Miller excited for women's basketball freshman class

IU Coach Curt Miller praised the IU women’s basketball team at Friday’s Hoosier Hysteria for its accomplishments behind the scenes last season. 

“We may not have won the Big Ten yet, but we’ve created an unbelievable chemistry in that locker room that continues now,” Miller said. “We became one of the hardest working teams in the Big Ten.”

The Hoosiers’ recruiting class for this season ranks third in the Big Ten. Miller also had high praise for it.

“When I look at this freshman class, I see a lot of Jordan Hulls and Christian Watfords in Coach Crean’s first recruiting class,” he said. “I look forward to seeing what those guys will be like in four years, what Jordan and Christian meant to the men’s program.”

Other behind-the-scenes milestones from last season included a sizeable increase in attendance, Miller said.

“We had a 20-percent increase in attendance per game in year one,” he said. “We look forward to that getting higher and higher as the years go,” he said.

Miller pointed out that the team is one of the youngest in the Big Ten and the nation, but still has leadership.

“We have 13 scholarship players eligible to play, but eight of them have yet to score a basket in an Indiana uniform,” he said. “But we do have five seniors on the team.”

Miller also said fan support will be crucial this upcoming season.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the crowd will help us,” he said. “It’s not a coincidence that when we beat Purdue we had the best crowd of the year. When we had the best student body crowd of the year, we beat Purdue.”

“It’s time for women’s basketball to be a player nationally,” Miller said.

In the Hoosier Hysteria contests, redshirt sophomore Kaila Hulls was the top performer for the women’s team in the three-point shootout but fell to men’s finalist sophomore guard Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell in the finals.

“I don’t like almost winning,” Hulls said. “I wish I would have won it. All the girls, we’re always in the gym shooting. And we had fun. That was the most important part about it.”

Freshman forward Lyndsay Leikem won the two-ball competition, teaming up with men’s senior guard Taylor Wayer.

“Shooting in front of all these people and competing with a men’s player, it was really awesome, and it felt great,” Leikem said.

It was Leikem’s first time playing in front of the fans.

“It was amazing,” she said. “It was everything I expected it to be — an amazing experience.”

Hulls also said she predicts a successful upcoming season for the team.

“Last year we did really well, and this year we have a really good incoming class, and even though we’re really young, I think we’re going to do really well,” she said. “We have high expectations for this team. I think we’re going to surprise a lot of people.”

Follow reporter Stuart Jackson on Twitter @Stuart_Jackson1.