Indiana women’s basketball emerged with a solid 76-72 road win over Florida State on Sunday night in its biggest challenge of the season up to this point.
There were some questions as to how the Hoosiers
would handle playing on the road after a pretty mistake-laden outing at home against Marshall, but Indiana stuck together through a rough start to the second half to come back and secure the victory.
Here’s five things we noticed:
- Lenee Beaumont was the best player on the floor throughout the game. Sidelined with an injury last season, she’s returned to action after redshirting and looks the part of a starting guard for a Teri Moren team. She led all scorers with 23 points and made all three of her attempts from long range, adding in five rebounds and an assist to boot. If Indiana gets this version of Beaumont on a consistent basis, things could get pretty good.
- Shay Ciezki had a bit of a confusing game. On one hand, she was the game’s second leading scorer just behind Beaumont with 22 and made multiple key plays in the closing minutes to get the win. On the other, she fouled out and turned the ball over five times. Indiana doesn’t win without her, but she had enough headscratching plays to not earn MVP honors.
- Zania Socka-Nguemen was also pretty important, pulling down 13 rebounds while scoring 11 points. Indiana will probably need more scoring out of her at times this season, but she did exactly what she needed to do against the Seminoles.
- Fouls became a really big problem for Indiana in the fourth quarter. Three Hoosiers (Ciezki, Edessa Noyan and Phoenix Stotijn) fouled out of the game and Beaumont had five of her own. It’s not surprising for a new group getting the defense down, but ideally that shows up less and less in box scores as the season goes on.
- The third quarter was pretty rough for Indiana, which was outscored 27-18 as Florida State took the lead, necessitating the fourth quarter comeback. The Hoosiers hit just five field goals while the Seminoles got 10 shots to go in.
