Indiana is set to take on Florida State on Sunday in a road matchup in Tallahassee, Florida.
The Hoosiers sit at 3-0, but got out to an interesting start to the season with two hotly-contested games against
inferior competition at Assembly Hall. It’s almost an entirely new roster for head coach Teri Moren, so it’s fair to expect some necessary grace and time to jell, but it hasn’t been pretty.
Here’s three things to know ahead of the game:
Last time out: Indiana 57, Marshall 51
This was… ugly.
The score tells most of the story, Indiana played some pretty exceptional defense but struggled mightily when it had the ball. The Hoosiers never fell below 90% in ESPN’s win probability tracker, with a pretty firm lead kept until the closing minutes, but shot 14 (!) less field goals than the Thundering Herd and converted on just 40.8% of the attempts they managed.
The real tale of the game was…
Key stat: The Hoosiers’ 28 (!) turnovers
Ordinarily I’d like to save the key stat for the opponent, as you can see in our preview of the men’s matchup, but this was too much to ignore and including it in one sentence above wouldn’t be enough.
That’s a wild amount of turnovers at any level of basketball. As stated above, it allowed Indiana’s opponent to shoot over 10 more shots. I don’t need to tell you what could’ve happened if Indiana was facing a team that was at all capable of scoring points.
This wasn’t a one-player effort either, almost everyone had a hand in those 28 TOs. Lenee Beaumont had seven, Nevaeh Caffey had six, Shay Ciezki had five and the two of Zania Socka-Nguemen and Phoenix Stotijn each had four. Oof.
Indiana deserves some level of grace as not all of the pieces on the roster have a lot of experience in general, much less with eachother, but that’s an astronomical number with a coach who’s emphasized protecting the basketball. The Hoosiers can’t afford another performance like that.
Player to know: Sophomore G Sole Williams
Florida State is led in scoring by Sole Williams, a sophomore who spent the previous two seasons at Texas A&M. She averaged 7.6 points, 2.3 rebounds and 2.4 assists in 25.8 minutes per game last season with the Aggies. She’s taken a Leap with the Seminoles, averaging 17.5 points, 4 rebounds and 3.8 assists in 25.3 minutes per game.
A lot of that production is coming from the 3-point line. Sole is hitting 50% of her shots from distance on six attempts per game thus far. She managed 14 points in Florida State’s loss UConn, their lone defeat of the season, hitting two of her four attempts from beyond the arc.
Indiana will probably have Caffey as her matchup and look to keep her from getting comfortable from long range. It’ll be a tough test, but one you’d rather have early that could prove beneficial down the line.
