BLOOMINGTON — Indiana women’s basketball, for the first time since 2019, is on the bubble for the NCAA Tournament.
There’s still plenty of time for the Hoosiers to build up their résumé before March arrives. And they already appear to be on the right side of the bubble, entering Saturday a No. 9 seed in ESPN’s Women’s Bracketology. But that positioning gives increased importance to every game — not for hosting or seeding purposes, like recent years, but for simply making the field.
That contextualizes Indiana’s performance on Sunday against No. 4 Southern California at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, a 73-66 USC win. IU (12-6, 4-3 Big Ten) trailed by just one point going into the fourth quarter, thanks to a deep 3-pointer to beat the third-quarter buzzer by USC star JuJu Watkins. But the game just slipped away in the final period, as Indiana’s offense went cold and the Trojans (17-1, 7-0) were able to put the game away.
“We’re going to learn going down the stretch that we can’t turn the ball over. That’s easy stuff. But I look back at UCLA, I look back at today, we just got to hit shots. It’s that easy,” IU head coach Teri Moren said after the game. “If that’s the lesson we got to learn… I think we got some really good ones. We just didn’t hit them.”
IU shot just 31 percent from the field in the fourth quarter, while USC shot 46 percent. Junior Yarden Garzon, Indiana’s leading scorer on the season, struggled mightily all afternoon and finished 3 for 17 from the field and 2 for 11 from 3-point range. The Hoosiers also committed 15 turnovers in the game, including two critical bad-pass giveaways in the fourth quarter.
Ultimately, there wasn’t one clear-cut reason for why Indiana lost this game. But the collection of those things and more swung a potentially season-changing victory into another missed opportunity.
IU has a few nice wins so far, particularly the recent road triumph at Iowa. But the early-season losses to Harvard and Butler will loom large as selection season approaches, and the Hoosiers will still need more good wins to secure their spot in March Madness.
Indiana will have plenty of those opportunities in a loaded Big Ten. But with every chance that gets away, it adds that much more importance to each remaining opportunity.
“They know that every game is very important in this league. It’s a one game season, and they know that. Every game is really important to what we want to be able to do, and that’s to play in March,” Moren said. “We just got to keep focusing on the things that we have to keep improving on and getting better, and I think we will. We will. I got a lot of a lot of faith in these guys.”
Lineup change
Moren criticized forward Lilly Meister after IU’s game against Illinois, calling her “just OK.”
The junior didn’t play for the entire fourth quarter of Thursday’s game, and that served as a precursor for Sunday. Moren moved Meister to the bench and inserted Karoline Striplin in her place, the Tennessee transfer’s first start of the season.
“I was really grateful that Coach Moren had enough confidence in me to push me into the starting lineup, but at the same time, I was still just ready to do whatever was needed of me,” Striplin said. “And I’m really proud of how our team fought today, but ultimately, it’s sad not to get the win. And we want to be better next game.”
Striplin turned in a solid game for Indiana on Sunday, shooting 4 for 6 from the field for 10 points with three rebounds and a steal. She played 28 minutes, while Meister played only 12 off the bench. But the Minnesota native still made a nice contribution for the Hoosiers with seven points, including six during a key stretch in the third quarter.
After the game, Moren indicated she’ll stick with Striplin in the starting lineup moving forward.
“Strip has been very reliable. She’s smart, she understands game plan,” Moren said. “It was great to see Lilly come in and impact the game the way she did. And part of that is, we felt like Lilly’s been playing with a little bit of extra pressure on her, and so bringing her off the bench was intentional to just get her to relax a little bit. We knew that she was gonna play, and we knew that we need both of them, But Strip was, I thought, really good for us today.
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