BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana coach Teri Moren is pleased with the state of her team after the Hoosiers defeated Wisconsin 83-52 on Saturday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
Indiana has won six in a row and is off to a 2-0 start in the Big Ten Conference. The Hoosiers had over 25 assists for the fifth time in six games and also had a season-low eight turnovers against the Badgers.
Here’s everything Moren had to say after the victory.
Opening statement …
Moren: A lot of really good things happened inside the game, especially in the first half. Really thrilled with the way we pushed the pace in the first half, in particular. We wanted to get off to a great start and I thought we did, Looking at our assists and our made field goals its pretty terrific. The 25 assists and a season low in turnovers. Nine for 18 from three point line, 42 points is a paint. You guys know the rest.
I thought defensively we kept Serah (Williams) uncomfortable for most of the game. I thought our pace really was not something that she was incredibly excited about in terms of getting up and down the floor. We wore her out. That was our goal to make her tired. I thought our kids executed the game plan just about as good as we wanted them to. So, you know, really happy with the way we played.
On Indiana’s ball movement …
Moren: We knew this. We were just trying to take advantage of what the defense was giving us. And one thing about defense, if you can get teams in rotations, sometimes their closeouts are maybe not as controlled. We felt like our advantage was getting them in rotations, forcing them to have to close out at times out of control and then being smart enough to lift, fake, shot fake, put it on the deck, drop it off, kick it out. Talked a lot about that, just in watching them how they guard, certainly at halftime, we reiterated it. That’s how we will get points if we can do those two things. We’re not going to try to challenge Williams at the rim one on one. We’re probably not going to win that battle, because she’s she’s very long and athletic, but we did feel like we could bring her away from the the basket. Some of those rolls, the screen and rolls, she plugs pretty high. Felt like we could get her a little bit just out of space, you know, a little bit more space to work with for our post players. This is our third back to back game where our assist have been relatively high, which is really good for us.
On Yarden Garzon’s health status …
Moren: No update as of right now. It was late in the game. (The athletic training staff) have her in the training room right now doing some recovery and rehab. And then I think that as the days go by we’ll probably know a little bit more tomorrow and the next day.
On Sydney Parrish’s leadership while she was injured …
Moren: It’s great to have Syd back on the floor. I think she’s settling in really well. She’s she’s super high IQ kid. She’s a really mature kid, and so she knows how valuable she is, not just to be on the floor for us, but also her leadership is incredible. She’s a really great teammate. You know, that’s one of the things I’ve always said about Syd is that she is incredible when it comes to just being a teammate, pouring into her teammates, but also knowing that all of them have different buttons that you know they have that you have to push. And Syd has a really good feel for everyone individually and what they need from her. It’s been great to have her back without question. She was really great when she not out there practicing or on the bench.
What’s clicked in the assist department …
Moren: It’s just reps we’re getting. We talk about how much better of a basketball team we are when we’re playing in space, when we’re playing with pace, when we can get the ball out of our hands. You’ve heard me say it a lot of times. There’s moments where the ball sticks, we just hold on to it. And so we’ve really talked about our ball movement and getting getting the ball out of our hands quicker. It’s one thing to talk about it. It’s another thing to be able to come out and execute it, but it’s also something that we emphasize, and we do every day in practice. Our kids like playing fast. They like playing that way. We will continue to rep that and talk about it and show all of those good clips in film, because it’s something that we got to continue to do. It puts a lot of pressure on teams defensively when you have great ball movement. We can get it side to side when you have balance, you have some some touches from different people. We always talk to Lilly (Meister) and Strip (Karoline Striplin) about, ‘Hey, you know, we got it. We got to look inside. You don’t necessarily have to shoot it, but we got to get a post touch. Maybe we get a relocation. Maybe we have a hard close out to that extra pass.’ So those are all things they see in film. But, you know, we work on them every day too.
On Karoline Striplin’s physical play of late …
Moren: She’s really had back to back to back since the Penn State game, where she’s just been lights out offensively. Sometimes we get caught up in these stat sheets. A lot of things that she does for us, they don’t show up (in the stat sheet). Strip is physical. She understands the gameplan. She is experienced because of her time that she spent at Tennessee, playing in the SEC. She’s reliable. We needed her to come in and be a great defender for us against a first team all-Big Ten kid in Serah Williams. In spite of maybe not hitting shots like she had for us in the last three or four games, but was so important defensively for us.
