Outrebounded, outshot, outmanned, outmatched.
After losing heartbreakers against Nebraska and Iowa, where the Hoosiers had played some of their best basketball of the conference slate, many expected Indiana to respond with a bit of momentum as they hosted Washington.
Washington, fresh off a loss to Purdue, put those claims to bed early. Indiana never held the lead as Washington would run away winning 82-63. The loss moves Indiana to 11-7 and 0-7 in conference play as the Hoosiers have lost their last six outings.
Ice cold temperatures and snow on the ground couldn’t even keep a good chunk of fans from exiting the well heated Assembly Hall early.
Washington led Indiana in every statistical category except for free throw percentage where Indiana’s 5-for-6 narrowly edged out Washington's 4-for-6 from the stripe and 3-pointers made where Indiana’s 12 triples kept this one closer than the scorebook showed.
Shay Ciezki led the Hoosiers once again with 23 points on 7-for-11 shooting from downtown after shooting just 4-for-24 from deep in the previous four games. Maya Makalusky added in 16 points with four triples of her own.
The hot topic of the night preached by head coach Teri Moren and the players was effort. It was a problem Indiana thought they had addressed earlier in the season but has reared its ugly head once again as the Hoosiers were dominated in “effort” stats.
“I think it's definitely a want and a will and I think that comes from experience,” Ciezki said. “At the end of the day, these games are hard, they’re tough, the seasons long, and we got to learn how to adjust to that.”
The Huskies outrebounded Indiana by 12, scored 34 more points in the paint, scored 20 more in transition, and had five more second-chance points.
“Our effort was not nearly what it needed to be at all tonight,” Moren said. “We come in tonight and just lay an egg, and there’s no good excuse for it other than we just got our rear ends beat. I think our staff and I can live with if teams just score more points and they just execute better, but what’s hard to wrap your head around is when we got beat in every area just because of our lack of effort tonight.”
It was one of Moren’s shorter home press conferences as she hammered home her displeasure at being 0-7 in Big Ten play.
“This is going to be a very short answer, if 0-8 [0-7] doesn't spark your end to be motivated then I don’t know what is,” Moren said in response to being asked what she’s doing to spark something in her team. “If it doesn’t bother you, if it doesn’t ignite something in you, then you probably shouldn’t be playing this game.”
The Hoosiers’ 0-7 conference start is their worst in the Moren era as there are genuine concerns brewing that Indiana could be one of the three Big Ten schools left out of the 15-team conference tournament.
“These games are winnable for us. They’re close games, we’re right there,” Ciezki said about her message to the team. “We just got to get one win just for us to get it rolling a little bit.”
Indiana gets some much needed time away to recollect and regroup during their upcoming bye week before hitting the road for a pair against Ohio State and Purdue on Jan. 22 and Jan. 25, respectively.
