The first eight games of the season have been up and down for Indiana women’s basketball junior forward Lilly Meister.
She had strong showings in the Hoosiers’ victories over Brown University and Columbia University but was quiet in their losses to Butler University and the University of North Carolina.
On Sunday, Meister delivered another commanding performance on the inside for the Hoosiers.
Meister scored 18 points and corralled nine rebounds in the Hoosiers 78-53 win over the University of Maine inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington. She was second in scoring for Indiana behind graduate student guard Chloe Moore-McNeil, who recorded 22 points and was 4 for 5 from beyond the arc.
Most of Meister’s points came during her dominant third quarter, in which she tallied 14 of Indiana’s 25 points, recorded three rebounds, was perfect from the field and went on her own 9-0 run.
“Our game plan is really just to get the ball moving and get it in and out,” Meister said postgame. “Obviously if I have a good seal or if I feel like I have an advantage, I’m going to try to score, but for the most part, it’s really in the flow of it. Kind of what I feel and if I think we have an advantage kicking it out, then we’re going to do that.”
Head coach Teri Moren said if Meister is going to continue to have dominant performances, Indiana is going to have to find a balance between Meister’s teammates on the outside finding her on the inside and Mister being more “assertive” when trying to score.
“She has a different mindset — where Mack begged for the ball all the time, we got to get Lilly to be,” Moren said. “And she’s not going to be Mackenzie (Holmes), not suggesting that, but we have to get her to beg for the ball a little bit more because she is efficient around the rim.”
While Meister had 18 points, Moren said she could have scored more.
“And then our guards have to do a better job of playing with their eyes up,” Moren said. “I thought we missed her a couple of times inside. We had great ball movement, but it was just side to side, never peeked inside to see if Lilly had an advantage.”
Indiana entered this season without its all-time leading scorer and All-American Mackenzie Holmes, who graduated in the spring. While replacing Holmes’ production does not fall only on Meister’s shoulders, the junior plays an important role in Indiana’s success after Holmes’ departure as the starting forward.
While Meister’s scoring mindset is different than Holmes’, Moren drew a comparison between where Holmes improved and where Meister needs to improve.
“The one thing that Lilly will have to continue to do, and it’s kind of like what was a challenge with Mack, is be able to stay in longer,” Moren said. “Right now, personally, I’d like to be able to keep Lilly on the floor longer. We have a hard time doing that when she fatigues and tires. And when she’s tired, she’s either going to foul or she’s going to come up short on her shot.”
Compared to Meister’s fellow starters who played over 30 minutes, Meister played just 26.
“When you’re used to being able to play with a kid like Mackenzie Holmes, it’s an adjustment for us,” Moren said. “And it took us, and it’s taken us, some time to figure some of those things out. But this is a team that’s very together. They want to compete. They want to win. They want to figure out how to win. They want to do right by our staff, fix the things that we get wrong.”
The Hoosiers continue their season at 7 p.m. Wednesday against the University of Southern Indiana at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. The matchup will stream on Big Ten+.
Follow reporters Dalton James (@DaltonMJames) and Savannah Slone (@savrivers06) and columnist Ryan Canfield (@RyanCanfieldOnX) for updates throughout the Indiana women’s basketball season.
