Quick Hitters: Key takeaways from Indiana women’s basketball NCAA Tournament region

Indiana women’s basketball heard its name called on Sunday during the women’s selection show and got the news it wanted — being a host. Indiana received a four-seed and will host its first two games inside of Assembly Hall.

Indiana’s first round matchup will be against 13-seed Fairfield on Saturday afternoon at 1:30 pm ET.

With Indiana hosting for the third straight season, it looks to make it to its third Sweet Sixteen in the past four years.

But, there are a ton of storylines in Indiana’s region. So, let’s break them all down and take a look at the key stats and takeaways from the Albany region.

1 loss: That’s it. That’s how many losses Fairfield has this season and Indiana gets a matchup with them in round one. Fairfield’s loss came in just its third game of the season to Vanderbilt and has now won 29 games in a row. The Stags are also currently ranked in the AP Top 25, coming in at No. 25. So, while this is a 13-seed, this is no layover opponent for Indiana. It played three power-six opponents, its three-point loss to Vandy then an average margin of victory by 24.5 points against Rutgers and St. John’s.

2 wins vs No. 1: If Indiana is able to get by in the first round it could have a second round matchup with Big 12 regular season champions, Oklahoma. As the 5-seed, the Sooners have some very impressive wins, but none are more impressive than getting two wins against Texas this year — the fourth No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Texas had just four losses on the season, with two of them coming at the hands of Oklahoma. They’re battle tested and have won back-to-back Big 12 titles.

3 years: Carly Thibault-DuDonis is the head coach for Fairfield and she has a special connection to the Indiana women’s basketball program … to a certain extent. She was an assistant and associate head coach at Minnesota from 2018-22. Why does that matter? Indiana guard Sara Scalia played at Minnesota for three of those seasons, averaging 14.5 points on 38.1 percent from three. While Scalia is a different player now than when she first got into college, it’s still a great tool to have in your toolkit for Fairfield — with the potential to know what to do to limit Scalia’s scoring ability.

9 teams: In the Albany region with Indiana, alone, there are nine teams who either won their regular season or conference tournaments. That’s a lot of talented teams in one region. Either way, Indiana will play two conference winners by way of Fairfield (regular + conference) and then Oklahoma (regular season) or FGCU (regular + conference) if it advances to the Round of 32. The ‘good’ part is if Indiana is able to get by South Carolina in the Sweet Sixteen, there will be less potential conference champions on the bottom side than the top. Either way, it’s going to be a difficult first few rounds for IU.

12 seed: Florida Gulf Coast won’t be easy for Oklahoma in its first matchup by any means, and history is on its side. FGCU is actually the winningest 12-seed in NCAA Tournament history with three wins coming as as 12-seed, including one last year. In total, three of its four wins in their tournament history have come as a 12-seed. They have won 22 games in a row and UConn is the only other program in the nation to have at least 25 wins in 14 straight years.

29.8 points per game: This is the margin of victory this season from South Carolina, the No. 1 overall seed. The Gamecocks are phenomenal and this would be a potential Sweet Sixteen matchup with Indiana if both were to advance. Currently undefeated, South Carolina has taken down seven ranked opponents by an average of 16.3 points this season as well. Its schedule wasn’t made of cupcakes either. Only six games were against non-power six opponents, with six out of conference play matchups against power six programs.

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