Not only will the game open the Hoosiers’ season, but it will also open the Women’s National Invitation Tournament, something IU Coach Teri Moren said is a blessing for the team.
“It’s nice to have a team like Tennessee State coming in here — a team that just came off an NCAA tournament,” Moren said. “Playing an NCAA opponent is important and exciting because that’s what we aspire to do.”
After a 15-16 season last year, IU failed to make the NCAA tournament, but Tennessee State, which finished 18-13 and won the Ohio Valley Conference tournament in 2014-15, went to the tournament and lost to Kentucky in the first round.
Moren said during the offseason, the Hoosiers made their schedule more challenging in 2015-16 to push the athletes to make the NCAA tournament. Playing Tennessee State will give them a feel of where they stand as a team sooner rather than later so they can fix their mistakes.
One mistake Moren said she wanted to fix after the exhibition win Sunday was the balance on inside and outside shooting. She said players needed to watch when and where they took shots because, even though the Hoosiers run a fast-paced offense, Moren still wants to find points in the paint.
Passing to the post was a point of emphasis in practice for IU, as Moren and assistant coach Todd Starkey challenged the women to pass crisply around the top of the key and stressed sharp cuts on off-the-ball screens.
“We’ve been especially working on post-entry passes,” sophomore guard Tyra Buss said. “We need to get the ball to the post a lot more. We’ve got Kym (Royster) and B (Amanda Cahill) down there working their tails off, so we need to get the ball into them more.”
Moren said she wants the ball to run through sophomore forward Cahill’s hands on most possessions this season, which did not happen as often as the coaching staff would have liked Sunday.
Out of eight shots in the post, Cahill connected on four of them, while junior forward Alexis Gassion hit five of nine on the inside. IU grabbed 18 offensive rebounds against Slippery Rock.
While Tennessee State has size in the post, Moren said IU will need freshman forward Kym Royster to step up more than she did in the exhibition, as Moren said offensive rebounds will be a focus for Tennessee State.
“I thought Kym, in particular, looked like a high schooler,” Moren said. “We’ve kind of told her, ‘It’s time to put your big-girl pants on, this is college basketball.’ You’re going to have to play at a whole other level. Your mindset, your aggression. All of that is different.”
Moren said the coaching staff is simplifying the concepts for the freshman, though, whom they’ve told to think about three things: running the floor, rebounding and setting screens.
Simplifying the concepts into three simple rules will help ease Royster into the atmosphere of college basketball, Moren said, since women are equal in athleticism now.
With the Hoosiers’ lack of depth on the inside, Royster will see the floor, but that’s the case for all the Hoosiers, Moren said. How many minutes they will see is dependent on how they play.
That’s where the team will miss sophomore guard Jess Walter.
Moren said the guard will be unavailable for Friday with her concussion-like symptoms after a hit to the jaw in practice, but Moren said she hopes Walter will be available in a few days for practice and IU’s next game.
“They’re a good team,” Buss said. “I think that it’ll be a good game for us. We just need to come out strong. It’s our season opener so of course we’ll be excited and ready to play Friday.”
