IU gets clawed by Wildcats

With 47 seconds left in Sunday’s game at Northwestern, the IU women’s basketball team was down by only three points. The team’s first conference win this season was only a couple shots away.

IU Coach Felisha Legette-Jack said she had her team change its defensive strategy.

“We were trying to defensively blitz them and make them go faster than they wanted to go,” Legette-Jack said. “But they have good players and kept their focus and
their poise.”

Northwestern forward Dannielle Diamant didn’t crack down the stretch, hitting all four of her final free-throw attempts en route to Indiana’s ninth-straight conference loss this season, 68-61. Another tough shooting day plagued the Hoosiers (5-17, 0-9), who shot 22-for-68 from the floor.

It was junior forward Aulani Sinclair’s 3-pointer that got the Hoosiers on the board first after a slow start that included five missed shots in the opening two minutes.

Both teams went on small runs of their own, with Northwestern (13-9, 3-6) holding as big as a 20-12 lead in the first half. IU stormed back to take a 30-29 lead with just a few minutes remaining, and the Hoosiers would go into the locker room down two, 34-32.

The Wildcats scored the first nine points of the second half.

IU trailed by as much as 12 in the second half, but powered by a Sinclair 3-pointer and five-straight points by junior center Sasha Chaplin, IU closed to within two, 52-50.

Northwestern would then go on a 10-5 burst of its own, and the Hoosiers were never within more than three points the rest of the game.

“You can’t give a team like Northwestern a lead because they aren’t going to relinquish it,” Legette-Jack said. “But we’ll continue to get better.”

Legette-Jack said she saw huge improvements from Chaplin after the Hoosiers’ last game against Ohio State.

“I think the kid (Chaplin) grew up today,” Legette-Jack said. “I think she came out and did some really aggressive things down the stretch.”

Sinclair scored 11 points, including a 3-8 outing from behind the arc, and sophomore forward Milika Taufa was the fourth IU player in double-digit points with 10.

The Hoosiers will try to keep from starting 0-10 in the Big Ten Thursday when they take on Penn State in University Park, Pa.

The game will tipoff at 7 p.m. and will air on BTN.com.