What Teri Moren Said After Indiana Women's Basketball Lost 68-54 To Illinois

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Indiana women's basketball team lost 68-54 to Illinois Thursday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.

Coach Teri Moren and the Hoosiers had won eight of their last nine games, but this loss drops their overall record to 12-5 and 4-2 in Big Ten play. Sydney Parrish, Chloe Moore-McNeil and Shay Ciezki each scored 13 points, but overall the Hoosiers scored their third-fewest points of the season and committed 14 turnovers.

Here's everything Moren said in her postgame press conference.

Opening statement

Moren: "Super disappointed. I thought Illinois played great. They came out, hit every shot, it felt like, in that first quarter. Maybe we made a few tweaks, obviously they cooled off in the second quarter, third quarter. And we just dug ourself a whole, couldn't get anything going. They were super physical with us. Disappointed in the fact that I felt like we should have probably at some point got into the bonus, got to the free throw line just because of how physical obviously. Our officials didn't see it that way, but nonetheless, give Illinois all the credit. They hit the shots. They were physical with us. We didn't respond in the right way. They had 14 points off of our turnovers, and that's the game, right, so we lost by 14, 14 points off our turnovers. We cut it within four, missed a layup, gave up a three. So just disappointed for our kids. Yesterday, again, we didn't – it was not a good practice for us, and as I always tell them, you play how you practice. And I thought our practice was not very good yesterday with some individuals, not all of them, some of them. And that always ends up biting you in the rear end because I do believe that it's true. How you practice is how you play. So disappointed after coming off such a great win at Iowa. I thought tonight would be one of those nights where we were anxious to get back home and play in front of our fans, and it's just disappointing that we couldn't perform better."

On Yarden Garzon and Lilly Meister playing fewer minutes than normal...

Moren: "They're not injured. They're fully healthy. Yarden had a hard time guarding, and we had to get stops. And so they – she had a hard time guarding and obviously she, 24, went right at her. And so we had to get a more athletic lineup on the floor just to try to do a better job defensively. You know, Lilly has to be better. She has to be better offensively. She has to be better defensively. And here, as of late, she's just been okay. And we don't need an okay Lilly, we need a really good Lilly to help us because we have to have great balance. And just not a good matchup with Boston."

On if there was a hangover from the high of the win over Iowa...

Moren: "No, I don't believe in that. I don't. We know how good the Big Ten is. This is a really good Illinois team, a team a year ago that probably kept us from winning a second Big Ten championship, and so they know how we have a tremendous amount of respect for all the teams, but certainly Illinois. Shauna and her staff do a great job. That group plays together. They play hard, and so no hangover. That's just an excuse, and I'm not gonna give us that as an excuse, as an easy out. Hangovers, I don't think."

On how Illinois has given them issues in the past and what Indiana can do to adjust...

Moren: "Well, we have to be able to guard better. I think we'll look back, we'll probably from a staffing standpoint, I don't just want to put it all on our players. I think from a staff, our standpoint, we probably needed to make earlier adjustments, right, with their zoom action that they continue to run. We tried a couple possessions of zone, and they knocked down shots. So we were a little it leery of trying to change the rhythm by just throwing some zone at them. And so we gotta continue to get better at all of it, and I think the other piece of that is when teams are as physical as Illinois was tonight and there's nothing being called, we have to be able to work throught that. And I didn't think we were able to do that tonight."

On why Wednesday was not a good practice...

Moren: "Well, low energy from some of them. I'm not gonna say particular ones, but the ones we count on a lot. Low energy, not being focused, turning the ball over too much. And you just can't – not before a game of this magnitude. This is a big weekend for us with two really good teams coming in here, and you want to be sharp and you want to be focused and you want to be excited. I thought today, we seemed much better in terms of the energy and the excitement level to play a really good Illinois team, but yesterday was not a good day for some of our players in terms of how they approached practice and that's disappointing. It can't happen."

On if she has overriding concerns about playing physical teams...

Moren: "Yeah, unless we – it is concerning because it's stuff that we talk about a lot. It's a double-edged sword because we play – we have a great practice squad of males that we want them to be a little more physical with us. But where do you draw the line of how physical, right? Because the last thing we can afford to do is have someone get injured or hurt in practice by them picking the pace up or the intensity up a little bit. And so, to me, that's probably something that they gotta look at from an individual perspective and realize teams are gonna be physical with us. We have to be able to be as physical back and not allow them to not allow us to get to our spots and where we want to ultimately be. I thought, like I said, Illinois came out from the beginning and established how physical the game was gonna be. And there were a lot of moments, I'm not gonna lie, I didn't feel protected in that. I didn't think our kids, I didn't feel like we were protected and that's disappointing. That's not why we lost the game though."

On if this game can be a stinging reminder that all Big Ten games are difficult...

Moren: "No, again, as I mentioned this leage is much, is just too good to feel like you can take a night off ever, no matter who it is, no matter what number, if you have it by your name or you don't. This is, I think, the best league in the country, and even without two of her players, Cook, Dolan, she's still, Shauna, is doing a terrific job of – that's six guys that play a lot of minutes. I mean, Boston never comes out. Genesis Bryant never comes out. McKenzie never comes out, right, but they're three really, really good players. And it's impressive how they can withstand it, because they play so hard. It's not like – they don't take plays off offensively. Their pace never lightens up, and then they're gonna guard you really hard. So real impressed by, as far as strength, conditioning, cardio, all that, how they have terrific stamina in terms of being able to play both sides of the ball at the pace, the level, the intensity at which they do it."

On if Wednesday's poor practice was an outlier, and if Moren has had to be more vocal in those moments as opposed to leaning on player leadership in past seasons...

Moren: "A little bit of both. Syd and Chloe, especially Syd, you know she's just such a high-energy kind of player and is always ready for practice, and Shay is very much the same way. I think that they can recognize when some of their teammates are not interested, maybe, in being in practice for it to be an outlier, no. I mean, I'm not saying it's consistent, but I'm not saying we haven't seen this by some of our players that come in and, like I said, low energy, and that bothers me. But you just gotta continue to try to demand it out of them and make them somehow realize that it's really important. Two days out, a day out before a really big game, you should feel good about the two hours that you're leaving the gym, going, 'Our prep was good, our energy was good. I think we're on point with what we want to do from a scouting perspective. When we're on offense and we're playing against our practice guys, we look sharp offensively, not turning the ball over, not careless.' So there were a lot of things that happened yesterday during that, it was disappointing. And it carried over to tonight."