INDIANAPOLIS — After a comeback for the ages on Wednesday, the Hoosiers faced the Ohio State Buckeyes in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament on Thursday afternoon.
Previewing the matchup, head coach Teri Moren recalled the difficulty of the Ohio State press during their regular season matchup.
“What a terrific team they are,” Moren said Wednesday. “The press is going to be something that we're going to have to face.”
Riding their momentum from Wednesday’s victory, the Hoosiers had an opportunity to avenge their loss in Columbus earlier this season.
Against such a talented team, the Hoosiers could not afford to dig themselves into a hole; however, after being tied after the first, the Buckeyes took over en route to a resounding 83-59 victory. After Indiana’s loss in the Big Ten Tournament, we will have to wait and see whether or not the Hoosiers compete in the WNIT or the WBIT.
“You have to put points on the board in order to beat a team like Ohio State,” Moren said postgame. “We are disappointed we weren't able to play as clean and as well as we wanted to today.”
Indiana struggled to muster anything up on offense; their shots simply weren’t hitting despite a plethora of open looks.
To make matters worse, foul trouble bothered the Hoosiers all night long. Three players had three or more fouls at the break, including Lenée Beaumont with four.
“We trust Beau to stay in there, and it didn't quite work out for us,” Moren said. “We just felt like we had to have our best players on the floor in order for it not to get too out of touch for us.”
Unlike their performance Wednesday, Indiana struggled mightily coming out of the locker room. The duo of Chance Gray and Jaloni Cambridge continued their strong play for the Buckeyes, helping Ohio State turn a 12-point halftime lead into a 21-point cushion by the end of the third.
Ohio State’s quickness and physicality in the lane gave the Hoosiers fits from the tip all the way to the final whistle.
Shay Ciezki, who has been the heartbeat of this year’s squad, was able to fire off 20 shots Thursday, but could never find the rhythm that Hoosier Nation has been accustomed to seeing time and time again. She finished with 12 points.
Although her shots weren’t falling, her confidence never wavered, a common theme for one of the conference’s best.
“The first thing to come to my mind is keep working,” Ciezki said postgame. “That's what I pride myself on. That's the foundation of my game is just to work hard, to outwork your opponent, and I think that I tried my best to show this group that you can kind of do anything you set your mind to.”
While there was nothing eye-popping on the Indiana stat sheet, Maya Makalusky once again showcased her ability to score from the perimeter, connecting on five 3s and finishing with 21 points.
“My teammates throughout the year have been helping me continue to get more and more confident to shoot those shots,” Makalusky said. “Which has definitely helped me get more confident along the way leading to that.”
A disappointing loss to potentially end their season can sting; however, it does not take away from the strides the team made over the last month of the season.
“This is a group that when you start the season, the Big Ten season, off the way we did, it would have been easy to just kind of throw the towel in, and we didn't do that,” Moren said. “I'm proud of what we fought, we continued to fight, and that's what I'm most proud of.”
In February, desperation kicked in for the young squad, fueling an eventual 7-3 run to round out the season and make their mark as the 2025-2026 iteration of the Indiana Hoosiers.
