B1G Game 9: Gophers Visit Indiana (1-27-20)

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Ignatius L Hoops

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(just another) Manic Monday​


After handily sweeping their first four conference games, Indiana (5-3) dropped three straight including a double overtime 85-91 road loss in Iowa City and a single overtime 69-71 home loss to Northwestern. Those losses were followed by last Monday’s BTN 62-76 defeat at Maryland. Fortunately, the Hoosiers next trip was to Happy Valley facing one of the only two teams trailing Minnesota (2-6) in the Big Ten Standings. After a slow start, the Hoosier’s eased to a 76-60 win over the Lady Lions.

Now, Indiana welcomes Minnesota to Bloomington for a B1G Monday match-up. This is the first of two regular season meetings between the Gophers and Hoosiers. Last season the teams also met twice. The first meeting was in Bloomington where Ali Patberg was limited to 24 minutes because a separated shoulder ended her night early. The second meeting was in the B1G Tournament. Indiana’s victory helped advance IU and their 8-10 conference record to the NCAA dance. The Gopher loss played at least a small role in dropping a 9-9 Minnesota to the WNIT.

Last Season

Last season’s battle in Bloomington was the Gopher’s third consecutive conference victory in what was to become a six game win streak. The 65-61 Minnesota win became an end of game a nail biter which I recounted previously this season. Suffice it to say that a 61-49 Gopher lead with 4:15 remaining went sour and a Jaelynn Penn three point look could’ve given IU a one point lead. It didn’t and Minnesota escaped. For Minnesota, Kenisha Bell led all scorers with 22, Pitts 17 and Perez 11. Among Gophers who will play Monday Brunson dropped 7 and Taiye Bello had 6 points and 14 rebounds in 37 minutes. For the Hoosiers, Jaelynn Penn scored 18, Bendu Yeaney 12, Brenna Wise 9, a limited Patberg 8 and Gulbe 4.

The second match-up was in Indianapolis. Patberg was back and Indiana raced to a 20-10 first quarter lead. The Hoosiers upped their advantage to 42-28 at the half. Although Minnesota cut the lead to single digits a couple of times in the second half, Yeany and Patberg turned back the Gophers 66-58. Ali Patberg scored 20 (3-4 from three), Wise 19, Penn 8 and Yeaney 4. For Minnesota, despite going 0-7 from three, Pitts scored 25, Bell 15, Brunson 6 and Taiye Bello 6 points and 8 rebounds. The lineup experience advantage is heavily in Indiana’s favor.

Ali Patberg:

Ali Patberg, who is 2nd in the B1G in assists with 5/game, has been urged to up her scoring. Last night against Penn State Patberg led the Hoosier’s with 18 points and 9 assists. She’d only scored 6 versus Iowa; although, she delivered 7 assists and 1 turnover. Against Northwestern Patberg scored 12 points and had 7 assists and 5 turnovers. Against Maryland, Patberg responed with 15 points (4-11 shooting with 0-1 from three) and 6 assists and 2 turnovers. She’s on the upswing.

Teri Moren

In her fifth season, Teri Moren is putting together a respectable run with the Hoosiers. Following a 4-14 inaugural Big Ten season in 2014-15, the Hoosier’s went 12-6 making the NCAA tournament and defeating Gonzaga before losing to Notre Dame. During the next two seasons, Indiana went 10-6 and 9-7 making the WNIT. They were WNIT champions on their second try. And of course, last spring, after making the NCAA they defeated Texas before losing to Oregon.


Moren’s teams count on their defense. This year’s team is 5th in the B1G holding opponents to 63.9 points per game which includes three overtimes. Minnesota is 8th at 68.6. The good news is that the Gophers hit 7.1 threes per game compared to 3.6 for the Hoosiers. The bad new is that IU’s field goal percentage is .484 (2nd) compared to Minnesota’s .394 (12th). Yes, Indiana is an inside team; a better inside team than Wisconsin. Hopefully, for Minnesota, this coming Monday will be more manic than panic.

Player Notes:

Amazingly, Bendu Yeaney has returned following an ruptured Achilles tendon suffered during last spring’s NCAA game versus Oregon. Not surprisingly, the timing and durations of her on court appearances remain vague.

6’3” Aleksa Gulbe had 18 points and 9 rebounds versus Iowa.

