IUWBB @ Oregon - Friday, 01.24.25 @ 9:00 ET on B1G+

[Claxdj01 21]

Terrible game. Both sides. Oregon tried and begged us to win and we still give it away. Frustrating. Getting really close to probably not making the tournament. The lack of adjustment uggghhh. We have to lead the country in scoreless droughts. The offense is just horrible at times. It’s like we run the same dead play over and over and over they hand the ball off more than a bear bryant team. 

[TheWatShot 14,401]

2 minutes ago, Claxdj01 said:

Terrible game. Both sides. Oregon tried and begged us to win and we still give it away. Frustrating. Getting really close to probably not making the tournament. The lack of adjustment uggghhh. We have to lead the country in scoreless droughts. The offense is just horrible at times. It’s like we run the same dead play over and over and over they hand the ball off more than a bear bryant team. 

If we're not leading in scoring droughts of more than 4 minutes, we're probably leading in offensive fouls. As I said earlier, offense is just hard for this group. Not sure if Moren needs to make changes to her offense in the offseason or just get different players, or maybe both. Just no reason to be struggling to break 50 points in so many games. 

[Aaron 4,319]

Its down to a math problem for a tourney bid. Need to get to 10-8 in league. Have three near sure wins against bottom of league to get to 8. Can you find two more between Washington, Nebraska, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan St, Maryland, and Ohio State?

So far team has two wins against tourney teams in Baylor and Iowa and the game against Hawkeyes they really tried to give it away. It all comes down to having better composure down stretch against decent to great teams and better leadership from the upperclassmen.

[HoosierHoopster 7,277]

Maybe their worst game so far. Just bad game all around. Hoping they make the tourney but it’s going to require a return to better play. Maybe just a rebuilding year

[TheWatShot 14,401]

7 minutes ago, Aaron said:

Its down to a math problem for a tourney bid. Need to get to 10-8 in league. Have three near sure wins against bottom of league to get to 8. Can you find two more between Washington, Nebraska, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan St, Maryland, and Ohio State?

That only gets us to 7, not 8. The only games I can confidently say I think we'll win are Rutgers and Purdue at home. We should win at Purdue because they're terrible, but our offense just isn't reliable and I could see us messing around for stretches of that game and letting them think they can beat us. 

[Claxdj01 21]

Iowas been so bad lately I don’t know if they get in. I don’t know what to think to be honest. The lack of recruiting continues to rear its head. Maybe Beaumont could have been the savior? Or maybe she’s as non impactful as the rest that have been recruited. Losing 3 5th year starters. Meister isn’t magically going to get better, that’s a step down from striplin. Wiseman is apparently so bad she can’t even get on the floor behind 2 role players. The European girl #15 in her extreme rare minutes appears maybe she can play? Lemondola can take a charge and that’s about all. Complete deer in headlights. Bargessar is alright she does some good things. Moren is going to either have to figure out how to recruit some top talent, get the nil money going, or dig deep in the portal because the interest and support they get now will disappear as fast as it appeared. And it’s sad because the games are fun to go and up until this point I’ve been surprised attendance isn’t better and it’s pretty great for women’s. 

[Claxdj01 21]

7 minutes ago, HoosierHoopster said:

Maybe their worst game so far. Just bad game all around. Hoping they make the tourney but it’s going to require a return to better play. Maybe just a rebuilding year

I just don’t know. Would love to call it a rebuilding year but when you don’t even have 1 top 50 recruit coming and your past 2 years of recruits aren’t good enough to get meaningful minutes, where is the rebuilding coming from?

[Todd41 734]

This game was hard to watch.  As TTT said, Oregon really tried to play worse than us. 

Some observations:
1) Last year and going back through most of CTMs career at IU, they had players that consistently demanded a higher level of play from each other during the game and in the locker room.  This year, it does not look or feel like they are doing this consistently.

2) Striplin has been performing well but is not a player that other teams need to double but does have the strength and mentality to battle a 5 on the defensive end. Meister, on the other hand, does not have the lower body strength to handle the other teams 5 and on offense has not developed the upper body strength to finish strong as a 5.

3) Garzon has been struggling to shoot for a while now.  Not sure what is going on, but she is not getting her lower body into a good shooting position and in a lot of instances is just rushing her shot.

4) The offense relies on heavy movement with kick outs.  There are long stretches where they are not moving, and they just watch the person with the ball dribble into the lane instead of sliding to the open lanes behind the arc for an easy outlet when the defense collapses.  Instead, we settle for a crazy shot or just fumble the ball away.

5) There are too many stretches where the passes are lazy.  The ending last night was a perfect example. We did it on 2-3 straight plays that give Oregon easy buckets to get the win.  Past teams took more pride in being crisp and connected.  

There is limited time to right the ship this year, but if we can come out the end of season gauntlet wining 60-70% of the games and win a game or two in the B1G tournament, then we will get a shot to go to the NCAAs as a low seed.  NIT feels more likely at this point if something does not change.

 

[JerryYeagley23 4,039]

19 hours ago, Claxdj01 said:

I just don’t know. Would love to call it a rebuilding year but when you don’t even have 1 top 50 recruit coming and your past 2 years of recruits aren’t good enough to get meaningful minutes, where is the rebuilding coming from?

I hear what you’re saying and don’t disagree largely. I will say CTM is a hell of a coach and were lucky to have her. It HAS been disappointing we haven’t turned our on court success into recruiting success needed to sustain a winning program especially coming from a history as a very poor program. 
 