On Yarden Garzon’s growth over her career …
Moren: She’s the person we count on the most when it comes to making a shot and/or helping us get the shot we want. She came in super mature. She played against grown women over in Israel before she came over here. What we got with Yarden was special because of her experience that she was coming over here with – playing at a high level against some really good players that were just not international (players). She played with American players and against American players as well. And at a young age, she had been counted on to play the point off the ball. Any of these other freshmen, we have a different way of doing things, whether it’s our offensive system, how we’re going to score the ball, defensive system, and I think just being able to embrace that and adjust to all of that? Going back to maturity, she’s a mature kid, she’s a smart kid, she’s very unselfish.
There’s times where I want her to shoot the ball more and she’ll give it up, right? She’ll make that extra pass because she feels like her teammate is more open or has a better shot. She’s fun to coach, as I’ve said, because you can move her around to a lot of different spots. Tonight you watched her guard their number one because of her size. So she gives you something you can change defensive schemes, but you can also move her around on the offense, which is pretty terrific. As time has gone on, just become more comfortable with the lifestyle of how we do things around here, Being in the gym training and she’s become a really good teammate.
One of the things that I go back to Syd, because she talks a lot about our individuals, right? We talk about having energy in shootaround, but we got to make sure that we realize that you’re not going to get that kind of energy from Yarden. Yarden is her own person who gets ready for games differently and is not a rah rah kid. I wouldn’t call her an introvert, but she’s not that rah rah kid. She’s very serious about competitions. She’s serious about getting her mind and body ready for competition and she keeps growing inside of our program. She’s reliable and somebody that we count on. Fingers crossed that she is back at practice on Monday.
On making Wisconsin’s Serah Williams uncomfortable …
Moren: You look at Yarden and she had four blocks herself. That was part of the game plan … to crowd Williams as much as we could. We went from from a hard dig, to just trying to crowd, to a yellow, which is a double off of one of her teammates. We wanted to mix it up. And I thought our guards are part of the mixing up piece of it, because they have to do their job as well. I thought Chloe (Moore-McNeil) in particular (and Lex) … (their) activity in their gaps, activity in their digs. When Lex would go to double, her hands were high. All of it really good stuff.
On struggling early, but growth since then as a team …
Moren: There’s a tremendous amount of growth still left for this basketball team. Adversity teaches you a lot of really good lessons and we had our share of it early. Maybe those outside (were) surprised by it, but I don’t know that inside our staff was as surprised by it. I’m going to say it again when you’re trying to figure out how to play differently, when I say differently, without an All-American post player (Mackenzie Holmes), it takes time. It’s a process. And we have also newcomers in Shay (Ciezki) and Strip that have to get used to how we play. So you’re mixing in pieces that are new to our program. You’ve already taken Mackenzie out of the mix and (Sara) Scalia out of the mix, a really, really good player for us.
So you’re re-learning how to play maybe a little bit differently. We’re not putting the ball inside as much as we did when Mack was here. So you have to find other ways to score the ball. And I think it’s just been a matter of time for us to figure out what that looks like for us. Some of it is playing fast. Some of it is making sure that when we execute, we get our pieces where we want them. We have to be able to execute at a high, high level, because Mack could bail us out of a lot of those scenarios, right? Those situations where we went on streaks where two minutes where we weren’t scoring, and as everybody called her, she was the cheat code. We could throw that ball into Mack and she was going to make something happen for us. Usually good. It’s just think it’s a been a matter of time.
But to say that we still have so much room to grow, there’s no question for this group. I do think that they they feel good about how we’re trending right now. They realize there’s so much basketball ahead of us. We have so much work still to do, but I feel like there’s a confidence in how we’re trending here in the last month. It feels good to kind of get back on track, have the assist high, keep the turnovers low, and then be really disciplined and good defensively.
On No. 1 UCLA coming to Indiana next …
Moren: They’re really good. I haven’t watched a lot of them. I’m not gonna lie, but I’ve had a couple of them with USA basketball that I’ve coached. Cori (Close, UCLA coach) and her staff have done a great job of increasing their depth from portal to portal. There’s a reason why they’re number one in the country right now, right? They’re really good and they have a lot of different weapons and then they have great depth off the bench.
Really haven’t laid my eyes on them, but we will put together, hopefully a good plan as they come in here. We’re going to need everybody to show up and help us with the energy. I thought today the energy was really good. They’re really good, but the Big Ten is really good. So they’re just the next game for us, so that’s the only thing that we’ll focus on. We’ll put this one behind us and get ready for the next one.