The dangerous Jaelynn Penn dropped 24 points versus Iowa

6’0” Sophomore Grace Berger has become a key cog for IU: she had 21 versus Maryland, 16 points and 8 rebounds versus Northwestern and 16 points and 7 rebounds versus Iowa.

6’3” Freshman Mackenzie Holmes is making key contributions of the bench including 22 points and 9 rebounds against Northwestern. And she piled up the stats against Penn State with 18 points.


B1G Wins: Michigan State 79-67, @Rutgers 66-56, Illinois 83-42, Purdue 66-48, @ Penn State 76-60.

B1G Losses: @ Iowa 85-91 (2OT), Northwestern 69-71 (OT), @ Maryland 62-76


An RPI Aside (Using last Sunday’s RPI):

For Indiana, turning last season’s 8-10 Big Ten record into an invitation to the B1G dance took a strong non-conference schedule (71st in RPI compared to Minnesota’s 335th) and victories over UCLA (28 RPI) and Texas (33 RPI). Indiana had an RPI loss (Grambling (RPI 206)) equal to Minnesota’s (Illinois 217 RPI).

This season’s Hoosiers are following a similar script. Their non-conference RPI is 13th; Minnesota’s is 129th. The Hoosiers biggest win was South Carolina (2 RPI) while Minnesota’s is against Arizona State (27th). The Hoosier’s worse loss is Northwestern 17th; Minnesota’s is Illinois, 136th.


Probable Starters (B1G Stats):

HGTPOSYRPLAYERMINAVGREB
5’11”GRJrAli Patberg36.815.05.1
6’0”GSoGrace Berger35.513.65.1
6’3”FSoAleksa Gulbe25.810.36.1
5’10”GJrJaelynn Penn30.810.33.4
6’0”FSrBrenna Wise25.45.36.1


Bench (B1G Stats):

HGTPOSYRPLAYERMINAVGREB
6’3”FFrMackenzie Holmes19.913.35.5
6’1”FFrJorie Allen12.02.41.6
5’6”GRFrChanel Wilson10.61.90.5
5’10GJrBendu Yeaney10.30.71.3
5’10”GJrKeyanna Warthen7.10.60.1
 

www.thehoosiernetwork.com

IU looks to ride positive momentum against Minnesota - The Hoosier Network

A new perspective on Indiana Athletics.
www.thehoosiernetwork.com www.thehoosiernetwork.com

The Hoosier Network:

Turnovers essentially handed Iowa and Northwestern overtime wins over the Hoosiers, and if Thursday’s game versus Penn State is any indication, this problem has still not been fixed. While Indiana cruised to a 16-point lead, it still turned the ball over 17 times. Giving its opponent this many second chances will continue to result in losses, and has to be head coach Teri Moren’s biggest focus moving forward.

After the win over Penn State, Moren focused on Patberg when addressing ways the Indiana offense can improve. Patberg had 18 points versus Penn State and a continued focus on playing aggressive will be of utmost importance going forward, according to Moren.

“The more aggressive Ali Patberg plays, the more aggressive I think everybody plays,” Moren said. “She will need to continue to do that as we continue to grow in our program and grow as a team.”

We’ll see if the Hoosiers have used this weekend to fix some of their problems as they have a quick turnaround with Minnesota coming to Bloomington on Monday. Tipoff is scheduled for 6 p.m. and can be seen on the Big Ten Network
 





Powell does get some nifty passes to the posts, unfortunately the posts don’t always expect it resulting in turnovers. Maybe by starting Powell post play can be emphasize
 

23points at the half-yikes! Don’t like the body language of the team right now, appears to be flat and no energy
 


It’s crickets in here.

Powell and Bello need to work on FT shooting.
Powell gets team high score in 40 min for her first start.
Five total team assists? Doesn’t get much worse than that, and this was a two PG starting lineup.
Hubbard disappears too much. Might as well use some of those tall girls hidden on the bench. Can’t be any worse.
 




Shades said:
It’s crickets in here.

Powell and Bello need to work on FT shooting.
Powell gets team high score in 40 min for her first start.
Five total team assists? Doesn’t get much worse than that, and this was a two PG starting lineup.
Hubbard disappears too much. Might as well use some of those tall girls hidden on the bench. Can’t be any worse.
Click to expand...
I mentioned this in an earlier thread but i would not be surprised if Lindsay steps aside after the year....It must be brutal right now.
 

