COLUMBUS, Ohio – Silver Creek.

That’s the last shot Anthony Leal reckons he made as clutch, as crucial, as important as the one he drained from one of Value City Arena’s four corners late Tuesday evening.

This one wasn’t a buzzer beater, like the 3 over future Purdue forward Trey Kaufman-Renn more than four years ago. But it was a winner nonetheless, the product of a play drawn up by Mike Woodson to get Trey Galloway to the basket for the last time.

DOYEL: With season slipping away, IU makes a stand at Ohio State.

Galloway had three options — Kel’el Ware on the lob, Mackenzie Mgbako floated to one corner and Leal spotted up in the other. One Indiana Elite guard fired the ball to another, wide open in that corner, no doubt in his mind what would come next.

“We’ve played with each other since freshman year of high school. I trust him. He trusts me,” Galloway said. “I want him to shoot that 10 times out of 10. I’m glad he made it. That’s a big shot for us.”

Leal’s corner 3, and the free throws he added to cement the final score, 76-73, were the final notes in a relentless rally that delivered victory from 18 points down in Columbus. They were the final rounds fired from a pair of seniors who delivered the leadership their coach has so desperately needed these past weeks.

They were the ultimate difference between a team undeniably limited but still willing to fight for its season, and one genuinely disengaging from what Leal called postgame the “opportunity to learn about winning.”

That’s where Indiana (14-9, 6-6) is now. The Hoosiers are young. They are imperfect. This was a step forward. There will probably be steps back.

But Leal’s summation was wonderfully succinct: “Another opportunity to learn about winning.” Despite everything — a lackluster first half, a flagrant foul, a technical foul, an 18-point deficit after four losses in five — when that opportunity presented itself, IU didn’t shrink.

IU stood up. Tuesday night, that counted for something.

“You don’t like being in those positions very often, but the focus was there,” Woodson said. “We didn’t quit. We just kept fighting and fighting until we finally made things bounce our way, and the result was a win.”

“Made things bounce our way.”

Without really meaning to, Indiana’s players and coach delivered some honest assessment Tuesday.

Of an ugly start. Of 4-of-16 from the floor to start, and Ohio State moseying its way — without ever playing very well — to a double-digit lead. Of that technical foul on Malik Reneau, Tuesday’s leading scorer and rebounder, that highlighted a disastrous start to the second half which saw Ohio State (13-10, 3-9) reach its high-water mark, 49-31.

From there, the Hoosiers played a remarkable 17 ½ minutes of basketball. For those 17 ½ minutes, they were everything they have far too often not been this season. And they got everything they deserved for their trouble.

“We could’ve easily gone the other way,” Galloway said. “Our biggest thing is really just trying to focus on competing and staying in the moment. The first half was rough, a lot of ups and downs. But it’s a full 40-minute game, and I thought we did a good job of sticking together, and fighting, and finding some resiliency.”

Reneau, who finished with 26 points and 14 rebounds, described it as timeout by timeout. Leal, almost huddle by huddle.

“We definitely acknowledged it today,” Leal said, “the fact that we were clawing back, getting closer and closer. We were pretty confident that they would fold. Staying resilient and fighting through that, we were able to figure it out.”

After calming down and apologizing to his teammates for his outburst-turned-technical, Reneau resumed being unplayable. He scored 10 points in the first half and 16 more in the second, his game-high 15 free throws a testament to just how comprehensively Ohio State could not defend him.

“He didn’t stop playing,” Woodson said. “You have to move on to the next play, and he did that. That whole group was solid, bringing it home tonight.”

And, after hearing his coach criticize senior leadership and impact guard play almost in equal measure at times across the past month, Galloway willed his own transformation into the most dangerous player on the floor.

He finished the first half with six points on 2-of-5 shooting, no assists and two rebounds, which means his second-half line looked like this: 19 points, 7-of-10 from the floor, 3-of-3 from behind the 3-point line, 2-of-2 at the free-throw line, four rebounds, four assists, one steal.

It is difficult to imagine a better 20 minutes (all of which he played, by the way; neither he nor Reneau ever saw the bench after halftime).

“Our seniors can’t hide,” Woodson said. “He stepped up. He wanted the ball. We put him in a lot of situations, pick-and-rolls, where he had the ball in his hands, and he delivered.”

Ohio State came into Tuesday’s game desperate to feel good about itself again. A run of seven losses in eight games began with defeat in Bloomington on Jan. 6, and the Buckeyes (13-10, 3-9) surely just needed to see themselves put the stopper in that particular tube.

Instead, they got worn down until they cracked, then broke. Indiana preyed on those insecurities. The Hoosiers were not perfect themselves, but they hit enough of their KPIs — win the rebounding battle, don’t turn the ball over, defend the 3-point line — to push the door back open in that second half.

So, when Ohio State presented them one of those opportunities to learn about winning, the Hoosiers were ready. They set aside the ugliness of Penn State, moved on from their own 1-4 slump and delivered in the most critical moments.

Tuesday was not always pretty. No team’s problems are all solved in one night. But IU looked for all the world like it was through taking anything meaningful away from this season until it put its collective foot in the ground and decided it wasn’t.

Malik Reneau kept swinging. Trey Galloway had had enough. Anthony Leal, the senior who’s waited so long for his chance, didn’t score for almost 38 minutes before scoring Indiana’s last six points in what once looked like a borderline impossible win.

Opportunity seized. Lesson learned.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU basketball rallies past Ohio State, trying to learn about winning