The Indiana women's basketball team huddles before Monday's NCAA tournament game against Princeton at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
(Pat Beane/WTIU)
Grace Berger had a first half to forget Monday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
But with the game on the line, it was Berger the Hoosiers turned to.
Why?
“Because she’s Grace,” Indiana head women’s basketball coach Teri Moren said.
And the senior All-America delivered.
Berger took an in-bounds pass, drove to the right side of the key, did a spin move to get free in the lane and hit the go-ahead layup with 28.2 seconds left to help lift IU past Princeton, 56-55, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
The third-seeded Hoosiers will play second-seeded Connecticut in the Sweet 16 Saturday in Bridgeport, Conn.
“Big time players make big time plays, and that’s what ‘G’ did,” Moren said.
Berger finished with a team-high 15 points. Her final two points gave the Hoosiers a 54-52 lead. Princeton had the final possession, but Ali Patberg came up with a steal with 2.6 seconds left.
After a pair of in-bounds passes were knocked away, the Hoosiers got the ball in to Aleksa Gulbe, and she was fouled with 1.6 seconds left. The senior forward hit two free throws to give IU a four-point cushion that made Abby Meyers’ 3 at the buzzer meaningless.
And when that buzzer sounded, the crowd of 9,627, the third-largest ever for an IU women’s basketball game, was in a frenzy. Junior forward Mackenzie Holmes led the team into the end zone bleachers to celebrate with a raucous student section.
“I was like, screw it, I’m going to go run up, and I’m going to high-five them and make them feel like they’re part of this victory, because they are,” Holmes said. “We couldn’t have done this without them.”
Indiana needed every bit of energy it got from the home crowd after seeing a 14-point lead midway through the third quarter disappear over the next 10 minutes. Princeton went on a 21-6 run to take a 50-49 lead with a little over five minutes left in the game.
The teams traded baskets, then Berger hit one of two free throws to tie it at 52 with 58 seconds left.
Meyers missed a 3 on the other end, and Holmes came up with a huge rebound, setting the stage for Berger.
“We made just enough plays in the final two minutes, minute to win,” Moren said.
Berger struggled through much of the first half. She was 1-for-4 from the field, had committed five turnovers and IU was clinging to a 26-25 lead going into a timeout with 4:39 left in the half.
“I had heard they were a really good defensive team, but once I got in that first half, I kind of realized for myself how good they were, how aggressive they were, how long they were,” Berger said. “Credit to them, they definitely made everything hard for me.”
But from that point on, Berger was on. She hit three jumpers as IU closed the half with a 13-4 run to take a 10-point lead at the break.
Then Berger opened the second half with two more jumpers to give IU a 43-29 lead.
But the Tigers roared back to make a game of it.
“We wanted to make sure that we brought the fight to Princeton, and we dictated how the game was going to be played,” Moren said. “By God, we had to go all the way down to the end with them, but at the end of the fourth quarter, it was the fight that won the game.”
Nicole Cardaño-Hillary finished with 12 points, and Holmes had 10 points and a team-high eight rebounds. Sophomore Chloe Moore-McNeil came off the bench and had eight points, including a pair of 3s in the second quarter.
Julia Cunningham and Grace Stone each had 13 points to lead Princeton. Meyers, coming off a 29-point performance in a win over Kentucky Saturday, had 11 points on 4-of-15 shooting.
