No TikTok dances this time 🙂
4-seed Indiana women’s basketball advanced to its third Sweet Sixteen in four years with a 75-68 win over 5-seed Oklahoma earlier tonight in Assembly Hall.
The win exorcises the demons that had been circling the program ever since it was upset by Miami in the same round, on the same court, last year. The Hoosiers finished 2023-24 a perfect 17-0 at home.
Here’s three things:
Mackenzie Holmes
Mackenzie Holmes, the greatest player in program history, won Indiana this game.
The two-time All-America forward took over late and dropped 20 of her game-high 29 points in the second half. Holmes’s work in the post whittled down a Sooner lead that grew as large as seven points in the third quarter.
This was the most importance performance from Mack this season, but it was not her best. She had to weather a rough start to will Indiana across the finish line.
Holmes led the nation in field goal percentage (66.6%) during the regular season but went just 4-11 (36.4%) in the opening half. Trusted immensely by the entire building, though, Holmes kept shooting and they eventually started falling.
The program’s all-time leading scorer made eight of her last twelve attempts and added four thunderous blocks over the course of the game. She played most of the second half with three fouls, too. Statue when?
The First Half
It wasn’t great!
Indiana trailed, 31-30, after twenty minutes because of subpar shot selection and a lack of intensity on the defensive glass.
Senior guard Sydney Parrish, who finished with 17 points and eight boards, was the only Hoosier that got her shot going in the first half and made a pair of 3-pointers.
Indiana looked out of sync for long stretches at the start of this game. Garzon and Scalia were working as slashers rather than shooters and the Hoosiers erred on the side of caution on multiple potential fast breaks.
The sub pattern was a little, interesting, as well and Indiana head coach Teri Moren used her bench sparingly after halftime. Lexus Bargesser, Jules LaMendola, and Lilly Meister combined for just five minutes in the second half after logging 14 in the first.
It was a great adjustment by Moren, and it was only possible because of how careful the Hoosier starters were defensively. Holmes and Chloe Moore-McNeil flirted with foul trouble but were able to stay in. We don’t need to talk about Parrish’s third “foul”.
Demons: Exorcised
Last year sucked.
Indiana’s greatest season ever ended abruptly with a 70-68 loss to 9-Miami in the second round. The Hoosiers, who’d won the Big Ten weeks earlier, were a 1-seed and had lost only one game heading into their regular season finale (you know what happened from there).
Mackenzie Holmes’s health certainly played a role in the early exit, but concerns about winning big games, especially against teams with “gamewreckers” started to bubble. Losses to Stanford, Iowa, and Illinois this year didn’t help with that either.
To Indiana’s credit though, they never quit and responded each time things got tough in 2023-24. Fighting like hell in a close loss at Ohio State (without Sydney Parrish) and handling Iowa at home stand out in that regard.
The Hoosiers looked ready to be in this spot again. And then Mackenzie Holmes got hurt.
Seeing Holmes and Meister go down versus Maryland in the regular season finale was like a sicker, more twisted version of a nightmare we thought we’d all gotten over. The Big Ten tournament loss didn’t help.
With tonight’s win, however, we can confidently say that it all worked out. The moment wasn’t too big. Indiana was tough, and malleable, and persistent enough to pick up a true program-defining victory. Sweet Sixteen, here they come.