Fourth-quarter run crushes Boilermakers

The Purdue women’s basketball team (12-6, 5-2) came into Monday night’s game with a national championship and seven regular season Big Ten titles, but none of that mattered to the Hoosiers.  

Down by 2 points with 4:51 to play, IU (13-3, 6-1) used a 17-1 run to beat their rival
71-57 with more than 4,000 in attendance.

IU coach Felisha Legette-Jack said she will enjoy the win.  

“I know our young ladies; they go to Purdue to beat Indiana, and our kids come to Indiana to beat Purdue, so the value of this game is very important,” she said.  

Legette-Jack said her goal is holding every opponent under 59 points each game. With
Purdue getting to 56 before the Hoosiers’ run, IU’s defense came through.

So did the offense.  

Junior point guard Jamie Braun put the team on her back and hit two key 3-pointers with-in a stretch of 1:08 to give the Hoosiers an eight-point lead with just over two minutes to go.  

Legette-Jack said Braun found her stroke at the right time despite struggling in the beginning.  

“That’s a sign of a general of the team,” Legette-Jack said. “At the beginning of the game she wasn’t scoring as well as she liked. One thing about Jamie, she just keeps on playing.

“She just kept on playing, and those open shots she just kept on taking them. One thing about shooters, and I consider her one of the great ones, they just keep on shooting until you find your rhythm, and she found her rhythm at the right time.”
Braun, who had 16 points, might have scored her most significant points at the free throw line.  

With just over a minute to go, Braun hit two free throws to give the Hoosiers a nine-point lead and herself 1,000 career points. Braun joins Whitney Thomas as the 21st player in school history to reach the milestone.  

Braun said as special as it was for her to get to the 1,000-point milestone, she couldn’t have done it without her teammates.  

“I think they were wide open 3s, and I couldn’t have gotten those without my teammates driving like they were in the first half, and the second half creating openings for us outside shooters,” Braun said.

Legette-Jack, who notched her 50th win as IU coach, said she has a special team and is glad to be able to share the experience with them.

“I’m just along for the ride,” she said. “These young ladies have decided to take a stand, and I can’t be more proud of them as I am right now.”

Senior Whitney Thomas, who scored 19 points for IU, said Monday’s win is just another victory in a long season.  

“We’re just getting started,” she said. “We still have a lot of the season left. I know we have some big games coming up in a long stretch here. It’s just what we have to do to get to the post season. We are all looking for NCAA, but we have to take it one game at a time.”