The Hoosiers offense will have a different look to it without Mackenzie Holmes.
For the first time since 2018, Indiana women’s basketball will be without Mackenzie Holmes when the Hoosiers take the floor for the 2024-25 season.
Holmes has been among the sport’s most reliable scorers and presences in the low post for multiple years. Indiana’s offense emphasized this, with the staff surrounding her with 3-point shooting the past two seasons to maximize her impact on the offensive end.
Without her, what could the Hoosiers’ offense look like? A bit different, probably.
Teri Moren has seen A Lot of basketball through her life. As a coach, she’s studied the game at all levels from high school up to the WNBA and international leagues. At Big Ten Media Days, she noted the impact of her time with USA Basketball and seeing how international teams space the floor.
Indiana’s staff has been studying film from multiple teams that run a five-out, Princeton style offense. They’ve been looking at teams in levels including the WNBA, men’s college basketball and women’s college basketball. One such team that Indiana fans are probably familiar with is Maine women’s basketball.
The Hoosiers took on the Black Bears in Portland, Maine, this past season as a homecoming for the Pine Tree State native Holmes. It was a struggle throughout, with Maine’s 5-out offense giving Indiana fits all game, forcing a second half comeback that let Moren and co escape with a win.
“It took us a whole half to figure out how to guard it,” Moren said.
Moren emphasized that the one thing the program never wants to do is become complacent. The Hoosiers must always seek to add onto what they can do on the court, which has led to studies of teams from the NCAA division-III level and up to find concepts and ideas to implement.
“We had to take a hard look at our personnel,” Moren said. “I wanted to be a little bit harder to guard than we’ve been in the past. Less play calling, more just allowing them, giving them concepts of how we want to play and then trusting they’ll go out and make the right reads and right plays.
Indiana has the sort of roster to run that. There’s experience at the top with players like Chloe Moore-McNeil, Sydney Parrish, Lexus Bargesser, Shay Ciezki and Yarden Garzon and plenty of guard talent from underclassmen like Lenee Beaumont and Julianna LaMendola.
There’s also shooting, with Moore-McNeil, Parrish, Ciezki and Garzon being proven from the 3-point line. Bargesser has spent three years working on her shot form, LaMendola was a proficient shooter at the high school level. It’s probably worth waiting to see from Beaumont as she didn’t take all that many shots from deep off the bench as a freshman.
But Moren noted they’ll also have an inside presence from players like Lilly Meister, Karoline Striplin and others in the froncourt, that won’t be absent from the offense.
“I don’t want us to get all caught up in ‘it’s a new offense, we’re gonna play more five out’,” Moren said. “We’re gonna play traditional like we have in the past with putting our fives on the low block because I do still think you have great balance. I think you have to have an inside presence, that can only open up things for you on the outside.”
Moren emphasized that she believes the offense will improve with time as players become more familiar.
It’s not the first time Indiana has had to adjust its offense. The program has never necessarily had a “system,” more just finding what individual players do best and putting them in a position to do so while maximizing each year’s unique roster.
For Grace Berger, it was her sheer versatility and midrange shooting. For Sara Scalia, her shooting and transition offense. For Moore-McNeil, her ability to read the game. For Holmes, her sheer efficiency in the post. The list goes on.
So it’s not wholly surprising that Indiana will switch a few things around this year. As Moren said, don’t necessarily expect some entirely different on-court product, but the Hoosiers will show a few things they haven’t in years past this season.