Ohio State women's basketball has four games left in the regular season and it begins Thursday when the Buckeyes travel to the toughest road environment in the Big Ten at Assembly Hall, taking on the Indiana Hoosiers.
Indiana's season hasn't been easy, trying to adjust to life after the focal point of the team graduated. However, head coach Teri Moren brought in new names to try and fill the void, and the Hoosiers are still in position to earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
To learn more about the Hoosiers, Land-Grant Holy Land reached out to our friends at Crimson Quarry. Beat writer L.C. Norton talked about the impossible task of filling a Mackenzie Holmes-shaped hole, how Indiana can beat the Buckeyes and more.
Land-Grant Holy Land: Indiana had the nearly impossible task of filling in the gap left by Mackenzie Holmes leaving for the pros. How has the Hoosiers' game plan changed without the program's leading scorer? How has senior transfer forward Karoline Striplin moved into her role?
Crimson Quarry: You hit the nail on the head, it's impossible.
Indiana has become a much, much more perimeter-oriented team and Moren spoke on that in the offseason. They obviously knew there was going to be a dropoff in scoring at the five and studied a ton of five-out offensive concepts as a result, mostly Princeton type stuff or teams they'd faced in the past who ran five-out to find what would work.
Indiana has had some pretty elite backcourt play for years but it took time for this group to adjust to the newer offense as evidenced in losses to Harvard and Butler. There are still some hiccups, but Indiana takes its fair share of 3s and runs sets to get looks at the rim off of cuts or getting downhill.
Striplin just kind of does her job. You can count on a cool 10 or so points from her in the post and she doesn't really try to do much more, she understands her role on the court well. She's had times where she's passed the ball tremendously well, so I'd keep an eye out for that.
LGHL: Head coach Teri Moren still has some of the strongest backcourt players in the conference with Chloe Moore-McNeil, Yarden Garzon and Sydney Parrish. How has former Penn State guard Shay Ciezki acclimated to the group?
CQ: This is a really, really good question when it comes to understanding this year's team.
Ciezki was sold on taking on the Sara Scalia role. So not just shooting well from range but also pushing the ball downcourt with her speed to either generate good looks for teammates or take the ball all the way to the rim herself.
Like Scalia in her first year, Ciezki has been inconsistent and has had games where she's pretty much vanished as a scorer. She needs to be shooting to be effective and there have been outings when she just hasn't gotten enough shots off at all. Hitting 36.2% from range is far from terrible but it's gotta be better and she can't stop shooting if the first two don't fall. She played tremendously well against Purdue (which, who doesn't these days) but she was poor against Michigan.
Indiana looks great if Ciezki is scoring. If not? A great deal of other things have to be going well for the Hoosiers to be dangerous.
LGHL: This season, Indiana is hard to predict, beating ranked teams like Baylor and Iowa but also losing by 30 to UNC and getting tripped up by Butler. What is Indiana's Achille's heel? that has them sitting right in the middle of the Big Ten?
CQ: I kinda detailed it above but Indiana can live and die by its shooting. This group isn't especially athletic and has to rely more on creative play design, execution and shooting. The Hoosiers were firmly in games like UCLA and USC, neither truly pulled away from Indiana in either contest.
If Indiana's shots are falling they can compete with anyone. If not? They're pretty beatable.
Holmes was obviously an incredible scorer but her defense was also pretty key to this team's ceiling the past few years. She was among the best defensive bigs in the conference if not the best outright, especially when fully healthy, and understood the system. Striplin and Lilly Meister are trying and are solid, they're just not necessarily her on either end.
LGHL: The Hoosiers are predicted to be an NCAA tournament team by bracketologists. As someone who watches them closely, what is this team's ceiling in the postseason?