Penn State possesses one of the most dynamic scoring duos in the Big Ten. Ahead of its contest against Indiana women’s basketball, sophomore guard Kiyomi McMiller averaged 22.3 points per game and redshirt junior center Gracie Merkle averaged 19.1. Both marks rank in the top 10 in the conference.
“That’s the two headed monster we were concerned about,” Indiana head coach Teri Moren said Saturday.
The Hoosiers limited Penn States’ high-scoring pair en route to their 93-59 victory over the Lady Lions on Saturday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington. While Merkle scored a team-high 22 points and 10 rebounds against Indiana, the Hoosiers limited McMiller to just four points off 1-for-12 shooting from the field.
Indiana’s defensive dominance was evident from the jump. After 6-foot-6 Merkle won tipoff for Penn State against freshman guard Nevaeh Caffey, Merkle attempted an inside shot against junior forward Edessa Noyan.
Merkle missed but grabbed her own rebound with her 3-inch advantage over Noyan. Merkle tried to put her shot back, but, again, it missed, and senior guard Shay Ciezki flew in to grab the rebound under the basket.
Ciezki ran down the court and passed the ball to Lenée Beaumont. The redshirt sophomore guard drove toward the basket before passing to Caffey, who was standing beyond the 3-point. Caffey immediately attempted a shot from long range and drained it.
The opening 25 seconds of the contest foreshadowed a game to come – Indiana making defensive stops and taking advantage of them on the offensive end.
Caffey was the catalyst in the defensive showing. Throughout the season, the Warrenton, Missouri, native has been tasked with guarding opponents' top offensive threats, and Saturday was no different.
“What we ask her to do every night, which is guard the best player on the other team and then run our team, it was a lot for a freshman,” Moren said after the Hoosiers beat Wisconsin on Feb. 4.
When Caffey, who recorded a season-high 18 points Saturday, was on the floor, she was tagged on McMiller, who’s scored 30 or more points in her last six contests leading into Saturday, including a 40-point showing against USC on Feb. 25.
McMiller got off five shots in the first quarter and missed all of them. In the second, she made one of her three attempts. And in the second half, she missed each of her four shots from the field and her only points came from the free-throw line.
“I think just having the confidence with all the prep that we did, and the coaches pouring into me and my teammates pouring into me,” Caffey said, “knowing that everyone’s gonna be in their gaps, and don’t bite at none of her (McMiller’s) stuff, that helped me a lot.”
While Merkle scored above her season average, Indiana found a way to limit her despite the size advantage. Of Merkle’s 22 total points, 16 came in the second half, which was after the Hoosiers had already tallied a 34-point lead.
Indiana has struggled on the interior against bigger opponents. Against No. 2 UCLA on Feb. 15, the Hoosiers gave up 42 points in the paint with just 16 of their own. Indiana scored just 18 points in the paint and allowed Illinois to score 58 on Dec. 6.
Noyan and junior forward Jade Ondineme were the primary defenders on the interior. Both are 3 inches shorter than Merkle, and while she found ways to score late, limiting her was an important factor that the Hoosiers answered.
"I thought that our fives, Edessa, Jade, did a good job on Merkle, as well...” Moren said. “I thought we did a great job of crowding Merkle.”
The dominant victory gave Indiana its sixth Big Ten win of the season and allowed it to clinch a spot in the conference tournament. The Hoosiers went 6-2 in February to make a late-season push for a spot in the Big Ten Tournament from March 4-8.
As Indiana enters the conference tournament Wednesday, its defensive efforts against Penn State need to be replicated. Nearly any team the Hoosiers will play in the tournament will have a dynamic scoring guard like McMiller; many will have a dominant interior player like Merkle.
The Hoosiers are likely to play Nebraska in the first round of the tournament Wednesday. The Cornhuskers present a scoring threat of their own in sophomore guard Britt Prince, who averages 17.6 points per game.
Either way, Indiana proved that its defensive efforts against those types of players are possible and important to winning in the Big Ten, but the replication will be important.
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.
