With the IU women’s basketball team riding a two-game win streak, the team has a prime chance to keep its momentum rolling against last-place Wisconsin.
The Badgers are 5-15 overall and 0-7 in the Big Ten this season, and the Hoosiers have a 14-6 overall record and a 4-3 mark in conference play as they head into the Sunday afternoon matchup in the Kohl Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
IU is one of four teams with a 4-3 Big Ten record, and IU Coach Teri Moren said her team is eager to rise above the rest of the pack. She said her team knows the big-picture situation in the standings despite her mantra of treating every contest as a one-game season.
“As I always tell them, you’ve got to earn the right to win,” Moren said. “You don’t play the record of Wisconsin. You don’t play that. You play the game, and you’ve got to make sure your mindset — your edge — is in the right place. It’s always a one-game season, but they watch. We’re trying to separate ourselves.”
Wisconsin lost six of its seven Big Ten games by double digits, with the only single-digit loss coming against No. 15 Ohio State last week. Junior guard Cayla McMorris leads Wisconsin in scoring at 13 points per game, but the Minnesota native has scored more than 10 points just once in her last six games.
Senior guard Alexis Gassion will likely guard McMorris. Averaging 34 minutes per game, Gassion plays more than any other Hoosier and contributes in all aspects of the stat sheet. She averages 6.2 rebounds and about 5 assists per game to go along with her 13.7 points per game scoring average. Gassion said IU’s two most recent wins against Purdue and Penn State will help with the team’s momentum.
“Very big, especially going on the road for our next game,” Gassion said of IU’s current win streak. “You know, we just need to get our confidence back, and that’s all that is.”
Wisconsin’s offense scores just 62 points per game, compared to the up-tempo IU offense average of 81 points per game. Where the Badgers could steal the game from the Hoosiers is on the defensive end. Wisconsin has held opponents under 40-percent shooting this season, but IU typically shoots near 50 percent as a team.
With a game at Michigan State next week after Sunday’s matchup at Wisconsin, this will be IU’s final two-game road trip of the regular season. The Hoosiers have won consecutive road games just once this season, but they were several weeks apart.
For IU to finish as high as it would like to in the Big Ten, Moren said her team needs to start winning road games in the conference. Playing a last-place team like Wisconsin seems to be the easiest way to get those conference road wins, but Moren isn’t overlooking the Badgers by any means.
“Huge,” Moren said of the game’s importance. “We’ve got to go into Wisconsin, a team that has been up and down under new leadership. We’ve got to steal a few, we’ve got to steal a few on the road, and our kids know that. They know what’s at stake.”
