Hoosiers get vintage shooting performance in win over Maine

On By Littum

BLOOMINGTON — Indiana women’s basketball‘s rollercoaster season continued at Assembly Hall with a 78-53 win over Maine on Sunday.

The Hoosiers (5-3; 0-0 Big Ten) were coming off a 30-point loss in the Battle 4 Atlantis finale that was one of the lopsided losses of coach Teri Moren’s tenure. It was also the second time in as many weeks that the team failed to score 50 points, but that same IU team also has impressive wins against a pair of ranked opponents (Stanford and Baylor) this season.

Their performance Sunday resembled those wins even without starting guard Sydney Parrish, who is expected to miss several weeks with a knee injury she suffered in the Bahamas.

Indiana pulled away from Maine with a 15-2 run early in the third quarter and set a season high with 11 made 3-pointers. The Bears never cut the lead below 20 points in the fourth quarter.

The Indiana women’s basketball offense is making all the right moves

Indiana’s starting point guard Chloe Moore-McNeil knew her team needed a strong effort with Parrish out. She scored 15 of her season-high 22 points in the first half while going 6 of 6 from the field with three made 3-pointers.

It was as aggressive as she has been on the offensive end all season, but everything came in the flow of the offense. The Hoosiers looked more comfortable swinging the ball around and running their sets against Maine with a season-high 25 assists on 30 field goals.

Yarden Garzon and Shay Ciezki each had seven assists while the team combined for a season-low nine turnovers. It was the first time the Hoosiers had fewer than 10 turnovers in a single game since beating Oklahoma (four turnovers) in the NCAA Tournament last year.

Indiana forward Lilly Meister was a big beneficiary of that ball movement with 14 of her 18 points in the second half. Most of those buckets were open looks at the rim while coming off a pick and roll and cutting to the basket.

Indiana women’s basketball is a dangerous team when its shots fall

Indiana women’s basketball had a disastrous shooting performance to close out the Battle 4 Atlantis. The Hoosiers shot 4 of 26 from 3-point range (15.4%), marking their worst 3-point shooting performance as a team since a 2023 win over Northwestern (13.6%).

The Hoosiers entered Sunday’s game shooting just 27.4% from outside, and all of their guards shot a worse percentage than they did last year.

That resulted in some ugly offensive numbers in the first month of the season for a team that just last year had the nation’s best 3-point shooting percentage (39.6%). The Hoosiers got into an early rhythm against Maine by going 5 of 7 in the first quarter and finished the game 11 of 22. They’ll need more hot shooting performances like that in the coming weeks if they hope to be competitive in the Big Ten.

Michael Niziolek is an Indiana reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read his full coverage by clicking here.