One of the biggest themes of this Indiana women’s basketball season has been one step forward, one step back.
The Hoosiers have performed inconsistently all year. Anytime they’ve appeared to settle into a groove and generate some positive momentum, they’ve squandered that progress, one way or another.
Wednesday provided one of the season’s most glaring examples of that frustrating tendency. Indiana led Michigan by seven points at Crisler Center going into the fourth quarter. Karoline Striplin was putting on her best Mackenzie Holmes impression in the second half, and had IU in position for a huge résumé-boosting victory.
But the Hoosiers collapsed in that final quarter, and Michigan emerged 70-67 victors. And IU is once again trying to figure out how to get its season back on course.
“I can tell you this, there’s nobody that wants to win more than Syd Parrish, Chloe Moore-McNeil, Karoline Striplin, and also I’ll throw Shay (Ciezki) and Lexi (Bargesser) in there. Those kids battled, and they battled hard. And it bothers them,” IU head coach Teri Moren said after the game. “I wish we could have got to the finish line tonight with a nice win. But I don’t know that there’s a fire that needs to be lit. I just think we have to we understand what’s ahead of us, and we got to try to get back on track.”
Indiana (15-9, 7-6 Big Ten) is struggling to stay out of its own way in games. The biggest difference in Wednesday’s game was 18 Hoosiers turnovers — and while their 14.2 turnovers per game this season isn’t a problematic figure, this isn’t the first time they’ve had turnover problems cost them a game. IU also shot 3 for 16 from 3-point range, which allowed the Wolverines (18-7, 9-5) to hang in the game despite their own 3-point struggles for much of the evening.
But the Hoosiers aren’t dealing with the same issues in every game. They have things they’re better at and things they’re worse at, like any team. But there isn’t one clear weakness holding them back — it’s the combination of a lot of different things. IU lost at Minnesota on Sunday because it missed too many layups and gave up far too many rebounds. Those were clearly points of emphasis for the Michigan game, and Indiana looked much better in those areas Wednesday.
Fixing those problems while regressing in other facets of the game made this result sting even harder for IU.
“I’m not alone. Our staff feels the same way, those kids feel the same way: we’re all frustrated,” Moren said. “We let a really good opportunity — great opportunity for us — to come in here tonight, lead, and walk out of here with a win, and we just couldn’t get it done.”
Indiana has a lot of veterans. This isn’t a leadership issue.
But this team’s pieces just haven’t fit together the way they did over the past five years.
Striplin scored 24 points in a dominant second half in Ann Arbor, her best 20 minutes of basketball all season, and looked like the closest thing Indiana’s had to an alpha all season. But while the Tennessee transfer has improved since the start of the year and earned her place in the starting lineup midseason, she just isn’t that type of player every game like Holmes was.
Moore-McNeil is shouldering the most offensive responsibility she’s had in her career, and it’s been a challenging campaign. The graduate student is posting her lowest field-goal percentage (41.3) since her freshman year, her lowest assists per game (4.2) since her sophomore year, and the most turnovers per game (2.1) of her career. Moren has referred to Moore-McNeil as the team’s biggest ‘X-factor,’ and despite some great games and clutch moments, her inconsistency has caused problems for the Hoosiers.
Penn State transfer Shay Ciezki is averaging 10.4 points per game and shoots 34.1 percent from 3-point range, but she’s been wildly inconsistent from game to game. The junior’s effort is never an issue, but given her defensive limitations, she frequently isn’t giving the team much when her shots aren’t falling.
Sydney Parrish is fighting hard after battling back from a knee injury, and has arguably been Indiana’s most consistent player. But the graduate student’s numbers — 11.5 points, team-high 5.8 rebounds per game, 42.5 percent from the field, 32 percent from 3-point range — aren’t strong enough to be a team’s best offensive weapon.
Junior Yarden Garzon leads the team with 13.8 points per game, and she’s shooting 39.9 percent from beyond the arc. But her 2.6 turnovers per game is a problematic figure, and she’s been a defensive liability on too many occasions. And the Israeli’s shooting has become very streaky, which wreaks havoc on Indiana’s offense when she has an off-game.
And Indiana’s bench hasn’t posed enough of a threat, especially since Striplin replaced Lilly Meister in the starting lineup. Meister has underwhelmed this season, and Moren hasn’t shied away from saying that publicly.
Bargesser is a solid player: a good defender, and a good passer. Her jump shot looks markedly better than it did last year, and she played some really important minutes for IU at Michigan. But the junior has scored in double-figures only once this season; she’s not the weapon IU is missing.
Junior Henna Sandvik and sophomore Jules LaMendola have stepped up in some moments here and there, but their game action — particularly LaMendola — is mostly to just give the starters some reprieve, usually in the first half.
Moren has tried a lot of different things to maximize the team’s potential, but her coaching points just haven’t hit home the same way they did over the last five years. The Hoosiers have talent. But their inconsistent rebounding, their frequent turnover issues, and their uncharacteristic abandoning of defensive principles — among other things — has led to disappointing results and postseason uncertainty.
“I don’t know the answer to why it’s not resonating. Because I think, for the most part, they’re pretty high-IQ kids. I think they understand it. We rep it every day,” Moren said. “I don’t know why it’s not sticking. That’s a great question, but I don’t know. But we’ll keep teaching.”
IU has now lost five of its last eight games for the first time since 2019, which was also the last time the program was on the NCAA Tournament bubble before this year. ESPN’s women’s bracketology had Indiana in its last four byes entering Wednesday’s game, a No. 10 seed.
The Hoosiers have some solid wins on their résumé, but many of those teams haven’t helped them out since those games. Their two best results this season are a neutral-site win over Baylor (a No. 7 seed on ESPN) and the road win at Iowa (a projected No. 9 seed). IU’s win over Stanford in November appeared a notable victory, but the Cardinal have a losing record going into Thursday.
Indiana has plenty of chances remaining to pick up the wins it needs, with remaining home games against No. 9 Ohio State and No. 17 Maryland and a road date at No. 22 Michigan State. And the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis could provide other opportunities as well.
But this IU team has some real problems to work through if that’s going to happen. And at this point in the season, the Hoosiers haven’t — and may not get — the time they’d need to self-evaluate to that extent. But they’ll need to figure some things out regardless, before it’s too late.
“Our schedule here, as of late, has not allowed us to kind of get together and have those feel-good moments, and talk about, ‘OK, moving on. What are our goals? How do we want this thing to play out?’ But it is something that we do something that we do talk about. We talk about it daily,” Moren said. “But these guys know what’s at stake. They want to win. They desperately want to win games, and want to be playing in March.”
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