Lady Hoosiers prepare for Northwestern

ByJjoe Popely
jpopely@indiana.edu

When IU and Northwestern women’s basketball teams square off at 2 p.m. Sunday in Assembly Hall, the game will feature a couple of teams inthe Big Ten cellar.

Last season’s Hoosiers finished  with just six wins. At 14-16 overall and 4-13 in conference, the 11th place Wildcats had only IU between them and last place.
Fast forward to this season, and the picture looks a little different.

IU (9-5, 0-1) surpassed last season’s win total on Dec. 16 by beating SIU-Edwardsville 72-56 and finished the non-conference slate on a three-game winning streak, its second winning streak of three or more games this season.

The Wildcats, meanwhile, are trending downward. After starting the season 6-0, Northwestern (8-6, 0-1) has lost six of its last eight games. 

Both teams struggled to shoot last season, particularly from long range. IU was a Big Ten-worst at 28 percent on threes, while Northwestern was barely better at 30 percent.

“This year hopefully we’ll have a much better shooting team,” Northwestern Coach Joe McKeown said at Big Ten Media Days in October. “We’re going to spread the floor out more, chuck and duck a little bit.”

So far, that strategy has not paid off. Northwestern is shooting 30 percent from deep on the season, second-worst in the Big Ten.

The game could very well be decided on the perimeter.

While the Hoosiers do not shoot particularly well from the floor (40 percent, 10th in conference) and are last in scoring with 61.2 points per game, they have been above average when shooting threes.

IU shoots 34.3 percent from beyond the arc, good for sixth in the Big Ten, and limits opponents to just 27 percent three-point shooting.

Freshman Nicole Bell has been a threat on the perimeter all season, often getting her threes in bunches. She is shooting 33 percent from deep.

Leading scorer Aulani Sinclair paces IU with 44 percent three-point shooting and 40 made threes.

Those two have a good chance to light it up against the Wildcats’ porous perimeter. Northwestern has allowed teams to shoot 33 percent from three-point land, worst in the Big Ten.

On offense, the Wildcats feature a balanced scoring attack with all five starters averaging double figures. Senior forward Kendall Hackney leads the way with 14.5 points per game and is second on the team with 6.5 rebounds per game.

Northwestern was one of the few Big Ten teams IU came close to beating last year.
The Wildcats took the first game in Bloomington, 69-61.

On Jan. 29, 2012 in Evanston, Ill., the Hoosiers erased a 10-point deficit with 5:11 left in the game and got within three with 47 seconds remaining. The Wildcats held on to win 68-61.

Northwestern has struggled on the road this season, going 1-3, though the team nearly scored a road upset of No. 9 Penn State on Thursday. IU, meanwhile, is 7-2 at home.