WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — No. 16 Indiana women’s basketball senior guard Sydney Parrish was sidelined with an apparent lower leg injury in the Hoosiers’ 74-68 victory over Purdue Sunday.
Related: INSTANT RECAP: No. 16 Indiana women’s basketball comes from behind, defeats Purdue 74-68
Parrish sported a boot on her lower right leg, using crutches to maneuver around Mackey Arena. Since transferring from the University of Oregon to Indiana ahead of the 2022-23 season, she has played in all 49 of the Hoosiers’ contests — until Sunday.
“It would’ve happened Friday in practice,” Indiana head coach Teri Moren said postgame. “She’s going to have another appointment on Monday, and then we’ll know more.”
With Parrish sidelined, Moren started sophomore guard Lexus Bargesser in her place — her first career start. She finished with zero points on 0-2 from the field.
Despite failing to make a scoring impact, Bargesser’s defensive performance proved impactful. The Grass Lake, Michigan, native finished with the game’s highest plus/minus rating of 13 in the victory.
“Lexus — she’s really, really solid defensively,” Purdue head coach Katie Gearlds said postgame. “So having her and Chloe out there really clogging gaps and their athleticism — I thought it made them really tough on the defensive end today.”
Although Indiana was without its fourth leading scorer, senior guard Chloe Moore-McNeil and fifth-year senior guard Sara Scalia stepped up. The veteran duo scored 20 points apiece, combining to go 9-of-14 from 3-point range.
In 2022-23, then-graduate student guard Grace Berger suffered a knee injury on Nov. 25, 2022, and proceeded to miss Indiana’s next eight games. While injuries typically aren’t beneficial, being without a veteran leader last season may have better prepared the Hoosiers in Parrish’s case.
“I think we all had the mindset of ‘with Syd being out, we all need to do a little bit more’,” Moore-McNeil said postgame. “We kind of went through the same thing last year with Grace Berger, so adversity is nothing new to us.”
Since the turn of the new year, Parrish has torched opposing teams from 3-point range while also displaying her energizing scrappiness on defense. In the past five games, she’s gone 17-of-29 from distance. Without one of their best — if not the best — 3-point shooters as of late, the Hoosiers still finished 15-of-23 from beyond the arc.
While the Boilermakers held a 3-point lead after three quarters, Indiana could’ve folded in the fourth, but it didn’t.
“I credit Indiana because they never looked rattled,” Gearlds said postgame. “I think a little bit maybe there in the third quarter they started to press a little bit, but you could see the maturity (of) a championship ballclub that they just knew. Nobody forced a shot; nobody forced a play; stayed within what they were doing.”
In Parrish’s absence, both Scalia and Moore-McNeil played all 40 minutes against the Boilermakers. Not only did the duo lead the Hoosiers in scoring, but they also combined for just two turnovers in 80 total minutes.
Although the specifics of Parrish’s injury weren’t outlined on Sunday, the Hoosiers could possibly be without her for the foreseeable future.
Indiana, now winners of eight consecutive Barn Burner Trophy games, has a week-long break from game action. The Hoosiers will return to Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall at 2 p.m. Jan. 28 for a matchup with Northwestern.
Follow reporters Dalton James (@DaltonMJames) and Quinn Richards (@Quinn_richa), columnist Ryan Canfield (@_ryancanfield) and photographer Olivia Bianco (@theoliviabianco) for updates throughout the Indiana women’s basketball season.
