Everything Teri Moren Said After No. 25 Indiana's 72-68 Loss To Harvard

Indiana coach Teri Moren addressed the media after the Hoosiers were upset by Harvard at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

Indiana Head Coach Teri Moren disagrees with a call during the Indiana versus Brown women's basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. / Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - The 25th-ranked Indiana women's basketball team suffered a shocking 72-68 overtime loss to Harvard on Thursday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

Indiana had 27 turnovers in the contest, the most for the Hoosiers since 2016. Indiana also let a late four-point lead slip away as the Crimson forced overtime and controlled the final period to win the game.

Here's everything Indiana coach Teri Moren had to say about the defeat in her postgame press conference:

Opening statement ...

Moren: First of all, that's a really, really, really, really good Harvard team, very well coached. They played hard. We got them into foul trouble. They wouldn't go away. So that is a very tough, greedy group that came in here and kind of punched us in the in the mouth that first quarter.

Give our kids credit for battling back, because they did, as we knew they would, they were not going to go down without a fight. But look at the stat sheet, they got 17 more shots than we did because of our 27 turnovers. However we get to the line 38 times. We didn't shoot it well, except for the second quarter. Just nothing. Our scorers in terms of Yarden and Chloe and Syd, you know, you look at their stat sheets, it's just not good enough. Going down the stretch, we were trying to attack.

I think Yarden, you know, got a little overzealous at times, and she's going to have to do a better job of reading what the defense gives her. She she draws so much attention, and she's such a smart player for her willingness to kick that thing out and not, either take a bad shot and or charge is something that we got to continue to show her and she has to grow as a basketball player. There's no doubt that we're disappointed. You know, you look at the stat sheet, they had 32 points off of our turnovers. They had more points in the paint. Fast break baskets. We didn't have any. They had 16. Their bench came in and gave them 23 we got seven from ours. So disappointed, but give Harvard credit, they came in and really did a nice job against us.

On whether Moren thought the red flags she saw in Monday win over Brown were responded to from the Hoosiers ...

Moren: I will say that they responded how I thought they would. Understood that, you know, 18 turnovers, 11 threes is just too many. And they understood that they had to be so much better. Tuesday was a little funky, because we watched a lot of film, and then we're going in the morning right now, and I have kids that have one o'clock classes, so that I had about seven of them that had to leave early, and so it wasn't a full practice, but last night was. They met as a team before practice and focus was great. I think they were really excited about getting back on the floor. I just felt like their their focus is where it needed to be.

But going back to Harvard, I mean, they came out in that first quarter, and not only the press, but their physicality. I mean, they were physical with us. Nothing that we did was easy and and so that's disappointing that we didn't match that physicality, but we didn't handle it better. We'll have to go back and watch some of the things that went wrong and just keep chipping away. This is not the team it was a year ago. We have a lot of room to improve and grow. We will. This is a team full of competitors and it may take us a minute, a couple games. I hope it's just a couple to start figuring some things out. I feel like we're better shooters than we've displayed tonightI. t's disappointing, but I did like how they responded.

On Harvard's press and physicality ...

Moren: We've seen a lot of different presses in the Big 10. You think about Ohio State. We probably started working on our press attack far earlier than we ever have. We have felt like that's been a little bit of Achilles heel for us. Some of those, I mean, we just threw it right to them. So there's a lot of them to sift through on film. It's disappointing that we didn't handle that piece of it better, because it wasn't a surprise. We worked on it, we talked about it. We knew they were going to press. They knew, especially on made baskets, dead balls, missed baskets, we knew they were going to come back in the backboard and just try to be there, be pesky. There were moments where we panicked, there were moments where they sped us up. So those are all things that are hard lessons, but they're lessons that we have to learn, and we got to take those lessons and improve.

On whether Moren is worried about the psyche of the team ...

Moren: I'm not sure that I'm I'm worried. I mean, it's early, right? Is it perplexing? Yeah, it's perplexing to me how we are a veteran team and how we can have those moments. We had them against Brown, where we entered the ball and it went out of our hands on a just a simple entry to the wing. Yarden throws it ahead to Jules and it somehow goes out of bounds. We dribbled it off our leg a couple times. Those are uncharacteristic of us, and I get it, that's not what we normally look like. We don't look like that. I'm more perplexed by it than I am worried, because I know this group well enough to know that they are competitors. They want to get it right. And I'm confident that they will.

But it's nights like tonight that you do scratch your head. I thought that last the Brown game would have been a really great lesson for us to learn, like we just can't have those unforced turnovers. But here we are tonight against a team that sped us up. I mean, they pressed us a little bit differently, different than Brown did. But there were a couple of those that you just shake your head. I'm not sure why that's happening. I wish I had a better answer.

On whether there was ever the feeling that Indiana would get things under control ...

Moren: I think when we were up three and they advanced the ball. We're going to try to switch everything. And they ran a high double stagger into a ghost which is really a great call. That can cause some confusion, ghost screens or fake screens. I felt like that group, leaving the time out, they knew that they they had to get the stop, and if they got the stop, then there was probably a good chance that we're going to get out of here with a win, you know, but the kid hit the shot.

On getting Yarden Garzon and Chloe Moore-McNeil shots in overtime ...

Moren: You try to put the ball in their hand which is what we did. It's just that they got to be better decision makers when they draw so much help. Their willingness to be able to find either the drop and or the kick out. Yarden, you know, puts the ball in the deck, and there's three defenders that are running at her right, and she keeps going. She charges. I have to go back on film, but there's no doubt that there's probably two people on that strong side that's wide open. Those are decisions that she's going to kind of have to improve and get better at. She's a smart player. I think Yarden was trying to will her team to a win. So if she's guilty of anything. It's just trying to be a playmaker for us, and trying to score.

On the message moving forward ...

Moren: It's early in the season. I always say one game, although it's super disappointing, they can't break our heart. We'll take tomorrow off and on Saturday and get back to work. That's all that we know around here. So it's disappointing. Give credit to Harvard. That's a really good basketball team. We're going to have to go back and watch film and learn and just keep trying to chip away. You got to keep showing up and doing the work and improving.

I don't think anybody has hit the panic button quite yet. I think Syd said to you guys against Brown this is not the team of last year. There's new pieces and they're all trying to still figure out how that all works together. It may not happen as early as our fans and maybe as we would like, how quickly as we would like, but we have to stick to the process of just trying to improve a little bit more every day. Take those moments where you know the turnovers and the poor decisions and the choices that we made have got to be better.

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