LIVE BLOG: No. 25 Indiana Women's Basketball Begins Regular Season Against Brown

The Indiana women's basketball team takes on Brown at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in the regular season opener.

Todd Golden | Nov 4, 2024

Indiana's Sydney Parrish (33) passes during the Indiana versus Maryville women's basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. / Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Welcome to the 2024-25 women's basketball season! No. 25 Indiana begins its regular season on Monday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall against Brown from the Ivy League.

It's the first of two Ivy League opponents this week for the Hoosiers. Harvard comes to Assembly Hall on Thursday.

The game

• If you're wondering, the game is being broadcast on Big Ten-plus. Here's how you can watch.

• Crowd is about what you'd expect. Not a huge turnout, but not insigificant either. If everyone piled into the same areas, the fans would fit below the concourse entrances.

• Teri Moren begins her 11th season in Bloomington. That's hard to believe. I covered her at Indiana State and it doesn't seem like it was that long ago that she was there.

• Brown 3-0, 813 1Q. Bears off to a good start. Moving the ball well to keep Indiana's defense moving. Indiana is 0-for-2 with a turnover to start.

• Indiana 9-3, 454 1Q. That promising start for Brown lasted all of two minutes. Hoosiers answered with a 9-0 run. Sydney Parrish and Yarden Garzon hit from beyond the arc to kick things off for the Hoosiers. Parrish also has two blocked shots. The Bears made their first shot to briefly lead, but have missed 10 in a row since. Indiana isn't shooting well, but the Hoosiers seem destined to take control of this rather quickly.

• Teri Moren went to Karoline Striplin pretty early. Lilly Meister picked up an early foul on an illegal screen, but she went to the bench pretty quickly in the exhibition too. Keeping the bigs fresh is obviously helpful.

• Indiana 15-5, 147 1Q. Weird game. Comfortable for the Hoosiers, but also sloppy at times. Indiana has three turnovers, including not advancing the ball past mid-court in-time. Where Indiana has been ruthlessly consistent is with its defense. Brown is 2 of 13 from the floor and while it can move the ball? It sometimes moves it too much, resulting in turnovers.

• End 1st quarter: Indiana 18, Brown 7 - Bears were 3 of 16 in the first quarter, including 1 of 10 from 3-point range. Hoosiers ended up at 50% from the field. Indiana has doubled up Brown on the glass with a 14-7 advantage. Seven different Hoosiers have scored, led by Parrish's 4 points.

• Brown has been able to get dribble-penetration, but Indiana is snookering the Bears into an extra post pass and the Hoosiers keep forcing turnovers from it. Bears don't have the size to attack Indiana's bigs.

• Haven't seen Lenee Beaumont in the rotation yet. Hoosiers have played eight so far: starters plus Karoline Striplin, Jules LaMendola and Henna Sandvik.

• Indiana 29-17, 416 2Q. Bears are hanging around. Brown has made 4 of 6 in the second quarter, including a pair of 3s. If Brown hadn't missed all four of its free throws, this would be a relatively close contest. Hoosiers with six turnovers, not an egregious amount, but something to clean up.

• Mady Calhoun, Gianna Aiello and Mackenzie Leahy all with two fouls for Brown. Bears have been called twice for hooking Indiana rebounders on Indiana misses.

• Indiana winning the second quarter by a 17-14 margin. Combination of some missed open shots by the Hoosiers and Brown disrupting shots.

• Halftime: Indiana 39, Brown 21 - Brown missed its last six shots of the half and Indiana took advantage of the 3:27 drought. Solid half by the Hoosiers, but there were a few things to clean up. About what you'd expect in the first regular season game of the season.

• Halftime stats: Indiana 48.4%, Brown 28.6% from the field. Indiana is 3 of 13 from 3-point range. Brown is 4 of 19.

Indiana has a 22-15 edge in rebounds and a 10-4 edge in assists. Indiana has a 9-0 edge in second chance points.

Sydney Parrish leads Indiana with 9 points and 7 rebounds. Karoline Striplin has 7 points. Yarden Garzon and Lilly Meister have 6 points each. Olivia Young leads Brown with 7 points.

• StatBroadcast has an analytics tab within the live scoring. Sydney Parrish has an efficiency score of 14 and a game score of 9.7 if you care about such things. Shay Ciezki leads the plus-minus at plus-21. Karoline Striplin is lowest at 0.

• Sydney Parrish has a stop percentage of 118.2%. Stop percentage estimates the rate of defensive possessions where the opposing team did not score. Apparently this means Parrish is haunting Brown's dreams too?

