‘We knew it was going to be hard’: Indiana Women’s Basketball wins ugly and advances to their third Sweet Sixteen in last four years

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Trailing Oklahoma 64-60 with two and a half minutes left, Indiana women’s basketball’s season was on the precipice of ending on their home court again.

That was until All-American forward Mackenzie Holmes took over.

First, it was a drop step that led to a layup.

Then she drew a foul and knocked down both free throws to tie the game.

24 seconds later, she got to the rim for another layup to give Indiana the lead at 66-64.

The Hoosiers would not trail again, pulling out a 75-68 victory to advance to their third Sweet Sixteen in four years.

It certainly wasn’t pretty, but Indiana women’s basketball found a way.

The difference between a good team and a great team is a great team can and will win in different ways. That is exactly what the Hoosiers did on Monday.

“We knew that they were going to pose a challenge for us. We knew it was going to be hard,” Head Coach Teri Moren said about the game. “We talked about it being difficult. It’s going to be, we had to give everything we had and more. On a night that we didn’t shoot it well. This 38 percent is very uncharacteristic of this group as you guys know.”

Indiana women’s basketball had their third-worst shooting performance of the season on Monday. They also shot 19% from beyond the arc which was tied for their second-worst showing of the year.

Coming into the tournament they led the nation in three-point percentage, but with the three-ball not falling they found another way.

Down the stretch, Indiana made it their mission to play through Holmes, who scored 12 of her game-high 29 points in the fourth quarter.

“I know how it felt last year, we all know how it felt last year, and I was going to do everything in my power to not let that happen again,” Holmes said about her play down the stretch. “I just have a really great team full of people who believe in me, even when I don’t believe in myself and I think that’s the difference maker.”

After a disappointing end to the 2022-23 season, Holmes made it her mission to not let that happen again. Her 29 points broke the Indiana women’s basketball single-game tournament record for points that her teammate Sara Scalia had set two days prior.

Despite making history, it was a difficult start for Holmes, who shot 4-11 in the first half.

“It’s just the confidence that I know my teammates and my coaches top to bottom have in me,” Holmes said about battling through her slow start. “At some point, I got to start believing in myself too, and those are shots, those are things I work on literally every single day, rep after rep, before practice, after practice, during practice, they’re things that I do every single day. So I had to keep staying the course for the whole game because I knew if I quit on myself then I’m quitting on my team and I wasn’t going to let that happen tonight.”

Holmes, who is known for playing with emotion, let it all out after the win. Just like she had done two years ago, Holmes ran into the student section to celebrate the win.

“I did that a couple years back when we beat Princeton to head us to, take us to the Sweet 16, and this is my last game at Assembly Hall, I just really wanted to take it all in so I asked Coach if it was okay if we did it and she gave me the okay and we just went for it,” Holmes said about her celebration. “But I just want them to know how much I love them. They’re the best fans in the country and I’ve been so blessed every second I’ve gotten to play in the Hall and I’ll never take those moments for granted. The memories I’ll take with me for the rest of my life and Assembly Hall is my favorite place in the world, so to be able to do that one more time was so special.”

Holmes was not the only Hoosier to step up in the win, as senior Sydney Parrish played a big part in the victory.

“Yeah, we just love each other,” Parrish said when asked why this team is special. “We love each other on the court, off the court, you see our bench players that players, some players that didn’t even get in today they’re cheering for all 40 minutes and that shows a lot about our chemistry on and off the court. The coaches love us. I love playing for a coach that wants to win it for us as much as she wants to win for herself.”

With the Indiana offense struggling in the first half, Parrish scored 12 points on 4-6 shooting to keep the Hoosiers in striking distance. The rest of the team shot just 25% from the field in the half.

With most of the team struggling offensively, Parrish and Holmes shouldered the load to help the Hoosiers advance.

Sophomore guard Yarden Garzon was one of the Hoosiers struggling offensively.

Garzon had missed a few layups and was 0-7 going into the fourth quarter. She made her first shot of the game with six minutes left in the game, but her moment came later.

With Indiana leading by two with less than a minute left, Garzon had the ball on the right wing with the shot clock ticking down. She was 1-9 from the field at that point, but it didn’t matter. She drove left and knocked down the clutch pull-up jumper to extend the lead to two possessions.

“I’ve said it and I’ll continue to say it, she is not afraid of the moment. She’s just not,” Moren said about Garzon’s big shot. “She’s hit some big shots for us in close games. This is not her first one. She is — she’s Uber confident in her play, in herself as a basketball player. But I think the closer — I don’t like ’em, the tighter the game is, the better she likes it. Because she loves the competition piece. But she is not afraid of the moment. That was a big one for us. But it takes a lot of courage to take that shot on a night, as you mentioned, where her shots weren’t going in as easy. But we were not surprised when she took it and she stuck it in that moment.”

The belief that the Indiana Women’s Basketball team has in one another is a big part of their success, and Garzon’s shot only emphasizes that.

With their toughest test coming next, Indiana will need to channel that belief when they take on number-one overall seed and undefeated South Carolina on Friday night in Albany at 5:00 pm.