Hoosiers fail to close down stretch against Illini

Illinois women’s basketball coach Jolette Law splits each game into four key blocks of time.

“In this game,” she said. “It’s going to come down to the first five minutes of the first half, the last five minutes of the first half, and then after halftime, the same thing — the first five minutes and the last five minutes.”

During IU’s 74-67 loss to the Illini on Thursday night, IU coach Felisha Legette-Jack’s team failed to execute in the last five minutes of the game.

“We got to have a knockout punch,” coach Legette-Jack said.
“We’re not knocking people out. We’re not seeing blood and going after it.”

IU junior guard Alisha Goodwin shot 6-of-11 from the field to give her 14 points. She attributed her team’s late-game struggles to poor defense.

“We just needed to get stops on defense,” Goodwin said. “And we didn’t do that, and that cost us the game.”

Illinois (7-10, 2-2) led the Hoosiers (8-9, 2-3) by two heading into halftime and grabbed their largest lead with nine with 11:34 remaining in the game.

Coach Legette-Jack’s squad then went on an 11-2 run at the 10:36 mark to ultimately tie the score at 50 with 8:09 left in the game.

However, the Hoosiers’ run was not sustainable, as the Illini were able to outscore IU 11-to-3 in the final 2:52 of the game to pull out a victory.

Illinois’ late run was sparked by freshman guard Amber Moore who hit a mid-range floater from the corner while surrounded by Hoosier defenders to give the Illini a six-point lead with under a minute remaining.

“I don’t know why I did the floater, but I just felt like it was going in.” Moore said.

Moore led all scorers with 27 points off 9-of-17 shooting and 7-of-12 from the three-point arc. Coach Legette-Jack said there wasn’t much stopping the sharpshooting guard.

“[Moore] was hitting some unbelievable shots,” coach Legette-Jack said. “I can’t even get mad at the team. They were right there in her face.”

While Moore was lighting up the scoreboard, the Hoosiers’ own leading scorer was having trouble getting her shots to fall.

Senior guard Jori Davis, who leads the team in points on the season, scored three points in the first half and finished the game with 16 on 5-of-21 shooting.

Coach Law said she made sure her team made Davis a priority.

“At all times we had the whole team making sure we ID’d where number 32 was,” coach Law said.

With the loss Thursday, the Hoosiers extend their losing streak to three games.
Coach Legette-Jack said she believes her team needs to make some adjustments if they hope to reach postseason play.

“This is a team that lost our swagger a little bit,” she said. “And we just got to get
that back.”