Indiana’s all-around performance overwhelms Bellarmine in 95-61 rout

  • Dec 16, 2024 8:34 am in

Indiana women’s basketball hasn’t been at full strength at any point this season. Teri Moren has constantly preached “a next man up” mentality all year. On Sunday afternoon, Indiana got precisely that – a dominant performance based on every player’s individual effort.

The Hoosiers cruised to a 95-61 win against Bellarmine, returning to non-conference play. From the opening tip, everyone on the floor looked connected and the Hoosiers quickly put their foot down on the Knights. Everything was rolling for Indiana, as they started the game scoring 27 points in the first quarter on 61 percent shooting. That remained the common theme for the Hoosiers. Efficiency helped propel their comfortable 34-point win.

At one point, Indiana was shooting 71 percent from the field. The Hoosiers never shot less than 41 percent in a quarter. Indiana shot 56 percent for the game.

“I think anytime you have adversity the way we’ve had it, other people have to step up and their roles change,” Moren said. “And you know, we talk about that a lot; you always have to be on the edge of your seat, ready, you know, to come in when your numbers are called.”

Indiana racked up a season-best 27 assists in Sunday’s win as the ball moved unselfishly all afternoon.

“I just think it’s a matter of everybody understanding that, yeah, we all have roles, but at any point, our roles can change,” Moren said. And when I get in the game, my job is to impact it somehow, whether it’s defensively, offensively, and I thought tonight, a lot of these kids did that.”

The Hoosiers finished with a season-high 95 points and the bench was instrumental in the offensive onslaught against the Knights.

Karoline Striplin led all scorers with 18 points against the Knights, but she came with even more production off the bench alongside her second straight double-digit performance. Indiana finished with 45 points from their reserves.

Henna Sandvik, who had never scored more than six points in a game, scored a career-high 13 points and six rebounds. Seven players scored double figures for Indiana and nine different players scored. Sunday was the first time in program history that seven players scored double-digit points in a game for the Hoosiers.

There have been times this season when Indiana has yet to put a complete game together. Lapses throughout certain points of the game have given hope to the opponent. Moren has been vocal about limiting these spurts throughout games, but Sunday never had any moments of that.

The Hoosiers applied the pressure and never let up.

“Honestly, we have been struggling to put together a complete game, and going into halftime, we had a lot of positives which was nice,” Striplin said. “We just wanted to continue building on those, but I really think it started on the defensive end. Knowing who had the hot hand, I think it all came together really well.”

The Hoosiers have one more game left in their non-conference schedule before they enter the heart of the conference season. After a pair of difficult early-season losses, they have now won seven of their last eight games.

“This is a resilient group,” Moren said. “They’ve been disappointed in the losses. They’ve been disappointed when we haven’t played well. They’re really competitive. None of that has left our basketball team…We understand that it’s a daunting Big 10 schedule. There’s no question, and we’re still probably going to have some peaks and valleys in that, but I still think, you know, we’re a really good basketball team, and we can score a lot of different ways. And all the nights that we put it together, we’re going to be really hard to beat.”

(Photo credit: IU Athletics)

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