INDIANAPOLIS — In the second round of the Big Ten Tournament, Indiana women’s basketball took care of business.
The ninth-seeded Hoosiers opened their conference tournament run at Gainbridge Fieldhouse with a 78-62 win over eighth-seeded Oregon on Thursday. IU advances to Friday’s quarterfinals against No. 1 seed USC at noon ET.
Indiana (19-11) started with a strong first quarter for the second game in a row. The Hoosiers built a 23-11 lead thanks to seven Oregon turnovers, which turned into 13 IU points. The Ducks (19-11) finished with 18 turnovers on the game.
Junior Shay Ciezki spearheaded Indiana’s strong offensive start on Thursday, with 15 points in the opening quarter. The Penn State transfer finished the game with 17 points on 7-of-14 shooting, with a 3-for-5 mark from 3-point range, along with four assists, two blocks, and a steal.
Indiana had to overcome significant foul trouble in this game. Yarden Garzon, Lilly Meister, and Karoline Striplin all had three fouls at halftime. Striplin and Meister both picked up fourth fouls during the third quarter.
The foul issues forced freshman Faith Wiseman into first-half action for the first time this season. The Martinsville, Ind. native played a career-high 10 minutes and battled hard in a difficult spot, making a few clutch rebounds and an assist.
IU head coach Teri Moren repeatedly expressed her frustration with the referees throughout the game. When the teams played in Eugene, Ore. in January, the Ducks attempted 17 foul shots, while Indiana had just three free-throw attempts. On Thursday, the first-half foul trouble created another disparity in Oregon’s favor. But the officiating balanced out in the second half: the Hoosiers finished the game with one more free-throw attempt and only one more foul.
Still, the early fouls in the frontcourt created a challenge for Moren to navigate.
“Whether or not we agree (or) we disagree, they’ve got a hard job — the officials — and that was a very physical game. Last thing I would ever want to do is be an official,” Moren said after the game. “We haven’t been in this situation all year where we’ve had two 5s on the bench the way we had today. Whether it’s sometimes in losses, but also when you can win a game the way we did, you learn a lesson every time you’re in between the lines.”
Oregon closed the gap during the third quarter, trimming Indiana’s lead down to as little as five points with less than a minute remaining. Garzon responded with a big 3-pointer to put IU back up by eight going into the final period.
Garzon took control for Indiana in the second half, hitting some more clutch shots in the fourth quarter. The junior shot 5 for 12 from the field and 4 for 7 from 3-point range for a team-high 18 points. She scored 13 points in the second half.
Oregon went cold in the fourth quarter, shooting just 28.6 percent from the field as IU put the game away.
Graduate student Chloe Moore-McNeil chipped in 13 points on 4-for-6 shooting, a block, and a team-high five assists and three steals. Graduate student Sydney Parrish added 10 points, four assists, and a team-high six rebounds.
This matchup gave Parrish a second opportunity against her former team — she transferred from Oregon to IU in April 2022. The Hoosiers turned in a disappointing performance in their loss to the Ducks in Eugene, and the Fishers, Ind. native was eager for another chance to knock off her old school.
“It’s always fun getting to compete against your old team. I think a lot of transfers feel that sometimes. It’s nice to be able to come to Indy and play. I’m from Indy, so it felt good to play my last game against Oregon (here). It felt like home, it felt like a Hoosier crowd, and that was really fun,” Parrish said. “Just watching back this week, the film when we played at Oregon, it was just so sad seeing how bad we played. So we knew that we were going to come out and play much better. I knew we would get them the second time.”
Indiana now faces a very tall task on Friday against regular-season conference champions USC (26-2), currently ranked No. 2 in the country.
The Trojans beat IU in Bloomington in January, though in a closer-than-expected 73-66 game. The Hoosiers carried a 19-14 lead into the second quarter that day, and went into the fourth quarter down just one point.
But while this game will be just up the road in Indianapolis, it’ll still be less of a home-court advantage than Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. And Big Ten Player of the Year JuJu Watkins, with a strong supporting cast, present a tremendous challenge for an IU team fighting to secure its place in the NCAA Tournament.
Moren said she’d rewatched a small portion of the film from the Hoosiers’ first game against the USC, but still has more to dissect now that they defeated Oregon. But she knows the obstacle her team is now up against.
“We put them at the free-throw line too much, so we can’t foul. And then we’ve got to be able to hit shots. The quarter and the half that I did see, we got some good shots, just didn’t go down,” Moren said. “It’s another shot at one of the best teams in the country that has one of the best players in the country. Kiki Iriafen’s not too far behind. She’s a load too. This is a really good USC team. We have a tremendous amount of respect for them. We know this, it’s going to take our very best.”
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