Young Indiana women's basketball 'not going to lose hope' after 0-8 Big Ten start
IU women's basketball had a 15-point lead over No. 11 Ohio State, but 26 turnovers meant the Hoosiers fell to 0-8 in Big Ten play.
It was a “tale of two halves,” Indiana women’s basketball coach Teri Moren said Thursday night.
Her team had a tall task heading to No. 11 Ohio State, but for the first 20 minutes, they lived up to it. Indiana started the game on a 13-4 run and maintained that advantage throughout the first half, leading by as many as 15 points and going into halftime with a 10-point lead.
Then, similar to much of Indiana’s losses so far this season, it fell apart in the second half.
“Tale of two halves. I thought we played very well in the first half,” Moren said following IU’s 81-67 loss in Columbus. “Loved how we shared the ball, kept them out of transition, did a lot of really, really good things (in the first half). And then, you know, the second half came, and we knew they were going to turn up their pressure. We didn't handle it as we needed to.”
IU collapsed under Ohio State’s full-court press in the second half, with the Buckeyes guarding the inbounder and any receivers in the far backcourt.
Ohio State initiated 16 steals over 40 minutes, and IU had 26 turnovers to give Ohio State 34 points off them. So, even though IU shot 56% from the field (22 of 39) with a 64% mark from 3-point range (11 of 17), Ohio State had a clear advantage with 25 more shot attempts on 48.4% shooting from the field (31 of 64).
“Twenty-six turnovers is going to make it pretty hard to win a basketball game,” redshirt sophomore Lenee Beaumont, IU’s leading scorer with 20 points, said. “And I think that goes back to just kind of helping each other. You know, there were a few in the first half where we left people on an island, or I remember one specifically in the second half, where we got the rebound and then they went back and trapped Shay (Ciezki) and we're all running and on the other side of the half court. So we got to be more aware.”
It was yet another learning lesson for the young Hoosiers, who are now 0-8 in Big Ten play with no end in sight.
With a lot of turnover because of graduations and transfer portal entries after the 2024-25 season, Moren has a young team — even younger, she says, than it appears on paper.
Maya Makalusky and Nevaeh Caffey, both in the starting lineup, are freshmen. Moren considers sophomore Zania Socka-Nguemen and Beaumont pseudo-freshmen, too, considering how little they played before this season.
Socka-Nguemen transferred to Indiana after one year at UCLA, where she played minimal minutes. Beaumont played minimal minutes off the bench as a freshman at Indiana in 2023-24, then was out the entire 2024-25 season because of a knee injury.
“Maya and Nevaeh are true freshmen, but you're talking about two other kids that have had little to zero playing time in the Big (Ten) and this is a very, very great, this is a great conference,” Moren said. “And we've played all the ones, and you know that have been ranked so far, right? We haven't had an easy path to start Big Ten play. And you know, that's been part of it. It's the league, it’s how good it is. And, you know, nobody feels sorry for Indiana.”
Moren’s job, too, is to teach her young players how to work through this tough slew of games. IU has seen a lot of success as a program over the past five years, including a Big Ten championship and No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, so this is uncharted territory — and likely not what players expected when they committed to the Hoosiers.
But this is where they’re at now. And Moren needs to make sure her players don’t lose hope in this stretch.
“It's just the communication piece, right,” Moren said. “It's making sure that we are showing them, you know, the things in film, those lessons that we have to learn. But it's also showing them all the things that they're doing well. And then, last night, at the end of the night, when we watched film, we had a deep dive of some analytics, some statistics. We're so close, and that's what we keep saying to them.”
IU may have some opportunities for its first Big Ten win in its games coming up; it plays in-state rival Purdue, who is 2-6 in Big Ten play, on Jan. 25 and Feb. 8, and Northwestern, also 2-6 in conference, on Feb. 1.
And Beaumont thinks her team will have the fight for it.
“Believe it or not, I do believe that the fight in the locker room is in a really good spot, and we're not going to lose hope,” Beaumont said. “We just take tomorrow as a new opportunity to continue to grow and get better. It would be so easy for us to fall apart right now and not stay together, but I give credit to the people in the locker room that we've stayed together as one unit, the best that we could possibly do that.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana women's basketball score vs Ohio State, Big Ten record, stats today
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