Shades said:
It’s crickets in here.

Powell and Bello need to work on FT shooting.
Powell gets team high score in 40 min for her first start.
Five total team assists? Doesn’t get much worse than that, and this was a two PG starting lineup.
Hubbard disappears too much. Might as well use some of those tall girls hidden on the bench. Can’t be any worse.
Click to expand...
They went 2 big lineup for about 8 minutes at the end of the 1st q, beginning of 2nd quarter and scored 2 pts i think. Indiana is a really good defensive team. Our guards really struggled tonight.
 




GopherGangsta said:
I mentioned this in an earlier thread but i would not be surprised if Lindsay steps aside after the year....It must be brutal right now.
Click to expand...

How do you step aside from a half a million a year?
 

Minutes Played and plus/minus (K Bello and Tomancova at about a minus point per minute pace)

40 Powell -13
40 Hubbard -13
37 Scalia -9
35 T Bello -8
28 Brunson -8
9 Adashchyk -2
6 Tomancova -7
5 K Bello -5
 

ATTENTION MARK COYLE:

The whole team need a get away weekend bonding trip to Giants Ridge or ice fishing on Lake of the Woods or something to just have fun and recharge their batteries.

I sensed that they are playing too uptight. Everyone including the coaching staff need a break away from basketball to lighten up and relax.
 

I’m not in love with (+/-), especially for single games. Hubbard sucked for 40 min, so that will reflect on Powell’s (+/-).
 

I don't remember anyone scoring 18 straight points like Grace Berger did. 8 of 8 plus 2 free throws.
 

Shades said:
I’m not in love with (+/-), especially for single games. Hubbard sucked for 40 min, so that will reflect on Powell’s (+/-).
Click to expand...
Agreed. +/- is near useless.

If you’re so short-handed that you play the 5 starters for 40 min each, then all five look equally incompetent if they lose, or equally brilliant if they win.

Now extrapolate that to a 5.5 player rotation, which is pretty much what the used, what with Brunson out injured for a spell, and second-post minutes so small you might as well round their minutes down to zero.

Upshot: Only thing you can conclude from this +/- list is: “I bet Adashchyk and Tomancova and K. Bello came off the bench.”

Also, there’s a math error in the original post referenced by @Shades. Dividing the subs +/- score by their minutes played means you divided by minutes played twice. The +/- is already normalized to playing time, so dividing again gives you units of (points per minutes played) per minutes played.
 

Teri Moren’s well trained defense wasn’t giving us any shots, and the ones we got were rarely going in.

Meanwhile, at the other end we got Bergered. Especially second quarter. The very simplest of screens by her teammates gave her a wide-open look on a mid-range or elbow jumper, and I think (well not sure but it sure seemed like) she made every one of em.

Props to Whalen for giving double-post the college try for a little while, but unfortunately it was mostly a college fail this time around. No motion by the guards, and way too often the ball ended up in the hands of Tomancova at high post or wing as shot clock wound down, and she had no option but shoot - and her shot was pretty bad today. In general I think that with practice, something good could come out of her distributing from the high post, but for crying out loud, guards, can’t you do something besides just stand there? Anybody think of setting an off-ball screen for Taiye so she could get a layup off a bullet pass from Tomancova?

Illinois-game-like free-throw shootin. 9 of 16 from the charity stripe for 56%, while Indiana shot 83% on 20 of 24. We gave em 24 free throws? Well, and I can’t be sure of this since the bar TV was not as big as I wished, but I had a vague feeling that the refs gave them some portion of those 24 charity shots. Anyway, an 11-point differential from the line, and that’s pretty much game over right there.

A 7-rebound margin in Indiana’s favor, and that’s pretty much game to Indiana as well. But part of the issue there was actually Indiana’s hitting everything in sight, leaving few defensive rebound opportunities for us; whereas we were missing everything, leaving lots of defensive rebound opportunities for them. So not lack of rebounding effort on our part, just lack of opportunity.

As noted, only 5 assists for us, 3 for Powell and 2 for Brunson. And 12 turnovers, for a team assist:turnover ratio of .417. Indiana assist:turnover ratio was .889. Actually, the Hoosiers only had 8 assists themselves. They didn’t need many. Just set a simple screen for Berger, who takes a dribble and two steps and cans the jumper. The game looked like a contest between a frustrated offense (Minnesota) and an easy-flowing offense (Indiana).