I think the biggest difference is the large disparity in the women’s game between a top 20 recruit and a top 150 recruit. The truly athletic generational type of talent is SO much better than the average bball player. Some of that is the rarity of tall, very coordinated girls. You see the disparity when you look at the scores of the UCONN, SC, LSU, UCLA, USC versus middle of the road teams. They win games by 40 or 50 points against average teams with recruits in the range that we have on our team. But there are less elite talent to go around in the women’s game, and if we’re being honest most of them end up at the same 5-10 programs. Parity is not very good in the women’s game. Watch the first round of March Madness or fill out a bracket. Not many good games or upsets. 
 

I feel like this makes it extra difficult for a program like Indiana to sustain success. When you DO catch lighting in a bottle and one of your top 100 players becomes generational (Holmes, Buss, Berger) you have trouble duplicating it after they leave. Heck, look at Iowa this year struggling after CC left. 
 

I genuinely hope CTM can work the portal and get things rolling again next year. Losing Chloe, Syd and Striplin is gonna hurt. Because like many of you, I’ve really enjoyed the last half decade developing a joy from watching the women’s team that I never had before because we weren’t relevant. I’d hate to see the crowds die down and enthusiasm wane. Let’s see how we rally the troops and if we can salvage the season to some extent. Every program has transition years. We just need to make sure that’s what this is, and it isn’t falling back to second tier as a program long term. 

[IUHoosierJoe 1,350]

4 hours ago, JerryYeagley23 said:

I hear what you’re saying and don’t disagree largely. I will say CTM is a hell of a coach and were lucky to have her. It HAS been disappointing we haven’t turned our on court success into recruiting success needed to sustain a winning program especially coming from a history as a very poor program. 
 

I think the biggest difference is the large disparity in the women’s game between a top 20 recruit and a top 150 recruit. The truly athletic generational type of talent is SO much better than the average bball player. Some of that is the rarity of tall, very coordinated girls. You see the disparity when you look at the scores of the UCONN, SC, LSU, UCLA, USC versus middle of the road teams. They win games by 40 or 50 points against average teams with recruits in the range that we have on our team. But there are less lite talent to go around in the women’s game, and if we’re being honest most of them end up at the same 5-10 programs. Parity is not very good in the women’s game. Watch the first round of March Madness or fill out a bracket. Not many good games or upsets. 
 

I feel like this makes it extra difficult for a program like Indiana to sustain success. When you DO catch lighting in a bottle and one of your top 100 players becomes generational (Holmes, Buss, Berger) you have trouble duplicating it after they leave. Heck, look at Iowa this year struggling after CC left. 
 

I genuinely hope CTM can work the portal and get things rolling again next year. Losing Chloe, Syd and Striplin is gonna hurt. Because like many of you, I’ve really enjoyed the last half decade developing a joy from watching the women’s team that I never had before because we weren’t relevant. I’d hate to see the crowds die down and enthusiasm wane. Let’s see how we rally the troops and if we can salvage the season to some extent. Every program has transition years. We just need to make sure that’s what this is, and it isn’t falling back to second tier as a program long term. 

Great post.

[Aaron 4,319]

19 hours ago, Claxdj01 said:

I just don’t know. Would love to call it a rebuilding year but when you don’t even have 1 top 50 recruit coming and your past 2 years of recruits aren’t good enough to get meaningful minutes, where is the rebuilding coming from?

Wrong. Maya Makalusky is highest ranked recruit in program history for next year at no. 39 (beating Grace Berger by four spots). Also Navaeh Caffey is just outside of top-50 and is a more athletic guard fans have been begging for who can shoot and drive to basket. 

[JerryYeagley23 4,039]

3 minutes ago, Aaron said:

Wrong. Maya Makalusky is highest ranked recruit in program history for next year at no. 39 (beating Grace Berger by four spots). Also Navaeh Caffey is just outside of top-50 and is a more athletic guard team has been begging for who can shoot and drive to basket. 

But will either of them be a JuJu Watkins, Paige Buekers, Caitlin Clark type player? Or will they be more like Sydney Parrish who was a top 50 recruit. Good player. Program changer, very far from it. I’m rooting for it. But it’s more likely we’re going to need to stack classes of good to great 4-star kids four or five deep to have sustained success like we’ve become accustomed to now. Because without a JuJu or Paige or Caitlin, you need a bunch of high end players i.e. Ohio State or Maryland right now. 

[Aaron 4,319]

2 hours ago, JerryYeagley23 said:

But will either of them be a JuJu Watkins, Paige Buekers, Caitlin Clark type player? Or will they be more like Sydney Parrish who was a top 50 recruit. Good player. Program changer, very far from it. I’m rooting for it. But it’s more likely we’re going to need to stack classes of good to great 4-star kids four or five deep to have sustained success like we’ve become accustomed to now. Because without a JuJu or Paige or Caitlin, you need a bunch of high end players i.e. Ohio State or Maryland right now. 

Who knows? Mackenzie Holmes was pretty much on that level and was ranked 54th out of school. Until someone gets to campus really hard to know how great they will be.

This team absolutely needs a better center than they have now to compete at the level they want in Big Ten given they way Moren runs her system. Given Moren has been extremely critical of the post play all year, i expect this will be addressed. I want to see what happens in portal before I make any judgements gong forward. This team with a starting level Big Ten center is on Maryland and Ohio State's level probably at moment. 

Moren likes a system where the sum is greater than the parts and until I see who is anchoring the middle next year to effectively run it, I have a really hard time saying what will happen in future years. Moren is essentially coaching with a hand tied behind her back and has them in tournament contention. Give this roster to a lesser coach and they are essentially Purdue at very bottom.

It is really hard for me to make grand judgements on future of program and next year until I see how the huge missing ingredient at center is handled.