IOWA CITY – No. 14 Indiana suffered an 84-57 loss to No. 3 Iowa Saturday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
The Hoosiers kept it close in the first half, but Iowa's Caitlin Clark hit a pair of 3-pointers just before halftime. After that, the Hawkeyes never looked back. Clark led Iowa with 30 points, and Mackenzie Holmes scored 16 points for the Hoosiers.
Here's what Indiana coach Teri Moren said after the loss.
Opening statement
Moren: “Well, we’re very disappointed. I wish we could have played so much better than we did tonight. Every ounce of credit goes to Iowa, they were terrific. And their crowd was terrific, the energy in the building. I felt like that first half even we just turned it over way too much, but in spite of all our turnovers, still felt decent about the score at halftime. We’re down three, then of course she hits the, Cait [Clark] does, hits the three to put them up by six. But at that points, we thought we were doing a pretty decent job. We were just turning the ball over too much, but we were still in the game. Then we come out and we give Cait the backdoor layup, and all of a sudden you turn around and you’re down nine. And so from there, it kind of got out of our control. Like I said, they were clicking on all cylinders, all of them shot the ball really well tonight and we just, we weren’t very good. I’d love to be able to give you reasons why that was. We looked out of sorts, I thought, offensively. Certainly didn’t do what we needed to do on, not Cait, but the rest of those guys. Molly Davis to have 18 points, just things like that. You know Cait’s probably going to get her average, but you don’t want to let those other guys have big nights. And unfortunately, we let too many of them have their way with us. All the credit goes to Iowa, great team, well-coached. Lisa [Bluder] does a tremendous job, and like I said we’re very disappointed that we weren’t better tonight.”
On travel difficulties leading up to game…
Moren: “Well, we’re not going to use that as an excuse. It’s different because it’s just different in terms of how you normally travel, but that’s not the excuse of why we lost the game. We got here with plenty of time to have a shoot around, plenty of time to get back to the hotel and have a pregame meal and kind of be in our routine. So the travel piece of it, although frustrating, certainly you don’t want to be out of your element, was not the reason. Iowa was the reason tonight.”
On Indiana’s defense on Caitlin Clark…
Moren: “Like I said, I felt like they did a great job. We made it hard for her. We knew she was going to hit tough shots. I’ll probably go back and feel like, ‘Ah, she looked awful comfortable,’ but in the moment I felt like they were not doing a bad job. She’s just that terrific. She’s an extraordinary, special player, and she makes things look easy out there. I thought both Chloe and Lexi, they knew the assignment, and I’m proud of their effort. There’s no doubt about that. It’s the other pieces that you’re frustrated by. Cait goes out because she gets those two fouls, and then it’s like Molly Davis takes over the game, and you’re like, ‘That shouldn’t happen, right,’ but give her credit. She took advantage of the opportunity and made us pay.”
On Indiana’s shooting struggles in the second half…
Moren: “Yeah, we just weren’t hitting shots. I did think there were a couple moments where we looked not as organized offensively as we’d like to look and we were kind of going off script, one-on-one. But Mack [Holmes] got a lot of good shots tonight around the rim. Some of them didn’t go in. Struggled from the free throw line when we got here there. And so, there were a lot of things that just didn’t go our way, and some nights you have nights like that. We’ll have to regroup and get back to Bloomington and get ready for a good Minnesota team. But tonight, like I said, was all about Iowa had it going. And like I said, their crowd was tremendous. I don’t feel like the moment was too big for us. I just don’t think we played our best basketball, and that was disappointing.”
On feeling after this loss compared to 32-point loss at Stanford…
Moren: "Well again, disappointing. I didn’t think I would be sitting here having to answer that question, you know. But we have to regroup, you know. It’s not the second year of the season where you can say, ‘Well, this is a good wake-up call for us.’ That should have already been done. I think all of us, we’ve got some soul searching to do. We can’t allow ourselves, first of all to get off to a slow, bad start the way we did with turnovers. We had opportunities, and then we would just give them the ball back and they were getting more possessions than we were. You can’t do that to a team like Iowa. Another very, very, very hard lesson learned.”
On game snowballing when Iowa hit two threes to go up 15, then Moren called timeout…
Moren: "Yeah there’s no doubt. There were probably a couple of those moments. I felt like every time, especially in the second half, we were very, very bad in the second half, that it did, it got a little bit out of control. Then that kind of thing is contagious, right. You see one of those shots go in, and then Gabbie sees one of those shots go in, then Kate sees a shot, Kate Martin, so it is, it’s contagious. We’ve played like that before where Sara gets hot, then Syd gets hot, Yarden, and it’s kind of a snowball effect. It was’t fun."
On Yarden Garzon struggling offensively…
Moren: "I wish I had the answer for that. She has not looked comfortable. She has struggled, and we need her. And I don’t have an answer. She’s had some other things that have been going on, but we’ve got to get her back on track."
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