Another Successful Season for IUWBB Sees The End Of An Era That Mirrors A Couple Of Other Programs In Bloomington

Winning Will Likely Continue Going Forward At A Slightly Lesser Level Similar To These Two Other Squads

The Hoosiers Warm Up In Albany N.Y. Prior To Their Showdown With South Carolina On Friday

Albany N.Y.-The Indiana women’s basketball season finally came to an end against a South Carolina squad who is easily the best the country has to offer 79-75. However, in the end, it was a thriller that likely would have beaten any other team in the country.

In many ways, the Gamecocks are a better version of IU with a top post player in Camilo Cardoso surrounded by elite shooters. However, the athleticism and depth running the same system is far superior to what the Cream and Crimson deploy. With Cardoso’s superior size and bulk, she is the only player in the country who can erase IU star Mackenzie Holmes on her own inside.

What the Hoosiers faced today is what almost every other squad faced this season when trying to defend them throughout 2023-2024. One could argue that is a taste of the team’s own medicine at the worst time.

Watching March Madness, it is clear head coach Dawn Staley has built top squads now in the same way Pat Summit and Geno Auriemma did previously at Tennessee and Connecticut respectively. The Gamecocks play on a level different than anyone else in women’s college basketball and no one can beat them short of themselves having less than their best game.  

Due to their athleticism and talent, they do often get the benefit of the whistle as many Hoosier fans in attendance in Albany were quick to point out. However, trying to ref two teams so vastly different in skill is a thankless job.

The growth of the women’s game overall in terms of the athletes and talent has been tremendous in the last decade leading to increased attention. However, for the game’s popularity to go even higher, the era of the super teams may need to end.

The dynasty of John Wooden’s UCLA coming to a halt was what finally brought the men’s game to the maximum popularity it enjoys today. With that said, the NCAA has no way to police recruiting as courts have reminded them over and over again recently. However, if the players become employees and can collectively bargain something equivalent to the salary cap in the pros, that may be the best way that women’s basketball finally reaches its ceiling in the American sports realm with true parity.

Whether one is against having the game become even more like professionals in this way is a fascinating topic. However, it may be the only way to truly level the playing field in college sports with super teams.       

With all that said, while 2024 was halted in the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the Hoosiers, tonight and this season was beyond successful again and far from anyone’s wildest dreams not too long ago.

Four seasons, four NCAA Tournament appearances, four top-four seeds, three Sweet Sixteens, an Elite Eight, and a Big Ten Title. The last time any Hoosier basketball team could claim this amount of success was when Calbert Cheaney donned an IU jersey.

The link to this unprecedented success is Holmes. The greatest player in the program’s history just had her eligibility expire, as Cheaney did after the 1993 season. Holmes is the all-time leading scorer of any Indiana basketball player not named Cheaney.

How does IU replace this? They won’t, but backup post player Lilly Meister is more than ready to move into the starting lineup going forward at center. While she may not be quite what Holmes is, she is more than a capable starting-level player on a Big Ten squad. The return of Chloe Moore-McNeil, Sydney Parrish, and likely Yarden Garzon from this year’s team is also a big help.

Parrish said coming back home to Indiana has been the decision of her life and is excited to have another season here.

“I told Coach Moren last year when I transferred and came to IU, she made me fall in love with the game again,” Parrish said. “I thank her every single day for that because she makes me enjoy playing basketball, whether that's in game, in practice. She trusts us, she loves us, she wants to win for us.”

This is the inverse of the team’s last second-weekend appearance in 2022 when the squad graduated all its starters except its two top players in Holmes and Grace Berger and got better through the transfer portal. This time the top two Hoosiers in Holmes and Sara Scalia are out of eligibility but three others in the starting five remain.

Holmes said after she could not have had a better experience donning the Cream and Crimson and raising them to this level.

“Anyone who knows me knows how much I love being a Hoosier,” Holmes said. “I just pray that any high schooler that is looking at colleges that they pick a school that they feel the same way that I have felt about Indiana. I loved being a Hoosier, and I loved every second. I'm just very, very thankful that Coach Moren saw something in me, offered me to play here, and that I've gotten the chance to play five years under her with some really, really special people.”  

Where does these departures leave the IU? Maybe not as the championship contender they have been in the last few seasons. However, a regular postseason squad remains with a program built.

