Women’s Basketball
A banner will be raised in honor of the IU women’s basketball team during the 2018-19 season. In front of a record-breaking home crowd of 13,007 fans, the Hoosiers defeated Virginia Tech in the 2018 WNIT Championship game on March 31. It was the first championship of any kind for the program and will give Coach Teri Moren and her team plenty of momentum heading into the future.
Despite the graduation of two of the greatest players in program history, Tyra Buss and Amanda Cahill, the Hoosiers should have plenty of firepower coming back for next season. Leading the way will be two young budding stars in sophomore guards Jaelynn Penn and Bendu Yeaney, both of whom finished last season on a strong note.
Penn was selected for the Big Ten All-Freshman team and was IU’s third leading scorer at 10.8 points per game. Meanwhile, Yeaney averaged 8.4 points of her own. Both are players that can dominate on both the offensive and defensive sides of the floor.
IU will also be bringing back a third starter in senior forward Kym Royster, who averaged 10.2 points and six rebounds this season. They’ll also be bringing in two talented transfers in senior Brenna Wise from Pittsburgh and junior Ali Patberg from the University of Notre Dame, along with a highly-touted recruiting class led by five-star freshman guard Grace Berger out of Louisville, Kentucky.
Men’s Soccer
While the women’s basketball team will be riding high off of their championship season, the men’s soccer team will be looking for redemption. After a successful regular season that the Hoosiers finished with an impressive 18-1-6 record, 2017 ended in heartbreak for Coach Todd Yeagley’s squad.
The Hoosiers advanced to the NCAA Championship game in Philadelphia Dec. 10 after taking down Old Dominion, New Hampshire, Michigan State and North Carolina in the first four rounds of the tournament. There, they lost in devastating fashion in a 1-0 double-overtime thriller to Stanford.
IU will look to bounce back in 2018 as they bring back a number of key contributors to last year’s team. Headlining that group will be the likes of sophomore goaltender Trey Muse, sophomore midfielder Griffin Dorsey and senior defender Andrew Gutman.
The 2018 regular season will begin Aug. 24, when the Hoosiers will travel to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to take on Wake Forest in their season opener.
Men’s Basketball
There’s a lot of national buzz surrounding the IU men’s basketball program after the recent commitment of five-star recruit Romeo Langford out of New Albany, Indiana.
Langford will join an IU squad that finished last season with a 16-15 overall record and 9-9 in Big Ten play. It resulted in the Hoosiers missing out of postseason play in Coach Archie Miller’s first year in Bloomington, after he took over for former Coach Tom Crean, who was fired after the 2016-17 season.
Langford is the biggest name in Miller’s heralded first recruiting class at IU, which also features guards Robert Phinisee and Damezi Anderson and forwards Jerome Hunter and Jake Forrester.
They’ll also be joining a returning group of players that features some of IU’s most productive contributors from last season.
Senior forward Juwan Morgan was named Second Team All-Big Ten after leading the Hoosiers in scoring and rebounding, averaging 16.5 points and 7.4 rebounds.
Meanwhile, junior center De’Ron Davis averaged 9.6 points and 4.3 rebounds before going down with a season-ending injury mid-way through the year, and sophomore forward Justin Smith came on strong by the end of the season, averaging 6.5 points and 3.2 rebounds.
Miller should have plenty of depth on his hands, as he’ll also bring back senior guard and defensive specialist Zach McRoberts, junior guard Devonte Green and sophomore guard Al Durham, who all received major minutes in 2017-18.
