The Indiana women’s basketball team will be hosting first and second round NCAA Tournament games for a second straight year.
The Hoosiers were awarded a fourth seed in the Albany 1 Regional when tournament pairings were announced Sunday night.
“Anytime that you have an opportunity to play at home in front of your home fans,” Indiana head coach Teri Moren said, “we're not just excited, but really grateful that it worked out the way we wanted it to.”
Indiana (24-5) will face 13th-seeded Fairfield (31-1) in a first-round game on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. Fifth-seed Oklahoma (22-9) will play No. 12-seed Florida Gulf Coast (29-4) in second game at 4 p.m.
The winners will meet at a time to be determined Monday for a spot in the Sweet 16.
“It's gonna be a challenge, no matter who we play,” Moren said. “But we're so excited to be able to stay home here in Bloomington.”
It’s the fifth straight tournament appearance for the Hoosiers.
Last year, they secured a No. 1 seed for the first time in school history but were upset in the second round by Miami. All-American center Mackenzie Holmes injured a knee in the Big Ten tournament last year. She didn’t play in the NCAA opener and was limited in the loss to Miami.
This season has somewhat mirrored last’s for Holmes. She had another first team All-Big Ten performance but once again injured her knee late in the season, this time in the regular season finale. Holmes played just a couple minutes in IU’s opening loss in the Big Ten tournament.
She said the two weeks between the Big Ten tournament and the NCAA tournament has her feeling better going into this postseason.
“I'm feeling much different than I was last March versus this March,” she said. “I don't think I practiced maybe once or twice leading up to the Miami game, even after the Big Ten tournament. I'm now in practices doing pretty much everything. So, I'm feeling a lot better this March than I was last March, which is a great thing for me.”
And the team.
Holmes leads the Hoosiers with 20.0 points and 6.9 rebounds per game. Sara Scalia, who made 95 of IU’s 242 3-pointers, also earned first team All-Big Ten honors averaging 16.2 points per game.
Indiana reached the Elite Eight in 2021 and the Sweet 16 in 2022. Indiana is 9-9 all time in the NCAA tournament and 8-5 under Moren.
