No. 25 IU women's basketball was down by three to Purdue and had the ball with two seconds left.
Junior forward Brenna Wise set an off-ball screen for sophomore guard Jaelynn Penn in an attempt to free Penn up off the Hoosiers’ inbounds play. The screen worked, and Penn came curling around Wise to catch and shoot the ball in hopes of tying the game.
The play was executed to perfection — all except the finish.
Sophomore guard Bendu Yeaney passed it in to Penn, who bobbled the catch and couldn’t get a shot off in time as Purdue took the 56-53 victory.
Perhaps Penn was too focused on the upcoming shot to tie the game, so she forgot step one of the process, which is catching the ball. Perhaps Yeaney’s pass wasn’t where Penn expected the ball to be. It doesn’t matter what went into the bobble. The Hoosiers once again had a chance to win and let it slip away.
Just seconds before that last shot, Penn had another look at it. This time, Purdue was only up one. Penn created an open jump shot for herself that went too strong off the back iron and into the hands of Purdue’s sophomore guard Karissa McLaughlin, who proceeded to hit the two free throws that gave the Boilermakers the three-point victory.
The loss doesn’t fall on Penn, who finished with 13 points and the highest usage percentage of anyone on the floor at 30.6 percent.
But after an impressive start to the season, and games where IU finished teams off in the fourth quarter, the Hoosiers have struggled to do so in their last four conference games.
On Jan. 10 at Ohio State, IU suffered a loss similar to Sunday’s in which the opposing team made things difficult for IU down the stretch. After defeating Wisconsin by eight Jan. 13, IU has now lost two straight games for the first time this season.
IU Coach Teri Moren said postgame that she thought her team did bring the toughness and grit to Mackey Arena.
Yet IU still led by five at halftime and turned the ball over nine times in the third quarter, allowing Purdue to take a one-point lead into the fourth. The Hoosiers had chances to win this game, but just couldn’t capitalize.
Sometimes shots don’t fall, but if the Hoosiers keep letting games slip away, their chances of making the NCAA Tournament might slip away too.
