On the Hoosiers, mindset and Teri Moren.
When it comes to sports writing and storytelling as a whole, I’ve found that invoking the story of David and Goliath has been a bit overdone.
Sure, you could definitely apply it here. South Carolina has been the No. 1 overall seed two years in a row, is undefeated heading into tournament play again and literally has a player who is four inches taller than anyone in Indiana’s usual lineups. This would be apt, right?
No. For a few reasons.
For one, the team you’d be labelling as Goliath won the game. That doesn’t happen in the book. It wouldn’t make for a good story or have a tangible moral to pay heed to.
And Indiana ain’t David.
Every metric and countless predictions had the Hoosiers losing this game. Even the eye test. I mean, Kamilla Cardoso is 6’7”. That’s just not what you usually see in a women’s basketball game.
They did not care. Could not have been bothered. Teri Moren, her staff and the players were going to find a way to pull this off and ultimately fell short, but that wasn’t really the case at halftime.
When the Hoosiers got back to the locker room they’d left a 49-32 deficit out on the court. I mean, the Gamecocks were doing the macarena as they left the locker room after halftime, the vibes couldn’t have possibly been more in their favor.
It wasn’t the first big deficit. Indiana was down big to Stanford and Iowa on the road in the regular season, both of which ended with double-digit losses. They’ve been there before, and they weren’t about to get put there again.
That 17 point gap shrunk to just 2 with a few minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
At its core, Teri Moren’s program has been about that mentality. Just keep fighting, no matter what the scoreboard says.
The first few years, it was writers and commentators praising Indiana’s fight and spirit to keep competing in losses against Big Ten foes. Then came the wins, the postseason bids and players like Amanda Cahill, Tyra Buss, Ali Patberg, Grace Berger and Mackenzie Holmes.
Now those Hoosiers are getting the No. 1 overall seed with all-star level talent all over the bench on its heels in the closing minutes of a Sweet Sixteen matchup.
They just do not give up. No deficit fazes them. Until the final buzzer sounds the game is within reach no matter what the gap is, be it 17 or 2. This is just what they do.
Before Teri Moren arrived, Indiana had four appearances in the NCAA Tournament. She’s led them to three Sweet Sixteens and a regular season title last year. Just unprecedented heights for a program that spent decades as a hopeless cause, would-be saviors coming and going.
The Hoosiers are fighters, if nothing else. That quality has kept them in games for 10 years now and at some point the losses turned into wins.
Make no mistake, they’ll be back here and probably on better footing.