Indiana Women's Basketball Will Open Up NCAA Tournament Play With Charlotte in Bloomington

Senior guard Grace Berger said following the Big Ten Tournament, the team had a couple days off for both a physical and mental break before jumping right back into practices.

“We had a good practice yesterday, watched a lot of film,” Berger said. “We're going to have another good one today, and we feel rested, and we feel ready to go.”

This is the third, consecutive NCAA tournament for Indiana. Plus, the Hoosiers return each of their starters from last year’s Elite Eight team when the Hoosiers fell to Arizona 66-53 in Indiana’s best NCAA Tournament run in program history.

“I think having the experience that we have just also being a veteran team is very helpful, and getting to where we got last year is as well helpful,” graduate student guard Nicole Cardaño-Hillary said. “I think that not only just last year but what we've dealt with this year as well as having so many games in not that many days has just really prepared us to kind of keep our heads down and do what we do.”

Cardaño-Hillary joins Berger, graduate student guard Ali Patberg, senior forward Aleksa Gulbe and junior forward Mackenzie Holmes on the returning starting tournament team. Plus, all players are healthy, which wasn’t the case in the regular season as the team succumbed to COVID-19 and Holmes suffered a left knee injury before the Nebraska game.

They’re all back now which is what matters. 

What to expect from Charlotte

The Charlotte 49ers will arrive to Bloomington for their first NCAA Tournament trip since 2009 as the C-USA conference’s regular season and tournament champions with a 22-9 record and 15-3 conference record.

“That’s over,” Charlotte fifth year guard Octavia Jett-Wilson said. “We celebrated that. Now, it’s time to reach new heights and reach a new goal coming into the game tomorrow. We have great momentum right now.”

Jett-Wilson is Charlotte’s first C-USA Player of the Year and is the team’s leading scorer averaging 19.1 points per game.

Joining her in season honors is 49ers head coach Cara Consuegra for her first C-USA Coach of the Year award.

Consuegra is in her 11th season at Charlotte with a 197-134 career record. Her team ranks 90th in NET rankings having only lost four games on the road.

“We’ve been playing really well on the road," Jett-Wilson said. "We know it’s going to be loud, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. We never get rattled by things like that.”

Consuegra said her team has had to battle through a difficult schedule to end up in the tournament, and there has been a nice balance of celebrating victories while also keeping the competitive mindset in tact.

“We have prepared well,” she said. “We’re a really good team. We’re going to play a really good team in Indiana. They are outstanding. Everything we’ve seen on them in film and everything we’ve done to prepare, we know it’s a tall task ahead of us.”

The Hoosiers feel the same about the 49ers.

“We know they're a really good team,” Berger said. “They run a lot of good sets, and they have a lot of Power Five transfers, so they've been here before. They're not scared to play us or anything like that.”

Moren added the Hoosiers will need to use their size to challenge Charlotte on the offensive front. Two of Charlotte’s starters, Keke McKinney and Malina Williams are 6’1” and 6’0” respectively while three of Indiana’s starters are 6’0” and above.

“We liken this team a lot to Ohio State in the Big Ten in terms of they're very guard-oriented, have some transfers also on the roster, have the Player of the Year in the conference, of course, in Jett-Wilson,” Moren said. “So a terrific guard-oriented basketball team that's going to challenge us specifically off the bounce and challenge us in transition.”

Moren said Patberg will hopefully carry the Hoosiers deep into the NCAA Tournament. Patberg has been a part of five NCAA tournaments including in her time at Notre Dame. Moren said she sets great examples of hard work she puts in outside of practice and strives to build relationships with her teammates, pouring into them when they need encouragement or need to be challenged in the locker room.

“She's been so terrific in that space for our players, so it's going to be really important, but it will be also important that Grace Berger shows her leadership and Nikki shows some leadership and Aleksa," Moren said. "All of them are going to have the opportunity to step up and be leaders this weekend.”

Let the Madness begin! Indiana will tip off against Charlotte at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 19 on ESPN2.

“I think the experience in San Antonio (Elite Eight) was really good for us,” Moren said. “It obviously gave us some experience, but I think one of the things that happened was we understand the magnitude and the importance of every game. The first game, as I've always said, in tournament play is the most important because it can give you momentum going into the second and the third round and so forth.”