She took six shots in the first half. Whether it was from beyond the arc or inside the lane, she didn’t miss.
Indiana women’s basketball’s Chloe Moore-McNeil went a perfect 6 for 6 in the first half Sunday against the University of Maine inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington. It wasn’t until there were just over six minutes left in the third quarter that the graduate student guard missed.
Without graduate student guard Sydney Parrish, who sported a left knee brace after suffering a knee injury against Baylor University on Nov. 24, Moore-McNeil finished with 22 points alongside four rebounds and four assists in the Hoosiers’ 78-53 victory over the Black Bears. She tied her career-high in points as she also scored 22 against Purdue on Feb. 11, 2024.
“I thought Chloe was fabulous today,” Indiana head coach Teri Moren said postgame. “As I said to her on the way out, when she plays like that, we have a chance.”
Moore-McNeil drained three 3-pointers in the opening half and went on to hit another in the third quarter. While Moore-McNeil was on the top of her game in the first half, junior forward Lilly Meister led the Hoosiers in the third quarter as she scored 14 of her 18 points in the period.
Last season, Indiana found itself struggling in the third quarter during Big Ten play. Whether it was against Iowa in early January or Illinois in mid-February, the Hoosiers were plagued by stagnant third quarters.
So, leading by just 8 at the beginning of the second half, the Hoosiers could either take a convincing lead or allow the Black Bears to pull even closer. That led Moore-McNeil to deliver a message to her team at the half.
“I felt like we were just handing them shots, whether it was wide open threes, measure up threes, just one dribble-drive by — little things that Indiana basketball has never tolerated before,” Moore-McNeil said.
Indiana outscored Maine 25-13 in the frame to take a 20-point lead with just 10 minutes remaining, essentially ending the contest.
As a team, the Hoosiers finished 11 for 22 from 3-point range — their highest percentage this season. When they make their long balls, the Cream and Crimson have high potential, according to Moren.
Coming off a 30-point loss to the University of North Carolina on Nov. 25, Indiana needed to respond. It did it with a season-high 25-point victory.
“It was a bounce-back win for us after a tough one in the Bahamas, even though there were some really good things that happened in the Bahamas,” Moren said. “The last game didn’t sit very well with us, so we just wanted to come out and perform better and I thought we did that today.”
After the loss to the Tar Heels, Moore-McNeil said watching the film was hard and that the session itself was hard. While scoring only 39 points for the first time since 2013 certainly wasn’t the way the Hoosiers wanted to cap off the Battle 4 Atlantis, Moore-McNeil said it’s important to understand they did some good things in the three-game tournament.
Even without Parrish, Indiana still cruised to its fifth victory of the season. It next hosts the University of Southern Indiana at 7 p.m. Wednesday before beginning Big Ten play at 1 p.m. Saturday against Penn State at the Bryce Jordan Center in State College, Pennsylvania.
For the Hoosiers to continue winning efforts like Sunday, Moren says there’s a certain way they need to conduct themselves.
“I just think the best recipe for us is to stay the course of what we’re doing and making sure that our kids continue to get in before and after, they’re working on their shots, they’re getting shots up outside of required time, which has been part of what we do around here and the lifestyle,” Moren said. “Then you just keep plugging away and try to continue to give them the confidence that the next one's going to go in.”
While Moren, on her pregame radio show, said Parrish will be out for “at least a couple weeks,” performances like Moore-McNeil's are going to need to become the norm — and not just by her.
“I think not just me stamping my ticket and saying, ‘I need to do more on offense and defense,’” Moore-McNeil said, “It’s going to take everybody to kind of try to fill Sydney’s shoes.”
The Hoosiers have been far from perfect this season, and they know that. Learning to replace Mackenzie Holmes, arguably the greatest player in program history, and Sara Scalia — add in Parrish for at least the next couple weeks — has been no easy task.
But Moren still believes in her team
“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,” Moren said. “As I’ve always said, as long as you have an interested group that wants to come in every day and fix some of our shortcomings, you have a chance.”
Follow reporters Dalton James (@DaltonMJames) and Savannah Slone (@savrivers06) and columnist Ryan Canfield (@RyanCanfieldOnX) for updates throughout the Indiana women’s basketball season.
