Last year’s game was played in the friendly confines of Assembly Hall, but the Hoosiers still fell, 65-61 in overtime. This season, Moren will make her first trip back to Indiana State as the Hoosiers and Sycamores will battle at 7:05 p.m. Tuesday night.
“They came in here and did a nice job,” Moren said of last season’s loss. “I’m pretty familiar with that group. They graduated seven of those seniors, but there’s players left over from when I was there. Anytime they have an opportunity to play an in-state game, Indiana is the biggest game on their schedule.”
The Hoosiers (5-2) will be riding the confidence gained from defeating Georgia Tech, 69-60, in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge at home Wednesday. Georgia Tech led 60-59 with 4:05 remaining before sophomore guard Tyra Buss led the Hoosiers to a 10-0 run to end the game. Buss scored the first six points of that run en route to a game-high 22 points.
Prior to the win over the Yellow Jackets, the Hoosiers came up short in the Vanderbilt Thanksgiving Tournament, falling to Ohio before beating Austin Peay in the consolation game. Wednesday’s game against Indiana State will be the fifth time in the last six games in which IU has played on the road.
“A lot of good things have been happening as of late,” Moren said. “It was certainly a gritty win against Georgia Tech in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. We enjoyed that one, and now we’ve been getting back to the grind. We still have a lot of work to do as we head over to Terre Haute.”
Indiana State (3-6) enters the in-state clash coming off a road win against Tulsa, 67-63, a game in which freshman guard Jennifer Mackowiak poured in a career-high 18 points in the winning effort. The Sycamores had struggled to begin the season, starting the 2015-16 campaign with losses in four of their first five games. Indiana State graduated a plethora of its players from last year’s 17-13 team, however the Sycamores are still led by a duo of dynamic guards that have experience in Terre Haute.
ISU is paced by 5-foot-10 senior guard Cierra Ceazer, who leads the team in scoring with 12.1 points. Six-foot junior wing Joyea Marshall is close to averaging a double-double, scoring 10.3 points and 7.3 rebounds per game for the Sycamores. Four Indiana State starters are upperclassmen, as the team is led inside by 6-foot-3 Kelsey Dirks.
Freshman guard Jennifer Mackowiak, at 5-foot-8, has had a hot hand as of late. This will be the second straight game Moren plays a familiar opponent, as she faced former teammate and fellow coach MaChelle Joseph when Georgia Tech traveled to Bloomington. Wednesday, it will be Moren’s homecoming to Terre Haute, where she’ll face multiple players who she recruited to Indiana State.
“This is the ending of our agreement to play them,” Moren said of Indiana State. “It’s never fun to play your friends or the kids that you recruited. It’s always been about our players and all bets are off once the ball goes up.”