We only shot 26% from deep. If we had shot our usual 40%, that’s almost an extra 3 made threes for +9 points. Again, almost enough for the win by itself. And we shot 36% from two. Indiana shot 49% from two. We actually got off 6 more shots than them, in spite of rebounding deficit. We shoot our normal percentages, we win the game.

In summary, if we just played “normal” in every category, we would have won a road game against a very good team. This is kind-of a pattern. Except for maybe Nebraska who beat us fair and square probably, every other Big-Ten loss can be directly attributed to either (a) playing sub-par in one or more aspects of the game; or (b) playing without Pitts and/or the Bellos.

In her post-game interview, Teri Moren pretty much admitted that she was shocked and scared by our point-guard penetration, and that they had no answer for it. It’s a major point for tomorrow’s film review with her team.

I think from here on out, we need a new offense leveraging two starting point guards: I’ll call it “point-guard dribble penetration into the paint, almost all of the time.” They can get the layup; or dish to a post; or dish to a post (that is closely guarded but) who can pass it out to a shooting guard spotted up at the three; etc. Let’s banish the “dribble and pass sideways aimlessly behind the three-point line until the shot clock runs out” offense to Siberia (or at least International Falls).

And when the whole team takes that retreat to Giants Ridge or Lutsen or Bluefin Bay or whatever, can the coaches please tell them, “Look, just relax and play to your capabilities in every category, and you got the win against all Big-Ten teams except perhaps the top three, and you got a fightin chance against them too.”
 
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GopherGangsta said:
I mentioned this in an earlier thread but i would not be surprised if Lindsay steps aside after the year....It must be brutal right now.
Click to expand...
I think this is highly unlikely and not just because of her salary. Whalen is a fierce competitor and has found a whay to win at every level. I just can't see her backing out of this next challenge in her career. She will learn from her mistakes and work hard to improve this team.
 

GringaGopher said:
I think this is highly unlikely and not just because of her salary. Whalen is a fierce competitor and has found a whay to win at every level. I just can't see her backing out of this next challenge in her career. She will learn from her mistakes and work hard to improve this team.
Click to expand...
Agreed, don’t think she will bail, don’t know coach Whalen personally but she doesn’t seem like the type. Hopefully she gets more time to recruit bigs for the big ten season. Team does look a little deflated and quite frankly lacking confidence, not really seeing a leader on the court that is leading by example or by emotion, hopefully someone soon assumes this role.
 

Ignatius L Hoops said:
I don't remember anyone scoring 18 straight points like Grace Berger did. 8 of 8 plus 2 free throws.
Click to expand...
So, after about the first 9 of those points, don’t you just automatically switch to a “box and Berger” defense, or “triangle and two Bergers” defense, or some other Berger-focused defense?
 


www.idsnews.com

Grace Berger’s double-double pushes No. 20 IU women’s basketball past Minnesota

Grace Berger led IU in scoring in the team's victory over Minnesota.
www.idsnews.com www.idsnews.com

The crowd at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall shouted various chants and words of encouragement when junior guard Ali Patberg passed the ball to sophomore guard Grace Berger. Minnesota head coach Lindsay Whalen screamed one thing to her players:

“Get her!”

What started as a scoreless first quarter transformed into a shooting clinic for the sophomore. No. 20 IU women’s basketball rode Berger’s season-high 25 points and 11 rebounds to a 65-52 victory over Minnesota on Monday.
Click to expand...


As defenders continued to pressure the Hoosier guard, Berger kept hitting mid-range shots. Sophomore forward Aleksa Gulbe and senior forward Brenna Wise met Berger at the perimeter and created enough room for her to evade the Gophers and get the ball off.

“My teammates were setting good screens for me and spacing the floor, and I just kept knocking them down,” Berger said.
Click to expand...


The Kentucky native helped IU prevent second-chance opportunities by boxing out defenders. Her career-high and team-leading 11 rebounds all came on the defensive end and allowed her to keep the ball and score on the other end.

Moren typically sends her guards back when an opponent shoots the ball. She relies on the forwards to secure rebounds. Tonight, Moren’s team relied on its shooting guard.

“We need our guards to rebound,” Moren said. “We face teams in the Big Ten that are superb in transition, and they really make you pay if you don’t sprint back. She had a good night.”
Click to expand...
 

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