Sydney Parrish: 'We Just Got to Move On' After Indiana Women's Basketball Iowa Loss

Sunday afternoon, Indiana women's basketball dropped its second game of the season to Iowa in a nail biter between the conference's two best teams. Hoosier guard Sydney Parrish spoke with media following the defeat.

IOWA City, Iowa — It wasn't a bad loss to Iowa by Indiana women's basketball on Sunday — just unfortunate. Junior guard Sydney Parrish, who finished with 18 points, spoke to media following the defeat.

In the final 1.5 seconds of the game, Hawkeyes guard Caitlin Clark hit a buzzer beating three-pointer to win the game 86-85 for Iowa. Until that point, Indiana had fought back from as much as a 13-point deficit in the first quarter to build up a small lead in the second half.

The Hoosiers finished shooting 49.2 percent from the field, 94.1 percent from the charity stripe and only tallied eight turnovers. Iowa shot 51.7 percent from the field, 75 percent from the line and had seven turnovers. The matchup was a perfect example of competitive Big Ten basketball between the conference's best two teams.

It didn't necessarily count for anything since it was the Hoosiers' final regular season game and they already clinched the Big Ten regular season title, but every game is special to Indiana no matter the circumstances or opponent.

Here's what Parrish had to say following the loss:

On moving on from the loss...

PARRISH: You know, we love the game. Our whole team is super super competitive, so it's not like this didn't mean a lot to us. Like you said, I don't know if it's going to change a lot in the seedings or the rankings or whatever, but we're really competitive and we wanted that game. 

It's not like we're just gonna throw it out the window and act like it didn't happen, but we just got to move on. We have a great Big Ten Tournament coming up next week, and possibly we get to play them again. It'll be another great matchup, so I think really just focusing, flipping the page and going to you know, the tournaments and that's where it's gonna get really fun. 

We're excited. I mean, credit to Iowa, credit to Caitlin, was a tough shot. She's one of the best players in the country, so credit to them, but we're ready for the tournaments.

On what changed individually for Parrish after halftime...

PARRISH: I don't know if much changed. I try to let the game come to me as much as I can, didn't shoot it great the first half,  so my teammates found me open on a couple skip passes when they were helping really far on to Mack, so I think that just allowed for open threes, and Coach kept saying we need to shoot the ball with confidence, and so we came out and I thought we shot a lot more confidently in the second half than the first.

On staying together...

PARRISH: Yeah, I think our coaching staff does a great job of keeping us I guess humble and just together every single day in practice and holding us accountable every day. 

I think that's really going to help us make the runs we need in these tournaments, and I mean, you kind of saw we were down like 10, 13 maybe during the game, and we just kept fighting back, and I think that's one of the big things too about this team is we're fighters and we're gonna fight to the very, very end and we came back from what could have been a really really big ugly lead and made it a really fun game.

Related stories on Indiana women's basketball

• 2023 BIG TEN WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE The 2023 Big Ten Women's Basketball Tournament schedule is set,with Indiana earning the No. 1 seed and Iowa at No. 2. Here is the full schedule complete with dates, times, TV networks and seeding. CLICK HERE
• WATCH CAITLIN CLARK'S BUZZER BEATER: Watch the highlight of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark hitting the buzzer-beater three-point shot to defeat the No. 2 Indiana women's basketball team at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Sunday. CLICK HERE
• GAME STORY: HOOSIERS FALL TO IOWA OFF BUZZER BEATER: In a regular season finale letdown, No. 2 Indiana women's basketball fell to No. 6 Iowa 86-85 off of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark's three-point buzzer beater shot in Iowa City Sunday afternoon. CLICK HERE