Zach Collins Leads Trail Blazers to Road Win over Pacers

ThePortland Trail Blazersdidn’t look pretty as they faced theIndiana Pacerson Monday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Neither Damian Lillard norCJ McCollumtopped 20 points. Portland’s starters played with the consistency of day-old Cream o’ Wheat. The Pacers didn’t flourish on offense, but they had the defensive game locked down, limiting Portland’s three-point attempts and offensive rebounds. But just when things looked bleakest for the Blazers, their bench crew arrived. Indiana had no answer for Portland’s reserves and the Blazers took a 103-93 road victory.

Key Points

Zach Collinssparked Portland’s surge, shooting 7-10 from the floor for 17 points while playing stout defense.尼克Stauskasadded a timely 10 on 3-6 shooting,Evan Turner13 while shooting 6-9.

The Blazers started the game sloppy, with positioning and spacing slightly off. Combined with a referee crew eager to whistle screen infractions, this resulted inalmost every Portland big man getting in foul trouble.Jusuf Nurkic,Meyers Leonard, andCaleb Swanigancombined for 9 fouls in the first half.

Unsurprisingly, given the above,interior defense proved a problem in the halfcourtduring key stretches. The Blazers had to play strange lineups and it showed. One would expect that smaller men on the floor would result in better transition defense, though. That didn’t materialize, as the Pacers scored 14 off the break in the first half. Fortunately the Pacers shoot like a bunch of Star Wars villains, so Portland survived the mediocre first-half showing. They shored up their issues in the second half (hitting more shots helped) and ended up winning the points-in-the-paint battle 40-32.

Caleb Swaniganplayed 19 minutes, largely due to the aforementioned foul trouble. He scored 9 points in 14 first-half minutes, 11 total for the game with 10 rebounds, 3 turnovers, and 5 personal fouls.

The Blazersdominated the boards, winning the overall rebounding battle 50-35. This came largely from 53 missed Indiana shots, but26 rebounds from the bench sure helped.

Boxscore

The Blazers play theHouston Rocketstomorrow night at 5:00, Pacific in Houston.