Todd’s Take: Indiana Women’s Basketball Departures

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – After the Indiana women’s basketball team lost to South Carolina in the NCAA Tournament to end the 2024-25 season, Indiana women’s basketball coach Teri Moren was inevitably asked about plans for the future.

“There's no doubt when I look at our team, we're going to have to get bigger. We'd like to get more athletic for sure,” Moren said.

Her answers were unsurprising to anyone who watched the Hoosiers during the season.

For all of the considerable X and O acumen on the sideline, for all of the fundamental aspects of the game the Hoosiers excel at under Moren, for all of the shooting and defensive attributes of the players, it became obvious those admirable traits were not enough.

The Big Ten power teams, especially new West Coast additions UCLA and USC, were bigger, faster and more athletic than the Hoosiers.

It is a classic case of Jill’s and Jo’s beating Xs and Os – to paraphrase the Jimmy’s and Joe’s chestnut that is often applied to men’s basketball.

Though Indiana will get an infusion of talent with the addition of Maya Makalusky and Nevaeh Caffey from the Class of 2025 freshman group, there was still a deficit of speed, size and athleticism. So Moren’s other postgame comment on roster construction was also unsurprising.

“I think we're going to have a lot of holes to fill. I think with the portal opening, I think there's going to be a lot of schools out there that are going to have some holes to fill,” Moren said. “We've already sort of been in the process of kind of figuring out what we feel like those holes are going to be and addressing those, and then like the rest of the country, everybody will be in the portal.”

Given Moren’s comments, the influx of Indiana women’s basketball players into the portal March 25-28 was not a big surprise. The big proviso being that we don’t know why the players went into the portal.

There’s no one-size-fits-all explanation for why players go into the portal. Some do it for themselves, some do it to test the NIL market, some have no choice but to go into the portal if their coach intends to recruit someone else. And some players do return to their schools.

Purely from the point of view of Indiana roster construction and the desire to bolster that roster, taking the emotional pull of “family” and whether you like the players as people, Julianna LaMendola, Henna Sandvik and Sharnecce Currie-Jelks were reserve players whose entries into the portal were not particularly surprising or damaging to the Hoosiers.

That reads harshly – all three were valuable squad members and good people, but building a winning roster can be an unforgiving process.

To that same end, Lilly Meister was a popular presence on the Hoosiers for the last three seasons, but she was inconsistent when she became a starter and was eventually replaced in that role by Karoline Striplin. Indiana had to improve its prospects and depth in the post.

Mildly surprising, to me was Lexus Bargesser’s departure. She filled a valuable role as a ball handler and defensive standout. But again, we don’t know her own motivation to go into the portal.

The loss of those players was likely still jarring to Indiana women’s basketball fans who have become used to stability. In many ways, Indiana women’s basketball has been a lot like Purdue men’s basketball of recent years – and the antithesis of Indiana men’s basketball in the Mike Woodson era.

The Indiana women’s basketball team has been largely immune to the transfer portal churn that has reset rosters on an annual basis at other schools.

Moren added key pieces from the portal – Sydney Parrish, Sara Scalia, Shay Ciezki and Striplin being notable additions. While some Indiana players went into the portal – three players left from the 2023 Big Ten championship – the Hoosiers rarely lost major contributors.

So the initial wave of Hoosiers into the transfer portal wasn’t surprising. But that changed on Monday.

That’s when it was reported that Yarden Garzon had entered the transfer portal.

This is a sizable blow. A three-year Hoosier, Garzon led the Hoosiers in scoring at 14.4 points per game. She also averaged 5.4 rebounds and 3.2 assists. She’s also one of the best shooters in the country at 40.7% from 3-point range.

Moreover, Garzon was not a player you thought of as not being athletic enough to keep against the best of the Big Ten or the country. She could theoretically play any position on the court. She was not physically intimidated by opponents. She would be an asset to any team – elite or otherwise.

If there is a knock against Garzon, it was streaky production and that she occasionally crossed the line into trying to force shots. However, that latter desire was largely earned. Garzon had eight games where she made at least five 3-pointers. If she forced the issue in some games, she flat out won Indiana some games, too.

Once again, apart from the usual social media statement of thanks that is boilerplate when players leave a program, we don’t know specifically why Garzon put herself into the portal. There’s any number of reasons to go into the portal that have nothing to do with any sign of strife or a breakdown in a personal relationship.

It’s a business for the players now, too. The smart ones treat it that way. Players can’t be any more sentimental about their lot than coaches can be about theirs.

Regardless, Garzon’s departure leaves a huge hole to fill. While the Indiana women’s roster isn’t as decimated as the men’s roster, there are still eight roster spots to fill as of Thursday, even after Chloe Spreen committed on Wednesday.

It’s not just the number of spots to fill that’s concerning. Most of Indiana’s production has to be replaced. Indiana lost 60.4 points, 28.2 rebounds and 14.6 assists from the 2025 team.

So this is a full rebuild – something Moren has not had to do in a long time. Certainly not once her reputation for winning at Indiana was established.

From the beginning of Moren’s coaching era at Indiana in 2014, the team has had contributors that segued into the next group. Tyra Buss and Amanda Cahill transitioned to Jaelynn Penn and Ali Patberg, who then handed the baton to Grace Berger and Mackenzie Holmes. Most of those players overlapped from one period to the next, as it was with Berger, Holmes, Garzon, Scalia, Parrish and Chloe Moore-McNeil. It was a consistent culture and a winning one.

Moren knows what she had. A player like Moore-McNeil, who was with the Hoosiers for five years, is rare in today’s game.

“You've got to stick with the process. That's why I'm so proud of Chloe. Those Chloes are gone. They're not saying four years. They're not staying five years,” Moren said.

Shay Ciezki. — Indiana's Shay Ciezki (10) shoots past Illinois Genesis Bryant (1) during the Indiana versus Illinois women's basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. | Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Now that bond is being severed. Ciezki is the only returning starter – and she’s only been in the program for a single season.

These are uncharted waters for Indiana women’s basketball. Given the high caliber of competition in the Big Ten? The stakes are high to get the newly reconstructed roster right.

Is it cause for concern or a sign of the times? Certainly, it’s a sign of the times. Indiana is far from the only program in this situation.

In some ways, mass portal movement somewhat evens the odds between the coaches who know how to build and those who don’t. Witness Indiana men’s basketball, which had no problem getting players but could not mesh the pieces together for a winning team.

As for concerns about Moren? I don’t have any. After all, she built this program in the first place. There’s no reason to believe the 2023 Big Ten regular season championship was a peak. It is still an attainable goal.

It will certainly be a big test to see if Moren can build a successful team in an era where you won’t have that institutional knowledge guaranteed from one year to the next. And it will be fascinating to see how Moren goes about doing it.

But I don’t see the player departures as a sign of trouble. It’s just the reality of college athletics at the moment. So until proven otherwise, Moren should be trusted to keep Indiana as the winning program it has been during her time in charge.

Todd’s Take: Indiana Women’s Basketball Departures – Sign Of The Times Or Concern?

Related stories on Indiana basketball