The Hoosiers advance to take on the winner of 1-seed South Carolina and 16-seed Tennessee Tech.
9-seed Indiana women’s basketball is moving on in NCAA Tournament play with a 76-68 win over Utah in the first round on Friday at Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, South Carolina.
It marks a milestone for the program in that it moves the Hoosiers to 20 wins on the year. That’s ten straight seasons of 20+ wins for Teri Moren and co, a remarkable achievement given Indiana’s history prior to her arrival.
Indiana will move on to face the winner of 1-seed South Carolina and 16-seed Tennessee Tech. In the highly likely scenario that the former advances it would mark the second straight postseason in which the Hoosiers take on the Gamecocks after last year’s hard-fought loss in the Sweet Sixteen.
Here’s three takeaways from this game:
Adjustments
Utah head coach Gavin Petersen went into this one predicting it’d be something of a chess match between the coaching staffs and rosters given their similar styles of play.
It was Moren who ended up on top after that chess match, just not in the way anyone necessarily saw coming. It felt like this one was going to come down to which group was hitting shots and, for a while, that certainly wasn’t Indiana.
The Hoosiers went just 3-11 from deep in the first half of play, which the Utes matched by going 3-12. Indiana was running Utah off of the 3-point line or forcing more difficult attempts while its own just weren’t falling.
After a 31-31 tie at the half, both teams went in different directions. Indiana started to emphasize interior scoring more while Utah leaned into its identity and kept shooting.
The result? The Hoosiers outscoring the Utes 45-37 in the second half as the latter went 6-19 from deep. Indiana took just six attempts from beyond the arc in the second half, leaning into the paint and winning the scoring margin there 18-10 in the last 20 minutes of gametime.
Utah didn’t properly adjust as Indiana kept getting looks it wanted, namely Karoline Striplin pulling up at the elbow without a defender anywhere close to contesting.
It was enough to win the game and was a shrewd coaching move from Moren.
That’s not to discount Petersen by the way, who was forced into a difficult situation this season when Lynne Roberts was hired away by the Los Angeles Sparks in November.
Hoosier Defense
As stated above, Indiana went into this game knowing it was going to half to run Utah off of the 3-point line and for the most part did its job.
The Utes fired off 32 attempts from beyond the arc but converted on just nine of them. The Hoosiers made life difficult for their shooters with strong ball pressure and tough, physical defense along the whole of the perimeter.
It total, Utah shot just 43% from the field on the game, never being able to counter Indiana’s paint scoring reliably and not generating enough quality looks from deep. That’s a credit to the gameplan and execution from up and down the roster.
Sharing the Sugar
Five Hoosiers ended up scoring in double figures when the clock hit zero, which is obviously good for the points but better in just how difficult Indiana became to guard as the game went on.
In contrast, just two Utes reached double digits and one of them, Gianna Kneepkens, was bound to anyway as one of the best scoring guards in the entire country. Utah became a bit easier to defend when the worry was her pulling up or Mayè Tourè in the paint.
Shay Ciezki made the most of her time with the ball, putting up 16 points on 6-8 shooting while going 2-3 from deep. Indiana switching to an interior attack was notable for her given her ability to drive to the rack with her speed or pull up in the midrange.
It felt like Striplin hit on just about every attempt of the previously mentioned elbow jumper she just kept being open for. Lilly Meister found ways to be in scoring position and was perfect from the field with 11 points. Yarden Garzon was excellent all around in leading the team with 17 points while Chloe Moore-McNeil picked her shots well between dishing out eight assists.
If Indiana plays like that and shots fall from deep, it could make things interesting against, in all likelihood, South Carolina.