Saturday the No. 12 Hoosiers suited up in their white uniforms with red lettering and the Bobcats wore their black jerseys with dark green lettering. The jersey that stood out the most out of the two teams was the one in white with 17 in red lettering. That player was second year Celia Arroyo Cabezudo who scored twice in Indiana’s 5-2 victory over Ohio.
The last time Cabezudo was on the scoresheet was when Indiana played No. 2 ranked Iowa on Sept. 18 where she scored in a 3-1 victory for the Hoosiers.
“Before the game I was a bit scared because I hadn’t scored in a while,” Cabezudo said of Sunday’s game.
Cabezudo's two goals against Ohio puts her at eight on the season and tied for the most on the team with Molly Stutte, who netted the first goal of the game for the Hoosiers on Sunday.
Cabezudo was asked when Stutte scored her eighth goal of the season, which put her two goals ahead of Cabezudo, if it gave her extra motivation — especially since Cabezudo scored twice to tie Stutte at eight for the team lead.
They both looked at each other and shared a laugh together. Cabezudo then said, “I think we’re always playing into it.” Stutte said, “we’re always bringing each other up.”
Sunday was Indiana’s final nonconference game. As the Hoosiers look to the final four regular season games, they look to build on their 4-0 start to Big Ten play — the team’s best start since 2005. Head coach Kayla Bashore and assistant coach Dani Castro were a part of that 2005 team, which only ended up losing one Big Ten game. Bashore and Castro always joke around with the team at practice saying "who's going to be the team better than our team?”
“We’re always trying to be better so yeah it would be great to be better than the 2005 team,” Stutte said of trying to be the better team. “We [current team] were talking about it. They only lost one Big Ten game that year, so we’re trying to live up to that and go undefeated potentially.”
Bashore was asked how she felt about Cabezudo saying she was scared before today's game for not scoring in a while. Bashore said, “I think that the forwards put a lot of pressure on themselves and we [coaches] do too.”
The Hoosiers have a tough task at hand in the upcoming stretch of games, but first on deck is playing No. 1 Northwestern at 3 p.m. Friday.
“We won't have a lot of time making errors against Northwestern or they’re going to make us pay,” Bashore said. “The discipline has to be 100 against Northwestern and the rest of the season.”
