One might expect that No. 16 Indiana women’s basketball’s fifth-year senior guard Sara Scalia would enter the Hoosiers’ matchup against Minnesota with an increased level of motivation.
After all, Wednesday’s contest served as Scalia’s second time playing against her hometown team — the one she spent three seasons playing for. When the Hoosiers traveled to Williams Arena in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a season ago, she scored just 10 points on 3-of-10 shooting.
But playing on her new home court, the Stillwater, Minnesota, native Scalia dominated the Golden Gophers — with the same demeanor as if it were any other game.
“Obviously Minnesota is always going to be home to me — that’s where I grew up and it’s special to me for sure,” Scalia said postgame. “It’s definitely a different feeling being on the other side of the bench, but I was just happy to go out there and play with the team I’m on now and come up with the win.”
Although Scalia didn’t score her first points of the contest until just over eight minutes in, a corner 3-pointer kickstarted her dominating performance. Entering Wednesday, she averaged 9.8 points through the Hoosiers’ first six conference clashes.
It was a different story for Scalia on Wednesday night back at home in Bloomington. She notched 22 points against the Golden Gophers on 8-of-17 from the field alongside 5-of-11 from beyond the arc, turning in her finest performance since scoring 32 points against Bowling Green State University on Dec. 22.
Not only has Scalia had her fair share of struggles in conference play, but she’s struggled more so when the Hoosiers hit the road. She’s shot less than 36 percent from the field in four of Indiana’s five road contests so far this season — the outlier being a 50-percent shooting performance at Nebraska on Jan. 7.
At Carver-Hawkeye Arena against Iowa on Jan. 13, Scalia scored 6 points while shooting 30 percent from the field. While she struggled against the Hawkeyes, so did the rest of the Hoosiers, meaning Wednesday was paramount in getting 14-2 Indiana back on track ahead of a matchup against Purdue on Sunday.
“Much better performance tonight than we had the other night in Iowa and that was good to see our ability to bounce back,” Indiana head coach Teri Moren said postgame. “Really proud of our guys in how we came back from a tough night the other night.”
While playing away from Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall hasn’t brought Scalia — nor the team, with both losses coming on the road — a lot of success this season, she’s been in a different stratosphere compared to last season. Up to mid-January in her first season as a Hoosier, she shot 25.9 percent from the field in road games compared to 31.1 percent this season.
“One of the things that we pride ourselves in is the balance,” Moren said. “We have so much confidence in her.”
While Scalia’s success is crucial to the Hoosiers’ regular and postseason aspirations, what they learned from the loss to Iowa is what is important to hang on to moving forward. Not only did they get blown out by the Hawkeyes, but they didn’t play up to the standards of what the program was built on.
“We built this program on our toughness and our grittiness,” Moren said. “In the early days when there were 1,500 – 2,000 people out there watching us and we would come up short, one of the things that they would always say about Indiana women’s basketball is although they lost the game, they played to the very end.”
When Indiana is on top of its game and playing like Moren expects it to, it’s a squad that is a force to be reckoned with. If a Big Ten championship and deep March Madness run takes place this season, it could be attributed to Moren using the loss to Iowa as a way to remind her players what the team needs from each of them.
“I’m able to remind them individually of their role and how important they are to this team and remind them of what we need them to do and what the expectations are and what the standards are,” Moren said.
The Hoosiers now set their sights on a rivalry matchup against Purdue at 2 p.m. Sunday for the Barn Burner Trophy at Mackey Arena in West Lafayette.
Follow reporters Dalton James (@DaltonMJames) and Quinn Richards (@Quinn_richa), columnist Ryan Canfield (@_ryancanfield) and photographer Olivia Bianco (@theoliviabianco) for updates throughout the Indiana women’s basketball season.
