Penn State\u00a0possesses\u00a0one of the most dynamic scoring duos in the Big Ten. Ahead of its contest against Indiana women\u2019s basketball, sophomore guard Kiyomi\u00a0McMiller\u00a0averaged 22.3\u00a0points per game and redshirt junior center Gracie Merkle averaged\u00a019.1.\u00a0Both marks rank in the top 10 in the conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the two headed monster we were concerned about,\u201d Indiana head coach Teri Moren said Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Hoosiers limited Penn States\u2019 high-scoring pair\u00a0en\u00a0route to\u00a0their\u00a093-59\u00a0victory<\/a>\u00a0over the\u00a0Lady Lions on Saturday at Simon\u00a0Skjodt\u00a0Assembly Hall in Bloomington. While Merkle scored\u00a0a team-high 22 points and 10 rebounds against Indiana, the Hoosiers limited\u00a0McMiller\u00a0to just four points off 1-for-12 shooting from the field.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Indiana\u2019s defensive dominance was\u00a0evident\u00a0from the jump. After 6-foot-6 Merkle won\u00a0tipoff\u00a0for Penn State against\u00a0freshman\u00a0guard Nevaeh Caffey,\u00a0Merkle attempted an inside shot against junior forward Edessa Noyan.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Merkle missed but grabbed her own rebound with her 3-inch advantage over Noyan.\u00a0Merkle tried to put her shot back, but, again, it missed, and senior guard Shay Ciezki flew in to grab the rebound under the basket.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Ciezki ran down the court and passed the ball to\u00a0Len\u00e9e\u00a0Beaumont.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0redshirt\u00a0sophomore guard\u00a0drove toward the basket before passing to Caffey, who was\u00a0standing beyond the 3-point.\u00a0Caffey\u00a0immediately\u00a0attempted\u00a0a shot from\u00a0long\u00a0range and drained it.\u00a0<\/p>\n The opening 25 seconds of the contest foreshadowed a game to come \u2013 Indiana making defensive stops and taking advantage of them on the\u00a0offensive\u00a0end.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Caffey was the catalyst in the defensive\u00a0showing. Throughout the season,\u00a0the Warrenton, Missouri,\u00a0native\u00a0has\u00a0been tasked with\u00a0guarding\u00a0opponents’\u00a0top offensive threats, and Saturday was no different.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we ask her to do every night,\u00a0which\u00a0is\u00a0guard\u00a0the best player on the other team and\u00a0then\u00a0run\u00a0our team, it\u00a0was a lot for a\u00a0freshman,\u201d\u00a0Moren said\u00a0after the Hoosiers beat Wisconsin on Feb. 4.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Caffey, who recorded a season-high 18 points Saturday,\u00a0was on the floor, she was\u00a0tagged\u00a0on\u00a0McMiller,\u00a0who\u2019s\u00a0scored 30 or more points in her last\u00a0six contests leading into Saturday, including a 40-point showing against USC on Feb. 25.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n McMiller\u00a0got 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\u00a0from the\u00a0field\u00a0and her only points\u00a0came from the free-throw line.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think just having the confidence with all the prep that we did, and the coaches pouring\u00a0into me and my teammates pouring into me,\u201d Caffey said, \u201cknowing that everyone\u2019s\u00a0gonna\u00a0be in their gaps, and don\u2019t bite at\u00a0none\u00a0of her\u00a0(McMiller\u2019s)\u00a0stuff, that helped me a lot.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n While Merkle scored above her season average,\u00a0Indiana found a way to limit her despite the size advantage.\u00a0Of Merkle\u2019s 22 total points, 16 came in the second half, which was after the Hoosiers had already tallied a 34-point lead.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Indiana has struggled\u00a0on the interior against bigger opponents. Against\u00a0No. 2\u00a0UCLA<\/a>\u00a0on Feb. 15, the Hoosiers gave up 42 points in the paint with just 16 of their own. Indiana\u00a0scored just 18 points in the paint and\u00a0allowed\u00a0Illinois<\/a>\u00a0to score 58\u00a0on\u00a0Dec. 6.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Noyan and junior forward Jade\u00a0Ondineme\u00a0were the primary defenders on the interior. Both are 3 inches shorter than Merkle, and while she found ways to score late,\u00a0limiting\u00a0her\u00a0was\u00a0an important factor\u00a0that the Hoosiers\u00a0answered.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n “I thought that our fives, Edessa, Jade, did a good job on Merkle, as well…\u201d Moren said. \u201cI thought we did a great job of crowding Merkle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The dominant victory gave Indiana its\u00a0sixth\u00a0Big Ten win of the season and allowed it to clinch a spot in the\u00a0conference tournament.\u00a0The Hoosiers went 6-2 in February to make a\u00a0late-season\u00a0push for a spot in the Big Ten Tournament\u00a0from\u00a0March 4-8.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As Indiana enters the conference tournament Wednesday, its defensive efforts against Penn State need to be replicated.\u00a0Nearly any\u00a0team the Hoosiers will play in the tournament will have a dynamic scoring guard like\u00a0McMiller;\u00a0many will have a dominant interior player like Merkle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Either way, Indiana proved that its defensive efforts against those types of\u00a0players\u00a0are possible and important\u00a0to\u00a0winning\u00a0in the Big Ten, but the replication will be important.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn State\u00a0possesses\u00a0one of the most dynamic scoring duos in the Big Ten. Ahead of its contest against Indiana…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-510912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}