• Indiana 49-29, 445 3Q. Comfortable for Indiana ... and yet? Hoosiers only have a 10-8 edge in the third quarter as Indiana missed five of its first six shots. Brown hasn't been able to get hot enough to really worry Indiana. Hoosiers getting solid mileage out of Meister and Striplin in the lane. Indiana has scored 24 in the paint overall.

• Indiana 53-33, 316 3Q. Still Indiana's game without the Hoosiers really pushing this to a crazy margin. Offensively, Indiana doing a good job of having Striplin line up on one side of the lane or another, spreading the floor, and using Yarden Garzon or other penetrators to drive down the opposite and then dish to Striplin when the Brown defensive collapses. I wouldn't say it's five-out, but it uses similar principles.

• Brown is one of the few Division I teams to use its namesake as a primary or even secondary color. Off the top of my head: Brown, Bowling Green, Valparaiso, Wyoming, Idaho?, Long Beach State? That's all I got. I'm sure I'm missing an obvious one.

• Indiana 55-42, 120 3Q. Here come the Bears. A 9-0 run has the Indiana lead down to 13 late in the third quarter. Brown finally strung together some 3s.

• End third quarter: Indiana 60, Brown 44 - A three-point play by Sydney Parrish and a running layup by Karoline Striplin restored order to the Indiana offense to end the quarter. Still, Brown won the third quarter 23-21. And those 23 points are the highest-scoring quarter for either team so far. A moral victory for the Ivy Leaguers.

• Post player Gianna Aiello fouls out for the Bears. None of Brown's other players have more than three fouls. Striplin has three for the Hoosiers, but no one else has more than two fouls.

• With Aiello disqualified, Indiana is attacking the rim without much resistance being offered by the out-sized Bears.

• Indiana 70-49, 642 4Q. Brown calls a timeout. Bears resistance finally broke as Indiana did a very good job of finding cutters to the rim for easy baskets. Bears tried to hang in there with its 3-point game, but Brown is 1 of 4 from long range in the fourth quarter. All 10 of Indiana's points have been scored in the paint in the final period. Parrish has scored 6 points. Indiana has 4 assists on 5 field goals in the quarter/

• Sydney Parrish goes coast-to-coast for a layup that put her at 20 points and 10 rebounds. Let the double-double count begin.

• Indiana extending the rotation a bit with the lead at 21 with 4:32 left. Sharnecce Currie-Jelks enters the fray.

• Valentyna Kadlecova also into the game for the Hoosiers. And she scored on a nice cut from a feed by Currie-Jelks. Faith Wiseman into the game too.

• FINAL: Indiana 82, Brown 60 - Ultimately stress-free for the Hoosiers, who ran away and didn't quite hide, but who were also only briefly threatened by the Bears.

• Scoring: Indiana - Shay Ciezki 7, Yarden Garzon 16, Chloe Moore-McNeil 2 (only 2 FGA), Sydney Parrish 20, Lilly Meister 13, Karoline Striplin 17, Valentyna Kadlecova 2, Julianna LaMendola 3, Henna Sandvik 2, Sharnecce Currie-Jelks 0, Faith Wiseman 0.

Brown - Isabella Mauricio 15, Olivia Young 13, Grace Arnolie 8, Mackenzie Leahy 0, Gianna Aiello 0, Gia Powell 9, Sela Klein 0, Mady Calhoun 3, Elizabeth Nelson 4, Aima Ofunrein 8.

Pregame

• Starters: Indiana - Shay Ciezki, Chloe Moore-McNeil, Sydney Parrish, Lilly Meister, Yarden Garzon.

Brown - Isabella Mauricio, Olivia Young, Grace Arnolie, Mackenzie Leahy, Gianna Aiello.

• The good news is that Sydney Parrish was out warming up with the rest of the Hoosiers. She suffered an ankle injury in last week's exhibition game against Maryville, but she seems unaffected.

• The bad news is that Lexus Bargesser remains out. She's still in a boot so she won't play tonight. We'll have to see about Lenee Beaumont, who missed the Maryville exhibition.

• Update: Beaumont is taking part in pregame warmups. We'll see if she can get some minutes tonight.

• Brown is not a traditional Ivy League power, but they were decent a year ago. The Bears were 16-11 overall and 7-7 in the Ivy League, which is a good league at the top of its standings. However, leading scorer Kyla Jones transferred to Northwestern. She averaged 17.1 points.

• I'm curious about Indiana's defense. The Hoosiers were suffocating against Maryville, but the Saints took a suicidal amount of threes (it's an exhibition, I get it) and Brown won't likely do that tonight. Be interesting to see what the Bears try to do to throw Indiana off-balance.

• I'm looking forward to seeing how Lilly Meister fares tonight. She's so important to the Hoosiers' fortunes. She certainly made a statement with a strong performance against Maryville. Hoosiers needs to see more of the same tonight.

The game

Pregame

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