Indiana women’s basketball fell 82-67 to No. 7 Maryland on the road on Sunday evening at the XFINITY Center in College Park, Maryland.
The loss drops the Hoosiers to 0-4 in Big Ten play as the hole they’ve found themselves in early continues to deepen. They can’t really afford many more losses if they have any designs on keeping the NCAA Tournament streak alive.
Here’s three takeaways from the game:
Shot volume
Perhaps most prominent in a long list of issues was a discrepancy in field goal attempts.
Maryland took
63 shots to Indiana’s 49, a gap of 14. The Terps got there by outrebounding the Hoosiers 32-26, including 13 offensive rebounds leading to 14 second chance points. That’s a difficult gap for any team to overcome and Indiana just wasn’t able to do it.
Indiana’s frontcourt got into foul trouble (more below) keeping them from putting up more of a fight on the glass. That can’t become a frequent issue as we get deeper into Big Ten play.
Foul trouble
Indiana was in some pretty bad foul trouble throughout the game, leading to minutes restrictions, different lineups and free throws from Maryland.
The Hoosiers finished with 19 fouls in total, with Zania Socka-Nguemen and Edessa Noyan each picking up four. That’s Indiana’s rotation at the five, so Teri Moren ended up needing to put some less-than-ideal lineups on the floor with their absence. Maryland ended up going 16-19 at the charity stripe, bolstering their lead in field goal attempts.
It’s not like the fouls were slated in the Terrapins’ favor, Indiana shot 15 free throws. The foul trouble hurt Indiana’s rebounding and interior scoring, leaving the backcourt to try and make up for a scoring gap.
Fight
This is going to sound like a cliche, and it is, but it’s not worth nothing that Indiana didn’t just give up and let a blowout happen here.
The Hoosiers kept playing hard late through the fourth quarter, playing with energy on defense and stringing together a few buckets at times to keep the margin from being even larger. Yes, that doesn’t turn a loss into a win, but in the long-term you’d rather have a culture that does that.
