The growth and development from IU women’s basketball this year is evident. Now, being ‘back on track’ it heads into massive opportunity with No. 1 UCLA coming to town

There is always a learning curve when a program enters a new era. Whether it’s a new coach or new players, it takes time to see the growth and confidence needed in order to win at a high level. That’s exactly the process that the IU women’s basketball program has been going through during the first two months of the season.

While some key pieces of its core returned from the last few years, the main focal point in All-American center Mackenzie Holmes did not. The do-it-all center for Indiana whose legacy speaks for itself wasn’t walking through the doors of Assembly Hall and putting on the candy stripes again. So, there was certainly going to be a ramp up period for this year’s team. Not only learning how to play without her, but more importantly was finding confidence in everyone’s roles and responsibilities.

And in the early stages of the season you could see the team still working out some kinks and learning how to play together. The result? Back-to-back losses to Harvard and Butler that sent off a bit of a panic around the usually very steady Teri Moren coached program. The loss to Harvard was the first regular-season home loss since 2022, first home loss to a non-conference opponent since 2021 and to go even deeper — its first non-conference loss at home to a non-power four opponent since 2018.

During that process, Moren’s message remained strong and consistent — this team would eventually get there but it was most certainly going to be a major work in progress.

Well, that work in progress is starting to arrive at a place of consistency and look more like the IU women’s basketball teams the country has been accustomed to seeing over the last few years.

Saturday’s 31-point win over Wisconsin seemed to echo that sentiment. Not only was it sixth win in a row for Indiana, it was also the sixth straight double-digit win.

“I do think that they they feel good about how we’re trending right now,” Moren said following the win. “They realize there’s so much basketball ahead of us. We have so much work still to do, but I feel like there’s a confidence in how we’re trending here in the last month. It feels good to kind of get back on track.”

With Sydney Parrish, Chloe Moore-McNeil and Yarden Garzon back in the mix, IU women’s basketball came into this season with a great deal of confidence knowing that three key players who have already spent years inside the program would be returning and leading the charge.

IU went out and added transfers like Shay Ciezki and Karoline Striplin to round out the rotation and bring additional power-four veteran presence to the lineup.

But still, learning to play without Mackenzie Holmes and Sara Scalia were two major hurdles to overcome early on. Those early struggles, however, are now leading into a path of significant growth and development — both of which are clear on the floor.

“There’s a tremendous amount of growth still left for this basketball team. Adversity teaches you a lot of really good lessons and we had our share of it early,” Moren said. “Maybe those outside (of the program) were surprised by it, but I don’t know that inside our staff was as surprised by it. I’m going to say it again when you’re trying to figure out how to play differently — when I say differently, without an All-American post player (Mackenzie Holmes), it takes time. It’s a process. And we have also newcomers in Shay (Ciezki) and Strip (Karoline Striplin) that have to get used to how we play. So you’re mixing in pieces that are new to our program. You’ve already taken Mackenzie out of the mix and (Sara) Scalia out of the mix, a really, really good player for us.”

During IU’s 4-3 start, it was shooting just 40.2 percent from the floor, 27.4 percent from three, turning the ball over 16.7 times a game and dishing out only 11.7 assists a game. A receipt for disaster.

During the six game winning streak, those numbers have jumped to 50.8 percent overall, 42 percent from three, 23.2 assists a game and just 10.8 turnovers a game. It’s been an unbelievable turnaround, one that just needed some time.

“I think it’s just been a matter of time for us to figure out what that looks like for us,” Moren added. “Some of it is playing fast. Some of it is making sure that when we execute, we get our pieces where we want them. We have to be able to execute at a high, high level, because Mack could bail us out of a lot of those scenarios, right? Those situations where we went on streaks where two minutes we weren’t scoring — and as everybody called her — she was the cheat code. We could throw that ball into Mack and she was going to make something happen for us. Usually good. It’s just think it’s a been a matter of time.”

Next up is the big test to see whether all of the recent improvement can stick when No. 1 UCLA comes to Bloomington. It’ll be the fourth ranked opponent IU has faced this season, 2-1 in the first three matchups.

But, UCLA is as dominant as it gets and sits at 12-0 with one of the biggest wins in recent history in the women’s game — a 15-point win over then-No. 1 South Carolina. That is the only double-digit loss in the last four seasons for South Carolina and the first regular season loss for the Gamecocks in the last 2.5 seasons.

IU women’s basketball knows what it’ll take to try to pull the upset but is also trying to approach this as a one-game-at-a-time mindset — the same approach its taken to get them back on track with Big Ten play going full steam ahead.

“They’re really good,” Moren said. ” … There’s a reason why they’re number one in the country right now, right? They’re really good and they have a lot of different weapons and then they have great depth off the bench … We’re going to need everybody to show up and help us with the energy. I thought today the energy was really good. They’re really good, but the Big Ten is really good. So they’re just the next game for us, so that’s the only thing that we’ll focus on. We’ll put this one behind us and get ready for the next one.”

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