Bulls handcuff Pacers, become first team to hold them under 100 points this season

It was unique territory for Bulls coach Billy Donovan.

Just minutes after watching his team win by 26 points, there was little for him to pick at.

The defense had held the highest-scoring team in the league under 100 points for the first time this season in a 125-99 victory, the bench showed some life and the offense understood the importance of feeding the bigs as Nikola Vucevic and Andre Drummond were headaches for the Pacers all night.

In a month in which there have been few moments to breathe, Donovan was able to calmly take a deep breath Wednesday.

“I thought we really were connected defensively,” Donovan said. “We were on point when we needed to switch, were on point when we needed to stay. The only way to do that is through communication. I give our guys a lot of credit.”

The win kept the Bulls (35-38) 1½ games in front of the Hawks in the battle for the No. 9 seed and put them four games behind the eighth-seeded 76ers with nine to play.

All that mattered to guard Alex Caruso was the win.

“First time they’ve been under 100 this whole season?” Caruso asked surprisingly when the question about handcuffing the Pacers was tossed his way. “I didn’t know that.

“They seemed a little tired, but we played well. We didn’t have any of those lapses where we give up a slip-out layup or we forget to rotate or didn’t battle for the rebound. I just feel like for the most part, besides the way we started the third quarter, we were pretty consistent.”

And this performance was needed.

If the Bulls have showcased a strength this season, it has been that they don’t dwell on stains from previous games.

The loss to the Wizards on Monday was as greasy a stain as they’ve had in quite some time, but they flipped the page quickly.

In the second quarter, they outscored the Pacers 37-20 and looked seamless in doing so.

Vucevic led the way with nine points in the quarter, but he wasn’t alone in building a 23-point lead.

The Bulls outscored the Pacers 12-4 in the paint, won the battle of the benches 10-4 and outrebounded Indiana 9-6 in the second quarter, completely dismantling their division rivals on both ends.

The Pacers (41-33) tried to climb off the mat in the third quarter, using their transition game and three-point shooting to get within nine, but a hoop-and-harm on a Drummond put-in kicked the lead back to 12.

DeMar DeRozan and Coby White made sure to put hi-tops on throats, starting off the fourth on a mission and building the lead back up to 20.

The victory snapped a three-game losing streak and earned the Bulls bragging rights in the season series, taking it 3-1.

Still, Donovan has been coaching against Rick Carlisle long enough to know that the Pacers are still a very dangerous team, especially if the Bulls somehow have to meet them in a play-in scenario.

“He has always come across to me as trying to use his personnel to the best of his ability,” Donovan said of Carlisle, whom he also coached against back in their Oklahoma City-Dallas days. “I think [Tyrese] Haliburton is such a unique player, and it’s to a certain extent what we tried to do with Lonzo [Ball] —get guys down the floor, let him throw it up, let him advance it.

“I think [Carlisle] has always done a great job of, ‘OK, here’s the personnel. How do we utilize it?’ ’’