No. 23 IU women’s basketball coasted to a pair of season-opening wins at home last weekend, but with their first road trip of the year set to begin Thursday, the Hoosiers are about to be tested.
IU Coach Teri Moren will take her 2-0 Hoosiers to Tennessee to play the Chattanooga Mocs, a balanced and experienced team with a dominant track record at home in recent years. Last season, the Hoosiers beat Chattanooga 54-43 in Bloomington, but playing the Mocs on the road will likely prove to be a more challenging test.
Chattanooga returns four starters from a team that won the Southern Conference and advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the fourth year in a row. The Mocs are a particularly dangerous team at home, where they are 66-3 in the past five years.
“There’s lots of energy and enthusiasm for women’s basketball there, so it’s going to be an incredible challenge for us,” Moren said. “It’s a veteran club, it’s a deep team. They bring several shooters off the bench, so they’re going to challenge us defensively with getting out and guarding the 3-point line.”
The Mocs are led by senior forward Jasmine Joyner, who is a dominant low-post player Moren said can also face up when she’s not roaming the paint. Joyner averaged 13.1 points and 9.2 rebounds per game last season and is averaging 14.5 points and 6.5 rebounds per game through two games this year.
Junior guard Chelsey Shumpert anchors the backcourt for Chattanooga, averaging 13 points and 3.5 assists per game through two games. As Moren mentioned, the Mocs can bring sharpshooters off the bench, particularly sophomore guard Shelbie Davenport and senior guard Moses Johnson. Both have multiple threes already this season.
To combat the balanced and deep lineup of Chattanooga, the Hoosiers will rely on a defense that has already forced 41 turnovers through two games. Sophomore guard Tia Elbert, who comes off the bench for IU as a primary backup for junior guard Tyra Buss, said the bench unit always focuses on maintaining the defensive tone set by the starters.
“We take a lot of pride in it, because we know that if we come out flat, it’s not beneficial for the team at all,” Elbert said. “We talk to each other all the time on the bench, like ‘come on guys, let’s keep up the talk, let’s keep up the pressure.’ And then when we come in, we’re expected to do the same thing the starters are doing.”
Elbert, who sat out last season due to transfer rules after coming to IU from Marquette, said she remembers the defensive battle in last year’s low-scoring game against the Mocs. Moren also said the familiarity her squad already has with Chattanooga will be beneficial.
If IU’s starters falter early or get in foul trouble, Moren will almost certainly look to Elbert as a spark plug off the bench. In Sunday’s win over Vanderbilt, Elbert scored eight points and added five assists and four rebounds in just 19 minutes.
Moren said getting Joyner into foul trouble early will be key so Chattanooga can’t do the opposite to IU’s post players. Sophomore forward Kym Royster picked up two quick fouls in the first minute of Sunday’s game, something Moren said she definitely doesn’t want to see happen.
“Anytime you have to sit because you get in early foul trouble, hopefully she’ll learn that lesson that she’ll have to come into this game and be extremely disciplined, move her feet and have her hands up,” Moren said of Royster. “Because our hard and fast rule is you get two, you have to sit. They’ve got great balance, they play fast and they play reckless at times. So we’ll have to be sound, disciplined and connected.”
