The Hoosiers take down the Huskies to close out their trip to the Pacific Northwest.
Indiana women’s basketball secured a split record in its trip to the Pacific Northwest with a 73-70 win over Washington on Monday night.
It’s a more than welcome result after the Hoosiers’ disappointing finish against Oregon in Eugene for multiple reasons. The Hoosiers now have something of a break until a matchup with Nebraska on Sunday (which is also more than welcome, the jet lag from this specific flight is no joke).
Here’s three things:
Yarden Garzon was absolutely unstoppable
Indiana’s recent three-game skid coincided with three less than ideal performances from the Hoosiers’ best player, Garzon.
Garzon needs to be at her best on a consistent basis in order for the Hoosiers to win games and she entered a slump at a less than ideal time and looked poised to stay in it after Friday’s disappointment against Oregon.
She responded on Monday, absolutely torching Washington for a career-high 35 points featuring an 8-10 shooting clip from long range. Safe to say she broke out of the slump alright.
As we’ve said before, this version of Garzon is firmly among the best players in the Big Ten. She was just entirely too much for Washington to handle. Too big and too good.
Well, everyone else…
If you couldn’t tell from the final score, Indiana needed every single one of those points from Garzon in order to come out on top tonight.
Sydney Parrish more than provided her fair share with 16 points off of 4-6 shooting from deep of her own. The rest of the roster? Well… eh.
Chloe Moore-McNeil was more of a distributor tonight but has to do better than 1-6 from the field. Same for Ciezki, who needs to score on a consistent basis and can’t put up 2 points in these kinds of games as she has a few times this season.
Indiana doesn’t have reliable post scoring. The backcourt has to step up, as we wrote previously. The Hoosiers got away with it on Sunday but that probably won’t happen again.
Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers
I’m sorry that two of the three things are negatives but you’ve gotta talk about these sorts of things.
Turning the ball over is probably No. 1 on Teri Moren’s list of pet peeves. She’s made a point of addressing it previously even in games the program has won by comfortable margins, it’s a point of emphasis and always has been.
Indiana’s offense is gonna put the ball in a lot of different players’ hands on just about any given play. Some are better at handling that than others and sometimes the result is a turnover.
The Hoosiers are lucky to escape Seattle with a win given that two starters turned the ball over five times and the Huskies were just as eager to give the ball right back. It’s been a problem for Indiana all season and has probably become something they can only mitigate, not entirely solve.