Indiana women’s basketball’s 2024-25 campaign has been a rollercoaster of many emotions, superlatives and oddities.
From finding scoring reinforcements due to graduation to having to deal with four new squads joining the Big Ten to form what is now an 18-team league, the Cream and Crimson have had their fair share of challenges.
The Hoosiers have suffered tough losses, missed opportunities and have had to do a little bit of soul searching in the form of finding new player production. The blown lead at Oregon and the failure to show up in high leverage against Harvard and Illinois are just some of the Hoosiers’ battle scars in 2024-25.
But in their 76-60 victory over Nebraska on Sunday inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington, the Hoosiers hit all the notes many anticipated they would in the preseason.
Notes such as: can it knock down 3-pointers consistently, can it wreak havoc for bigs in a conference dominated by that position? Does it have enough juice to make a run in March? Can it sustain this efficiency?
If Indiana continues to play like it did against Nebraska on Sunday afternoon, Hoosier nation will not need to worry about the previously rampant rollercoaster — it will be too busy winning.
Going into the matchup, Indiana had its work cut out. If they could contain the 14.7 points per game in the form of Nebraska senior center Alexis Markowski, the Hoosiers’ offense just had to meet the average of its own. Handling bigs has been Indiana’s Achillies heal all season. The team needed to mitigate her, and they did.
Indiana averaged 69.6 points per game entering the matchup. Not only did it exceed that total, but Markowski finished with 8 points on only five field goal attempts.
“Another terrific post player in our league that we knew that we had to try to force her catches out from the rim,” Indiana head coach Teri Moren said postgame. “I thought we did a good job. But we have to get better at our post-D.”
From the attempts totals, Nebraska didn’t even get a chance to shoot the amount of shots Indiana did as the latter shot 13 more times. Indiana’s defense suffocated the Cornhuskers and it paid dividends as the Hoosiers responded with complimentary basketball.
Offensively, Indiana was as efficient as it has been in a few games. With the outlier of junior guard Yarden Garzon’s 35-point performance at Washington on Jan. 27 boosting the team percentage over 50%, Indiana’s 46% from the field is a total it hadn’t reached since its win over Iowa on Jan. 12.
Indiana was hot from 3-point range against Nebraska last season, shooting 60.9% with 14 makes in early January. On Sunday, Indiana was one make away from that total with 13 as Garzon had five of those makes.
What might be the biggest piece of the Hoosiers’ success is how they took care of the ball. Indiana averaged around 15 turnovers per game entering Sunday. It only had eight against Nebraska. Plus, it also forced 17 turnovers for the Huskers, 10 of which were steals.
Once again, Indiana did what it needed to do to reach its potential. When it clicks on all cylinders, it can be Big Ten championship good. Now, Indiana needs to capitalize.
With eight remaining games, Indiana can boost its NCAA Tournament resume and guarantee a berth, making this season worth remembering.
Coming into the matchup Sunday, five of the last nine games this season are against teams that are top 35 in the NCAA NET rankings –– Nebraska being one of those at No. 34. The others consist of Ohio State at No. 15, Michigan State at No. 17, Maryland at No. 24 and Michigan at 30.
“We feel really good about our play,” Moren said. “But we still got a lot of work to do and we let a few slip out of our hands.”
Moren is holding herself and her team accountable for some of their shortcomings. What she stated is correct, in that this team could’ve made it easier on itself if it could’ve closed out wins against Illinois and USC. However, that is in the past. The Hoosiers can only control what's in front of them now.
The season, while winding down, is rightfully heating up for Indiana.
Next for Indiana, it will get one of the opponents not in the top 30 NET rankings: Rutgers at 6 p.m. Thursday inside Simon Skjodt Assembly in Bloomington.
Follow reporters Dalton James (@DaltonMJames) and Savannah Slone (@savrivers06) and columnist Ryan Canfield (@RyanCanfieldOnX) for updates throughout the Indiana women’s basketball season.
