IU women remain winless in Big Ten after loss to Purdue

The Indiana women’s basketball team was unable to secure its first Big Ten win of the season Thursday night, falling to rival Purdue by a score of 82-60.

IU is now 5-14 on the season and 0-6 in conference play.

Purdue improved to 16-3 overall and remains the lone Big Ten team to be undefeated in the conference with a record of 6-0.

“I thought we came out with a great game plan,” IU Coach Felisha Legette-Jack said. “I thought we came out with a fire. I thought we solidified the fact that we can shoot the ball. That’s one thing that we’ve gotten better at. Offensive rebounds have to be the next thing that we get better at.”

IU was outrebounded 22-12 on the offensive end and 49-29 for the entire game.
Although they shot 54.2 percent from the floor in the first half, they struggled in the second stanza, connecting on only seven of 30 shots. They ended up shooting 37 percent for the night.

Despite the final score, Legette-Jack said she was satisfied with the intensity her team brought to the floor.

“This is the fire I want our team to play with all the time,” she said. “Every time we play somebody it has to be Purdue. I like the in-state rivalry but that fire should never change. I think that our kids understand now what that all means.”

Leading the way for the Hoosiers was junior forward Aulani Sinclair. She connected for four threes on the night and shot a perfect 6-6 from the line. In addition to her 20 points, she notched six rebounds, one block, and one steal.

She preferred to give credit elsewhere for her scoring.

“I can give a lot of credit to my post bigs, Danilsa (Andujar) and Sasha (Chaplin) ducking in,” she said. “That drew a lot of attention for them so it opened us up on the wings, and then our transition got us a lot of threes.”

The leading scorer for Purdue came off the bench. Senior forward Antionette Howard also scored 20 points while leading the team in rebounds with eight. She also produced four steals, one assist and one block.

Purdue had five players score 10 or more points, providing a well-balanced attack that IU couldn’t fully stop.

“You know you pick your poison,” Legette-Jack said. “We certainly thought (Brittany) Rayburn was the kid that we’d have to be cognitive of, as well as (Courtney) Moses and KK (Houser). I thought we did a pretty good job against them, but when you’ve got another senior to come over there and give them 20 points, we didn’t bank on that.”

Despite being disappointed in falling short of a victory against their rival, Legette-Jack saw the bright side to the loss.

“Lesson’s learned,” she said. “And I think we will continue to grow.”