Droughts and scoring sprees frequented Thursday’s game between No. 20 IU women’s basketball and Illinois. Leading the way for both teams were IU junior guard Ali Patberg and Illinois senior forward Ali Andrews.
Neither the Hoosiers nor the Fighting Illini shot the ball well in the Hoosiers’ 59-54 victory. Both teams went back and forth with scoring runs and relied on Patberg and Andrews to keep pace.
“Sometimes all the wins aren’t pretty,” IU head coach Teri Moren said. “Tonight we’re leaving here with an ugly win, but we’re happy.”
IU opened the game with a 6-0 run led by Patberg’s passing and floor spacing. She found sophomore forward Aleksa Gulbe for the game’s opening basket and made room for sophomore guard Grace Berger to score the next one.
Patberg and the Hoosiers cooled off after the 6-0 run, hitting a dry spell and making several bad passes. This allowed Andrews to take over.
The senior picked off one of Patberg’s passes and later hit two free throws after drawing a foul. She kept Gulbe and freshman forward Mackenzie Holmes from scoring down low and hit a three that capped off a 9-0 run for Illinois.
Berger found Patberg on the next play, and the IU junior answered with a three of her own, evening the game at 9-9.
Andrews went quiet in the second quarter, but her teammates hit from all angles. Illinois extended its lead to nine, which forced Moren to put Patberg back after less than two minutes of rest.
Following poor shooting from both teams, Patberg got IU back in the game with some mid range shots as she ran the floor with Berger. The duo fired passes back and forth with each other to find Gulbe and junior guard Jaelynn Penn for easy shots near the basket. Patberg added another three of her own and cut the deficit to two at the half.
Patberg opened the third quarter by leading her team on a 9-0 run. She drove at Andrews in the paint, drew the foul and hit her layup. Two plays later, Patberg made her way through the Illinois defense and scored again from the left side of the basket. This forced an Illinois timeout and a response out of Andrews.
The Illini senior drained a 3-pointer on the other side of the timeout and later hit another shot near the rim. She and her teammates forced the Hoosiers to take low quality shots and took a 40-39 lead.
Patberg, however, regained control of the floor.
With 2:39 left in the third, Patberg drove to the basket and kicked it out to senior forward Brenna Wise, who hit a mid range shot. Patberg found Gulbe for two on the next play and IU escaped the third with a one point lead.
Neither one of the Alis factored much into the fourth until the halfway point. Both teams went roughly three minutes without a field goal and exchanged airballs, turnovers and missed shots. Illinois was up and IU needed Patberg to ignite the offense.
Despite missing a handful of shots down the stretch, Patberg kept shooting and managed the ball better than she did in the first half. Her passes were not getting deflected, and with just over half the quarter to go, she got her seventh assist with a shot near the free throw line from Wise.
Patberg picked up two more assists and finished the night with 17 points, nine assists and five rebounds. Andrews tallied 19 points, but her efforts were not enough to knock off IU.
