Western Conference, all they'll remember is the end result. A win.

"We need every one we can get," Roy Hibbert said. "It's a struggle this year, and any win's a good win for us."

After a scoreless and foul-plagued Saturday night in Denver, Hibbert bounced back with one of his best performances of the month with 15 points, eight rebounds and four blocked shots.

Before facing Minnesota, Hibbert fell into the mind warp of being on a long trip, forgetting who would be his one-on-one matchup and stating how he needed to watch film on Minnesota center Nikola Pekovic. The injured Pekovic hasn't played since Nov. 15. His replacement, second-year player Gorgui Dieng, would be the guy Hibbert needed to study. But it turned out he only needed energy and not video footage.

Even as Minnesota threw forwards Thaddeus Young and Andrew Wiggins for double-teams, the matchups clearly favored the 7-2 Hibbert, and he feasted on the competition with an array of pick-and-pop jumpers as well as a pair of two solid post-ups for eight points through the first quarter.

"I just wanted to change my luck and be assertive from the start," Hibbert said. "My teammates found me. (There weren't) a lot of plays called for me to get going, but I just wanted to assert myself, and my teammates found me."

C.J. Miles, who scored a game-high 28, came off the bench for his third 20-plus point game of the season. Later in the locker room, the loudest of any stop on this trip, Miles smiled and politely apologized to reporters who couldn't hear his responses over his raucous teammates. Still, Miles wasn't that sorry.

"I'd rather it be like this now, then how it was (Saturday). I'd rather everybody be happy," Miles said. "It's good to get on that plane going home with a 'W.' We've been out here working hard every day and game plan hard, just trying to play the right way and get a win."

Through the trip, Miles often maintained how the team still believed in its process. However, from the outside, the confidence looked questionable as the Pacers gave up a six-point fourth quarter lead in Los Angeles, then laid an offensive egg in a 76-73 loss to the Denver Nuggets.

Even on Sunday, the once fluid execution that resulted in the 61-42 lead early in the third quarter took a hard left turn as the Pacers gave away possessions and could not score for more than 5 minutes. During that span, the five-win Timberwolves – no Pekovic nor Ricky Rubio – flashed on a 17-1 run. Then, several times early in the fourth quarter, the Wolves sliced the lead to just two points before reserve point guard Mo Williams curled around a high screen and hit the open midrange jumper to tie the score at 87 with 3:27 remaining.

However, after the swing of four lead changes, the Pacers stayed ahead with West's five-footer, with only the matter of getting defensive stops and making free throws remaining. In the end, the Pacers shot 50 percent and shared the ball for 25 assists and of course, picked up the most meaningful statistic.

"We're just happy to get a win and off that losing streak," West said.

Luis Scola, who often paired with West while the second unit played and scored 10 of the bench's 50 points, summed up the Pacers' current situation.

"We need games," Scola said. "We put ourselves in this situation and we've got to find a way to win games, and it's going to be hard. When you are that far behind in the standings, you can't use it as an excuse. Any game you (have), you've got to win."

Call Star reporter Candace Buckner at (317) 444-6121. Follow her on Twitter: @CandaceDBuckner.