If No. 4 Indiana women’s basketball’s loss to Michigan State Thursday was a premonition for a negative trajectory, the nail-biting New Year’s Day victory over Nebraska certainly reinstalled some confidence.
“Battle” was a word echoed by head coach Teri Moren, senior forward Mackenzie Holmes and junior guard Sydney Parrish after Sunday’s game. In front of a spirited Assembly Hall crowd and accompanied by a nationally televised ESPN broadcast, I might add, Indiana fought just enough to take the game into overtime and ultimately race away to a 74-62 win.
The Hoosiers displayed flaws, sure. Shooting 25% from beyond the arc is far from ideal, and neither was the Cornhuskers converting nine triples of their own in what felt like consecutive possessions.
Shot selection is also worth noting. While I admire Holmes’ confidence to try and score from all three levels, she simply took too many unnecessary midrange jumpers. One of which, coming at the very end of regulation, definitely could have been kicked out for a better look.
Aside from outside shots not falling, there’s not a whole lot to knock. The Hoosiers won the turnover battle in commanding fashion and kept the ball moving well on the offensive end. Perhaps most importantly though, they notched 24 points off free throws on a highly efficient 80% clip.
If you have any belief in the idea of momentum, it didn’t feel like a ton of it really belonged to either side heading into overtime. Watching the five-minute extra period on its own would make for an interesting experiment. To someone unfamiliar with the prior 40 minutes, it would have made sense to think the Hoosiers had the most dominating win of any team this season.
Denying the Cornhuskers from scoring a single bucket and putting up 12 points of their own, Indiana’s stamina was crucial in crunch time. While Nebraska players looked tight and noticeably slower, the Hoosiers appeared rejuvenated.
Parrish was the catalyst for the absurd 12-0 run after knocking down a three-pointer early in the period. Despite a less than stellar shooting day prior to overtime, Moren’s confidence in the Oregon transfer washed away the streakiness.
“As a shooter you go through slumps. I think I missed like four or five straight in a row,” Parrish said after the game. “In the fourth quarter I airballed one and coach Moren said, ‘just keep shooting, keep shooting.’ (It) really gives me the confidence to keep shooting the ball.”
Persistence and faith in one another are nothing new to this team. In hard-fought games like Sunday’s, those intangibles can be even more important than pure talent. Most of Moren’s players exude a quiet confidence, not too dissimilar to a middle-aged father who likes to “let his game do the talking” in something like ping pong.
Throughout the duration of overtime, we saw perhaps the most animation from the Hoosiers all season. About two minutes in, freshman guard Yarden Garzon was fouled after making a steal and converted her pair of free throws. Fired up might be underselling how Garzon and her teammates reacted to the sequence.
“Yarden’s not an emotional kid, but there were moments where there was some emotion,” Moren said. “You want them to play with emotion. You don’t want them to be emotional, but you want them to play with emotion.”
The most significant takeaway from the win was the response from Indiana after its first loss. It’s strange to say, but it took almost two full months for the Hoosiers to endure adversity from a results standpoint.
While they didn’t play their cleanest game on Sunday, they shined when it mattered most.
“I said to them after we got back from Michigan State, you never get too high over a win, and you never get too low over a loss,” Moren said. “I was as curious as the rest of you guys in terms of how we were going to bounce back.”
Well, bounce back they did. The Hoosiers still could work on a few resolutions for 2023, one being not playing in as many stress-inducing finishes, but a win is all you can ask for. And as Indiana treks on through Big Ten play, it knows that its model of winning is sustainable.
“We take a lot of pride in being the better-conditioned team,” Holmes said. “We’re built for moments like those. We always have been.”
