Indiana’s fate is out of its hands.
The Hoosiers entered the Big Ten Tournament projecting as a No. 4 seed for the NCAA Tournament. They’d slipped at Illinois after the first top-16 seed reveal in mid-February, but immediately recovered with their best win of the season, at home over Iowa. That turnaround helped IU stay on the four-line.
As long as Indiana won its first game in Minneapolis, it would be in good shape to secure the top-four seed that brings NCAA Tournament home games with it.
But that didn’t happen. The Hoosiers collapsed in the second half against Michigan and fell, 69-56.
It’s not necessarily a bad loss on IU’s résumé — the Wolverines are on the NCAA Tournament bubble, themselves, and this win could help them secure a bid. But it’s a game Indiana needed — badly — to fully ensure those home games in the first two rounds.
Instead, Indiana blew a 17-point lead. The Hoosiers have slipped in many of their biggest games this season — blowout losses at Stanford and Iowa, and a more competitive loss at Ohio State. The aforementioned win over the Hawkeyes is IU’s lone victory this season that rises to those levels.
Friday wasn’t supposed to be on par with those games. But the way it played out — from Mackenzie Holmes’ availability and the way IU handled it, to the team’s complete disintegration on both ends of the court — raised questions. And that uncertainty could be all it takes to knock the Hoosiers down to a No. 5 seed and send them on the road for the NCAA Tournament.
“I think our body of work speaks for itself,” IU head coach Teri Moren said after the game. “We’re not healthy by any stretch of the means. I think that has to be part of the criteria or whatever they look at. This is not Indiana at full health right now. It’s not a healthy squad. But I do believe this, that come tournament time in two weeks, we will have a much different-looking, healthier basketball team.”
Holmes was listed as questionable after suffering a knee injury on Sunday against Maryland. The forward participated in the team’s morning shootaround, and she was available. But Moren was hoping to avoid playing her at all, to allow the fifth-year to rest and then bring her back into the fold for a potential semifinal rematch with Iowa.
And through the first half, it looked like the Hoosiers wouldn’t need Holmes. They started the game off slow, but so did Michigan; and then they created separation in the second quarter and took a 14-point lead to halftime.
Indiana had to play small lineups for stretches, as Lilly Meister was also limited by an injury — both Moren and Sydney Parrish later said they didn’t think she could walk the day before the game, so they were encouraged to get 22 minutes out of the sophomore. And in the first half, Parrish, Sara Scalia, and Lexus Bargesser all stepped up in various ways.
But everything just fell apart in the second half, on both ends of the floor.
“I felt like we were all just guilty of trying to do a little bit too much as individuals,” Moren said of her team’s second-half performance. “There was a couple moments where they came down, and I kind of looked over like, ‘I’m not sure what that was and why we felt like we had to do it.’ And we were winning. We were up.”
As Michigan slowly took control of the game, Moren faced big decisions with Holmes — whether to use her at all, and if so, when to put her in.
She resisted as Michigan cut the deficit to single digits. She still resisted when the Wolverines got within three points with two minutes left in the third quarter. She continued to hold off when UM took its first lead of the second half early in the fourth quarter, coming back from down 17.
Moren waited until midway through the final period, when Indiana trailed by eight points. Holmes isn’t used to coming off the bench, and she was entering this game cold in the fourth quarter — she’d gone through layup lines and pregame warmups, but she wasn’t in the flow of the game. And the forward had very little time to settle in, with just six minutes left and her team already on the brink of defeat.
“Our goal was to be here until Sunday. She was available. We knew she was going to be available. We didn’t want to have to play her. We wanted to be able to use her tomorrow more. But she looked at me, and she said, ‘I’m ready to go in, see if I can help,'” Moren said. “So in terms of how healthy she is, she could have easily played tonight. We just were trying to hold her out as much as we could to see what the pieces that we did have that we did feel were healthy enough, if we could get past Michigan and into tomorrow’s semifinal.”
The situation was handled awkwardly. To be fair, it wasn’t the sole reason for Indiana’s loss. Not having a fully healthy Holmes was part of the reason for it. But this was another occasion where not having a Grace Berger sort of player hurt the Hoosiers as well — they desperately needed someone who could reliably create their own shot and knock it down consistently during the second half, when so many other things went wrong offensively.
An IU win over Michigan wouldn’t have completely locked the Hoosiers into a No. 4 seed for the NCAA Tournament. And the loss doesn’t necessarily mean Indiana will definitely fall in the bracket.
But a win would’ve made the next few weeks a lot more comfortable. Now, all IU can do is practice, rest, and recover for the NCAA Tournament — and watch the scoreboard. The Hoosiers have to hope other teams around them slip up in similar fashion. They no longer control their own fate for March Madness seeding.
This was a missed opportunity for Indiana women’s basketball, both to make a run at a conference tournament title, and to control its own NCAA Tournament destiny.
“I think I’m most disappointed because I know what this group is capable of. I know we could’ve made it to championship Sunday,” Parrish said. “I know we’re one of the best teams in the league, if not the best. And I think that’s where I really got emotional and upset, because I know we’re enough and I know we have enough pieces, even with Mackenzie and Lilly battling some injuries. I know we have enough pieces to be able to be a championship team. So just pretty disappointed.”
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