Senior guard Shay Ciezki has shined bright during the 2025-26 season for Indiana women’s basketball. However, her scoring prowess has not been enough for the Hoosiers to win games in the Big Ten.
Ciezki notched 37 points for Indiana women’s basketball against Purdue on Sunday. Despite picking up her 14th game with 20 or more points this season, Indiana’s deficit was once again too large for Ciezki to save the day, as the Hoosiers fell to the Boilermakers 80-69 on at Mackey Arena in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Ciezki has been one of the best players in the Big Ten this season, leading the conference with 23.6 points per game. Despite her efforts, however, Indiana has yet to earn a single Big Ten win in the season.
Redshirt sophomore guard Lenée Beaumont was the only other Hoosiers to score double-digit points against Purdue, chipping in with 13. Freshman guard Nevaeh Caffey and freshman forward Maya Makalusky tallied seven and three points, respectively. Junior forward Edessa Noyan failed to score in 16 minutes.
Ciezki shot 11 for 18 from the field against the Boilermakers and went 5 for 7 from 3-point range. The rest of the team combined for just eight field goals.
Besides Ciezki, only two other Indiana players average double-digit points per game. Beaumont, who led the Hoosiers with six rebounds against Purdue, averages 13.6 points per game but has struggled with consistency and confidence issues regarding her shot-making abilities.
Beaumont struggled from the field on Sunday, shooting 5 for 15. She failed to score from 3-point range in five attempts, struggling despite shooting 41.2% from beyond the arc on the season.
Sophomore forward Zania Socka-Nguemen, who averages 11.8 points and a team-leading 8.7 rebounds per game, has struggled with an injury in the middle stretch of the season. The UCLA transfer missed eight straight matches, starting in Indiana’s lone nonconference loss against then-No. 10 Iowa State University on Nov. 30.
Socka-Nguemen returned off the bench in an 82-67 loss to then-No. 7 Maryland on Jan. 4, then recorded double-doubles in losses to then-No. 25 Nebraska and then-No. 14 Iowa. However, Socka-Nguemen struggled in the Hoosiers’ next two contests before another injury sidelined her against Purdue.
With Socka-Nguemen's injury struggles and Beaumont’s growing pains, Indiana does not have a reliable scorer alongside Ciezki. In turn, the Hoosiers have struggled to stay in games down the stretch as the offense only has one place to turn to in a pinch.
Beaumont took personal accountability after the game for herself and the entire team.
“The program I committed to as a junior in high school is the same program I’m playing for,” Beaumont said postgame. “And as players, I think we got to take a lot of accountability because, I mean, the staff came in and shot us straight and said we were very disconnected. And I 100% agree, as a leader on this team, I have to take accountability there and figure it out within the locker room.”
Ciezki is currently writing herself into the annuls of Indiana basketball history. However, her spark is currently unable to light a fire amongst a pouring rain of issues for the Hoosiers.
If Indiana is to finally break its duck, win its first Big Ten game and even make the Big Ten Tournament come March, the Hoosiers need another scorer to step up to the plate and ease some of the burden on Ciezki’s shoulders.
Follow reporters Savannah Slone (@savrivers06 and srslone@iu.edu) and Max Schneider (maxschn@iu.edu) and columnist Sean McAvoy (@sean_mc07 and semcavoy@iu.edu) for updates throughout the Indiana women’s basketball season.
