Last-second shot sinks Hoosiers’ chances at first Big Ten victory against Illini during ‘THINK PINK’ game

The Indiana women’s basketball team fell 61-60 to Illinois (10-16, 4-9) on a last-second lay-in by the Fighting Illini’s Lydia McCully Sunday.

But on “THINK PINK” day at Assembly Hall, IU Coach Felisha Legette-Jack said she had the bigger picture in mind.

“At the end of the day, it’s a one-shot situation,” Legette-Jack said. “If we get the rebound, we’re celebrating, and if we don’t get the rebound, we’re celebrating because we’re fighting breast cancer.”

The loss was especially hard to take for Legette-Jack, though, who lost her father 10 years ago this month after a bout with throat cancer, she said. But despite the team’s loss, she and her players said they’re just playing a game, but other people might be out there fighting for their lives.

“It’s not about a win or a loss or who had 61 or who had 60,” Legette-Jack said. “We’re bringing attention to something deadly and totally unforgiving in breast cancer.

“I know how hard these survivors have to fight, and I know how tough it can be, but my energy is toward that more than anything.”

IU (5-20, 0-12) jumped to a 12-6 lead off of two baskets each from senior forward Danilsa Andujar and junior forward Aulani Sinclair. The Hoosiers would then stretch their lead to as much as 11 off an 11-6 run.

But Illinois would go on a 14-2 run of its own to take the lead at 26-25 with 4:06 left in the half. The teams would then trade baskets for the final four minutes of the half before Illinois’s Karisma Penn hit a last-second floater in the lane to take the lead 33-32 into the locker room. Penn led all scorers with a game-high 23 points, including 13 in the first half.

After a slow start to the first half that saw both teams turn the ball over twice in their first two possessions, Indiana tied it up 38-38 with more than 14 minutes remaining.

Illinois followed with a 10-2 run, during which the Hoosiers failed to connect on a single field goal in 5:15. Down 48-40, they didn’t give up.

Off of three-straight baskets from Sinclair, the Hoosiers tied it up again 48-48 with 6:07 left in the game, and IU would build as much as a four-point lead with 56 seconds to go.

Sinclair said with such a quickly changing game, they knew the lead could change at any second, but she and her teammates had to continue fighting to keep the lead.

“Coach called a timeout and said that it was going to be a back-and-forth, back-and-forth game, so we just had to keep it up,” Sinclair said. “(Coach said) we might be up six at one point and then we might get down three, but we’ve just got to play our hardest till the end, and it will be what it is.”

But in the final minute, the Fighting Illini battled back, as Adrienne Godbold hit a contested layup along with a foul shot to move her team within one point.

And they would get one more shot. Although the Hoosiers dominated all day on the boards, out-rebounding Illinois 47-32, McCully grabbed the last board off a missed jumper by Penn and laid the ball in with just 0.6 left on the clock. A Hoosier hail-mary heave failed to connect, and Indiana lost its 12th-straight conference game of the
season.

Sinclair led the Hoosiers with 17 points and seven rebounds, along with junior Sasha Chaplin, who scored 14 points along with seven boards.

But both, along with Legette-Jack, said they wished they could have had just one more rebound.

“The fight for that last rebound was the same, just like the fight for the other 47,” Legette-Jack said. “There’s no gift about it. You just have to have a knack for rebounding, and we have that knack. But sometimes you just don’t pull them down.”