Blowout loss at Stanford a wake-up call for IU women's basketball. How will Hoosiers react?
It wasn't a pretty sight for No. 9 IU women's basketball on Sunday afternoon.
The Hoosiers probably didn't travel to Palo Alto to face No. 13 Stanford, three time zones away, with an expectation to be dominant. But they likely didn't expect to be dominated, either. After all, IU was the higher-ranked team.
But that's what happened.
IU suffered the third-worst loss of Teri Moren's tenure in a 32-point defeat to Stanford, 96-64, and they left California disappointed and 1-1 on the season.
"Really, it was a good, old-fashioned butt-kicking," Moren said postgame. "That's what it looked like. Stanford was terrific."
'A good old-fashioned butt-kicking.' Stanford blows out Indiana in top-15 matchup
One of the biggest tests for IU this season will be mental. The Hoosiers had a historic season last year, becoming Big Ten champions, capturing a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and winning a program-record 28 games.
With four starters returning, expectations haven't changed — if anything, they've gotten even higher. With a top-10 preseason ranking, the women on this 2023-24 IU team expect to be great. They expect to make a splash in the nonconference scene, and they expect to be one of the best, if not the best, team in the Big Ten this year.
The biggest question is: How will an early-season blowout loss affect their mentality? Will they shrink at future top-ranked matchups, or come out more prepared than ever?
"I think it opened up the eyes of the younger players on our team," IU senior Sydney Parrish said. "Our freshmen, our transfers, and even some of our sophomores who haven't played in big games like this before. Just realizing that any team that comes to play us is going to give it their all, and I think we have to stick together through this. It really is a tough loss, but all we can do right now is learn from it."
Parrish said this game acted as a wake-up call. Stanford dominated the game from the start with its two-post lineup — something IU wasn't ready for.
With more two-post lineups on the schedule this month — the Hoosiers will see No. 12 Tennessee and its similar offense at the Fort Myers Tip-off later this month — IU knows it needs to be better prepared.
"I know I've never lost by, what was it, 40-some points in my life, and I don't think a lot of the girls on this team ever had," Parrish said. "Coach was saying this might be a blessing in disguise and widens our eyes a little bit, so we realize we have a number to our name, but we've got to bring it everywhere we go — whether it be at home, or when we're in Florida."
The reality of women's college basketball this season is that anybody can beat anybody. No. 1 LSU lost its first game of the season to No. 20 Colorado this week, and No. 2 UConn fell to NC State in another upset Sunday afternoon. In the Big Ten, No. 21 USC upset No. 6 Ohio State.
IU is not going to win the rest of its ranked matchups this season. With Iowa, Tennessee, Ohio State and Maryland all on the docket with a gauntlet of a Big Ten schedule, another ranked loss is something the Hoosiers are going to experience, whether they're ready for it or not.
"There's a whole lot of good teams," Moren said. "The parity in women's basketball — I thought last year was at an all-time high, but certainly this year. I think everybody, from a fan perspective, likes these early matchups. You don't have to wait until March Madness to see some of these. And that's exactly why we scheduled this game. We wanted to come out and we wanted this to be an early test against a team that we have a tremendous amount of respect for."
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana women's basketball: How will Hoosiers respond to Stanford loss
