After defeating a No. 24-ranked Chattanooga team early in the Preseason Women’s National Invitation Tournament and playing a No. 19-ranked DePaul in a competitive 84-69 loss, IU’s 17-point lead on Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne was cut to five at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
The Hoosiers had outscored the Mastodons by 13 at halftime, but they allowed IPFW back into the game after a 21-15 third quarter Tuesday night.
IU was able to make it to the line, though, hitting 27 free throws to IPFW’s 13 and cemented a 79-72 victory in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“We escaped with a win tonight,” IU Coach Teri Moren said. “I thought they outplayed us, outhustled us. That was a result of their 17 offensive rebounds to our eight.”
Moren said the reason for the offensive struggles in the second half was the press defense of IPFW, the same press defense IU saw from DePaul when it was eliminated from the Preseason WNIT.
The IPFW press defense forced several IU turnovers in the backcourt, a stat that tallied up to 21 by the end of the game and allowed the Mastodons to score 23 of their points off of Hoosier turnovers.
“We thought we learned some lessons in that game, really in terms of how we were going to deal with the press attack,” Moren said about the DePaul loss. “Tonight there were moments where we just didn’t handle ourselves very well.”
IPFW Coach Chris Paul said that he thought his team came out slow at the beginning, getting outscored 25-17 in the first quarter and shooting just 30.6 percent from the field, but they picked it up in the second half.
“We were a little passive which led to some turnovers,” Paul said. “We were much more aggressive in the second half — attacked the rim. We were much better in the second half but just cam eup a little short.”
Paul said that the Mastodons’ goal was to get the score pushed into the 80s because he felt that the fast tempo that both offenses play with would benefit IPFW and that his team could win.
It was the turnovers — in the backcourt specifically — that Moren said she thought allowed IPFW to hang on and kept the Hoosiers from pulling away.
“I thought Tyshee (Towner) was very careless with the ball,” Moren said. “I know Tyra (Buss) tried to make a couple plays on offense that just weren’t there, but Towner, as a starter and player that plays such a significant role for us, she can’t turn the ball over six times.”
Even with four turnovers in the game, Buss scored a career-high 29 points Tuesday after injuring her left wrist against DePaul Thursday. The sophomore guard warmed up and played with tape around the wrist and played 37 of the game’s 40 minutes.
Junior forward Alexis Gassion also put up a season-high 20 points Tuesday, but it was her perimeter defense that Moren said was disappointing — allowing three three-point shots to IPFW’s guard Kamilah Carter — something the coaching staff was stressing to the team all night.
“I thought against DePaul we played so soft on the perimeter with our hands down, didn’t move, didn’t want to have any kind of commitment to wanting to defend,” Moren said. “We talked about that and then Lex comes out and Carter hits two threes in her face. Something that we chart is deflections and we only had six at halftime.”
After two consecutive challenging road games, the Hoosiers travel to Nashville, Tennessee, where they will take part in the Vanderbilt Thanksgiving Tournament. The first opponent is last season’s winner of the Mid-American Conference, the Ohio Bobcats.
Moren said that she is expecting plenty of press defense throughout the tournament against tough teams.
“We gotta clean this up, so we’ll go back and look at our miscues against IPFW, show our kids a lot of film and talk about our decision-making and how that needs to improve. There’s going to be some great lessons to be learned here tonight.”
