Todd’s Take: Little Things Against Big-Time Opponents Holding Indiana Women’s Basketball Back

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – No one needs to remind Indiana’s women’s basketball team of the small margins that often decide games. They know it all too well.

“It’s definitely a bitter feeling when, especially when you’re at Assembly Hall, at your home court, and you can’t close and finish hard games. It’s pretty tough,” Indiana point guard Chloe Moore-McNeil said Sunday after another competitive game against a highly ranked team where the Hoosiers came up short.

Indiana battled No. 4 Southern California to the end. There were times where it looked like Indiana might conjure a breakthrough, but they were fleeting moments. Just like they were 15 days ago when the Hoosiers demonstrated similar resilience against No. 1 UCLA. That, too, was a close game until the Bruins earned a 73-62 victory.

USC took advantage of the accumulation of small margin Indiana shortcomings Sunday to leave Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall with a 73-66 victory.

There isn’t much statistically that stood out as glaring problem for the Hoosiers. USC had a 38-35 rebounding edge and made five more free throws than the Hoosiers. Indiana had three more turnovers than USC. All of those advantages USC had could be overcome by Indiana on the right day.

It’s what USC did with those small margins. The Trojans managed to score 17 points off of Indiana’s relatively modest total of 15 turnovers. USC made five more free throws, but only had two more attempts.

USC got its other players involved on a day in which Moore-McNeil (who also scored her 1,000th point) made star guard JuJu Watkins work hard for her 22 points. Kennedy Smith had 14 points, seven rebounds and five assists. Two of her buckets were momentum killers for Indiana in the final quarter.

Kiki Iriafen had 14 points and seven rebounds. Rayah Marshall had 13 points and 10 rebounds.

Indiana got good contributions from its starting five too, but fell just a bit short in matching USC’s level of production. USC’s 39%-37.5% shooting advantage from the field wasn’t large, but it was just one of the small cuts that proved costly to Indiana. Those small margins stick out once taken as the sum of their parts.

Add to it that Indiana was fighting uphill anyway given the size and physical disadvantage they have against elite teams like USC.

Indiana’s Sydney Parrish sounded the warning before the season about how big and physical the new West Coast members of the Big Ten are. She said this at Indiana’s media day in September.

“It’s a lot different than normal Big 10 teams where your post player is 6-3,” Parrish said. “We’re going to go up against girls that are 6-7, 6-8, and we have to know how to play against those.”

To Indiana’s credit, they endured early blows, but adjusted, and played a fundamentally sound game to generate offense and to take an 11-point lead early in the second quarter.

But then the scoring dried up again. This happens to the Hoosiers a bit too often. The undersized team has to rely on jump shots a bit more than desired.

Indiana also generates offense from its cutting action, and it did its fair share of that on Sunday. But when the Hoosiers are at a size disadvantage as they were against USC, the Hoosiers rise or fall based on whether those long-range shots find the mark.

None of those shots fell in the final 4:57 of the first half as the Trojans reversed an 11-point deficit into a six-point halftime lead.

It was a similar pattern in the second half. Indiana wiped out a nine-point deficit and led by four early in the fourth quarter. Three-pointers by Parrish, Moore-McNeil and Lilly Meister all helped the Hoosiers’ cause.

But then some good looks went begging. Garzon and Parrish failed to connect on open shots. From the 8:13 to 1:56 mark, the Hoosiers did not score a bucket.

It was supremely frustrating for the Hoosiers to create some good looks and not have them fall.

“When I look back at UCLA, I look back at today, we’ve just got to hit shots. It’s that easy. If that’s the lesson we’ve got to learn – I think we got some really good ones, we just didn’t hit them. Syd Parrish got some really good looks. Yarden got some really good looks. Same with UCLA. We look back and we’re like, ‘We hit a couple more shots and we win this game,’ ” Indiana coach Teri Moren said.

That just magnified some of the other ways in which the Hoosiers gave an inch only for the Trojans to take a mile.

Indiana only missed two free throws in the final period, but they came at a crucial time. Parrish missed two in a row when USC was up three and Indiana needed to blunt their momentum. Indiana had just three turnovers in the final period, but USC scored points after two of them.

Small margins, but against teams like USC, they mean everything. And those small margins are slowly adding up to make it harder for Indiana’s women’s team going forward.

With the defeat, Indiana fell to 4-3 in the Big Ten Conference – with all three of the losses coming at home.

There’s no shame in losing to No. 1 UCLA, No. 4 USC and a good Illinois team in competitive games. But these were all lost opportunities that almost certainly took away Indiana’s chance to compete for a Big Ten championship. A big goal probably gone due to little things.

It’s never easy in the Big Ten, and Moren knows Indiana has to start to win these small margin battles to get where they want to be.

“Our room for error is very small. And we’ve got to be so good on so many levels, whether it’s coverages, whether it’s our actions that we’re running offensively and there’s screening actions and there’s things that are happening inside the actions that we can’t forget to do, executing, all of it. We’ve got to just keep our head down, keep grinding and realize that it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint,” Moren said.

Unfortunately for the Hoosiers, life doesn’t get any easier going forward. The West Coast trip to Oregon (Friday) and then Washington (Monday, Jan. 26) is a tricky one. Both the Ducks and Huskies have proven to be formidable.

If Indiana doesn’t get a win on the West Coast, the Hoosiers are staring at a scenario where they would be 12-8 overall, 4-5 in the Big Ten and likely on the NCAA Tournament bubble.

The quality of the Big Ten always provides opportunities to change a team narrative, however. The other side of the coin is that if Indiana is once again stout on the road and comes home 14-6 overall and 6-3 in the Big Ten? They would have a chance to get back into the hosting picture in the NCAA Tournament.

To do that, though, Indiana has to start to win these small margin battles. The schedule still brings most of the remaining powers on Indiana’s schedule to Bloomington. Nebraska, Ohio State and Maryland still have to visit Assembly Hall.

So the opportunity is there for the Hoosiers, but time is getting shorter to seize it.