Indiana fans need look no further than the baseball team from 15 years ago on Bloomington’s campus. That downtrodden program was slowly built with an NCAA Tournament appearance under future-major leaguer Alex Dickerson and moderate success from 2008-2011. Then a superstar named Kyle Schwarber came to IU. From 2012-2014 while he donned the Cream and Crimson, success reached a whole new level. This included a College World Series, four conference titles, and two host spots in the postseason as a top-16 squad.

Did IU replace Schwarber? No, but it built a program that became a regular postseason contender thereafter and still wins at a high level (this year notwithstanding) with many more NCAA Appearances and stays near the top of the league season in and season out.

The women have followed a nearly identical path. Tyra Buss played the role of Dickerson turning a conference bottom-feeder into a very competitive team with an NCAA Tourney appearance. Next, Holmes is the equivalent of Schwarber raising Indiana to the championship-contending heights of the last few seasons. However, she is more like Cheaney in the sense that her pro prospects are not as bright despite being a Hoosier GOAT.

Finally, another similarity is the rise in support for said program. Baseball went from a couple hundred people pre-success to selling out their 2,500-seat stadium on a relatively regular basis when the winning started. With basketball always being the favorite sport in the Hoosier state and weather not a factor, the attendance has gone even higher for the women’s program. They averaged around 2,000+ pre-success but now are at well over 10,000 per game.

In many ways what IU coach Teri Moren has done in her decade in Bloomington, is more impressive than either of the above other programs mentioned. While Cheaney was the last player on the men’s side to lead his squad to sustained success at this level, he was the final in a long line of many under legendary head coach Bob Knight.

For baseball, an opening for success always existed with a conference that has seen relatively little talent and success throughout its history. For Moren, she had to build from scratch like the men on the diamond, but in a league that has seen plenty of squads who win big regularly and she has passed almost all of them.

In this sense, Moren bears a resemblance to Knight. Both came to Indiana with almost no success previously and somehow have built winning to an elite level. This contrasts with Tracy Smith, who saw baseball’s rise through after a lot of high moments at the mid-major level.

Indeed, coaches who normally turn around a program with no history of winning have often done it elsewhere first. This makes Moren and Knight unique in that coming to Bloomington was their first major job and took to it like a fish does to water. While Moren lacks the off-court theatrics and controversy of Knight, she shares many of the same principles on it.  With tough defense and building strong athletes for the future, she demands the same work ethic “The General” himself did.

So far though, little has been mentioned of the player Moren and the squad will miss the most. While Holmes is the straw that stirs the drink, she does have an obvious replacement on the roster who can make up most of what will no longer be available as described above.

The person who does not have a clear starter to replace them for 2024-2025 is Scalia. While finding someone with her sharp-shooting from deep is an easier thing to do, that answer is not on the team currently. Indiana will need to scour the portal for this player or suffer somewhat of a fall-off at the shooting guard spot.

Either way, like post-Cheaney and Schwarber, another postseason appearance is likely for Moren’s squad next spring. However, it may not be as a host this time and that is just fine.

Any Hoosier fan expecting a national power going forward on the women’s side will likely need to look elsewhere. If Moren can keep this level of winning up that is a bonus. However, she should by no means be expected to do this and if that is not the outcome, no one should be disappointed.

However, for any supporter looking for a competitive postseason team for next fall and beyond with good fundamentals, the women’s squad at IU is worth every Indiana person’s time and money.

Moren said she indeed expects positive results next season.

“Always look forward to what's next for our program,” Moren said. “We've done a lot of really, really great things and have accomplished -- this has been an unbelievable year. I'm always optimistic. That's just how I've been raised. Those guys that are coming back, this is a great experience for them.”

Also, after going toe-to-toe with Staley on Friday, Moren’s program will almost certainly look like a very attractive option to prospects going forward. Even in defeat, Indiana showed they can compete with anyone including the best in America.           

Certainly, Staley thought so postgame.

“Just want to say that Indiana is a really tough basketball team that wanted to move on,” Staley said. “They gave an incredible effort in the third and fourth quarter to get themselves back in the game and put us back on our heels. I wish the seniors well, and I know that Teri will get her team back in this position again in the future.”     

Listen to last night’s episode of Doing The Work here:

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