BLOOMINGTON — Chloe Moore-McNeil has spent all year speaking up.
The quiet-by-nature senior spent last offseason working on becoming more vocal, and has been Indiana women’s basketball’s voice of reason on so many occasions throughout the year.
She called out her teammates after the Hoosiers suffered a blowout loss against Stanford in November. She fired them up during a mid-January win over Minnesota. She reassured them during a key point in a big win at Maryland in late January.
Moore-McNeil has become increasingly comfortable in that leadership role. And in this season-defining time of year, she knows her voice is needed more than ever.
So when No. 4 seed IU trailed No. 13 seed Fairfield by five points at the second-quarter media timeout in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the point guard made herself heard.
“When we got in that huddle, and even in the timeout, as soon as coach (Teri Moren) was done talking, I said, ‘Everybody stop and look at the scoreboard, right now. And understand that we’re down,'” Moore-McNeil told The Daily Hoosier during IU’s open locker room period after the game. “We’ve been in those situations before.”
The Hoosiers responded. It didn’t happen immediately, but they went on a 10-0 run out of that timeout to flip the game around. That answer set the table for IU’s big third quarter that helped seal its 89-56 win on Saturday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
Despite trailing at that key point in the second quarter and several other times throughout the first half, Indiana remained comfortable with its position in the game. The Hoosiers weren’t playing their best basketball, but felt the game was within their control. They weren’t surprised by anything the Stags threw at them, nor were they incapable of combatting it.
“We knew we would be fine. It’s one of those things, it’s like, it’s March. We knew Fairfield was going to come out and run the floor and chuck up 3s,” senior guard Sydney Parrish told The Daily Hoosier. “We knew we just had to settle down and we would be fine, and stick to our game plan and stick to our strengths, and get the ball to Mackenzie (Holmes), hit shots, just slow it down a little bit on our end.”
IU, indeed, had trouble getting Holmes going in the first half. Fairfield sped the Hoosiers up offensively and forced some mistakes, and capitalized on some defensive miscues to keep pace with the hosts.
Sure, Moren expressed frustration over IU’s closeouts on Fairfield’s 3-pointers in the first half, when the Stags shot 6 for 16 from outside. And she wasn’t thrilled when her team allowed the sorts of straight line drives it struggled to contain all season.
But the Hoosiers never let the game get too far away from them. They didn’t get away from what’s gotten them to this point. Rather than panic when the Stags hit some shots in the first half, Holmes matched their energy and emotion.
“I didn’t want this to be my last game in Assembly Hall,” Holmes told The Daily Hoosier. “I think that’s my mindset going into each and every game now. I don’t want this to be my last game in this jersey, and I think that’s kind of been fueling me.”
IU remained optimistic at halftime, despite the narrow four-point margin. The Hoosiers’ steady mindset led to their kill shot: a 13-0 run in the third quarter. They locked in defensively and its outside shots started falling. Fifth-year guard Sara Scalia had 12 points by then — nine in the first half, and a 3-pointer with 7:37 left in the period that Fairfield answered shortly after.
But she hit another gear during that burst in the middle of the quarter. Scalia scored seven of IU’s 13 points in that big run, and finished the third quarter with 12 points. She tacked on six more in the fourth quarter, giving her 27 for the game — the most by any Hoosier in an NCAA Tournament game.
That spurt, and Scalia’s takeover, was when both Parrish and Holmes felt they had the game in hand.
“When Sara became Sara,” Parrish said. “It’s when she starts getting the fans going, and starts talking to the other team, it just kind of gets all of us going too.”
These Hoosiers have been tested plenty of times this season. They trailed Michigan State by double digits at halftime in February and came back to win. They withstood big second-half runs by teams like Princeton and Maryland. And they, of course, experienced the disappointments against Stanford, Iowa, and Ohio State, and remember those feelings.
The bulk of this Indiana team has been in this position before. These players know what March Madness feels like, both in victory and defeat, and they know how long the road to either outcome is over the course of a game. They’ve made deep runs, and they’ve come up short.
All that experience pays off in moments like Saturday’s.
“We have a very veteran team, we have a lot of girls that have a lot of experience, not just in the NCAA Tournament, but deep runs in the NCAA Tournament,” Parrish said. “Mackenzie and Chloe made it to Elite Eights, I’ve been to a Sweet 16, so stuff like that really helps you with momentum down in tournament time.”
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