'The Big Ten doesn’t wait for anybody.' IU women's basketball rebounds with blowout win

BLOOMINGTON — IU fifth-year senior center Mackenzie Holmes said it best: The Big Ten doesn’t wait up.

IU desperately needed a bounce-back moment after a humbling, 27-point loss to Iowa on Saturday night — just its second loss of the season. The Hoosiers, who are still second in the Big Ten, needed to make sure that loss didn’t derail their entire season.

But IU (15-2, 6-1) hasn’t suffered back-to-back losses since the 2021-22 season, and that wasn’t about to break on Wednesday night. With a three-day turnaround, IU had its own blowout Big Ten game, taking down Minnesota, 85-62.

“The Big Ten doesn’t wait for anybody,” Holmes said postgame. “We have to move on. Game after game, they’re going to keep coming. We have to learn from the Iowa game, but we can’t let it become a snowball effect. I think we have a really mature group, and we did a really good job of that tonight.”

IU had a tough couple days — both before and after the loss to Iowa. First, the Hoosiers’ plane was delayed until Saturday morning, the day of the game, because of a snowstorm making its way across Iowa. IU didn’t fly out until 10 a.m. for an 8 p.m. tip, then battled the stormy Iowa roads on the drive to Iowa City from Cedar Rapids.

There, Iowa cemented its place atop the Big Ten with an 84-57 victory.

IU left Iowa nearly immediately after the game, Holmes said, flying back to Bloomington late Saturday night. The Hoosiers had Sunday off to stew with the loss, then came in Monday for some tough love from coach Teri Moren in the film room: I’m not sure if you were ready for that game.

'We got some soul searching to do.'What's next after Iowa blowout loss?

'This is not normal.'How Sara Scalia became one of the B1G's best 3-point shooters.

“I think it was a pride thing,” Holmes said. “I believe it hurt every single one of us to hear coach question whether or not we’re ready to play that game. That was the last time we needed to have that conversation, and I think we all took that personally. We hate losing more than we like to win. I think hearing that and having that loss really woke us up. We don’t want to have that conversation again.”

It was a tough conversation, a tough watch of the film. But Moren knows it was what her team needed so they wouldn’t fall into a rut.

“We try to pride ourselves on being truth-tellers to our players,” Moren said. “I expect them to be truth-tellers to each other as well. What caught me during the moment, and certainly after watching the game, I think I was more frustrated — yes with the loss — but I just thought we underperformed, I thought we looked disconnected, at times we looked uninspired.”

 There were a multitude of things that went wrong for IU against Iowa — the Hoosiers were disconnected on both ends of the floor, they made just 5-of-20 3-pointers, and committed 15 turnovers. IU never pushed the pace against Iowa, because it was too busy trying to play catch-up.

The Hoosiers could push the game forward against Minnesota on Wednesday, highlighted in the second quarter by a near-full-court pass from Yarden Garzon to Sara Scalia under the basket, who put it in for an easy layup; and Holmes fighting for an offensive rebound when the game was already in hand at the four-minute mark of the fourth.

On Wednesday, IU fought on every aspect of the floor for all 40 minutes — something it lacked Saturday night.

“We’re a good basketball team,” Moren said. “We weren’t the other night, but this is a really good basketball team when they’re connected, when they’re playing fast, when they’re sharing the ball, when they’re intentional about what their assignments are defensively and they’re really super focused on that.”