BLOOMINGTON — Indiana women’s basketball coach Teri Moren remembers Oklahoma coach Jennie Baranczyk’s playing days at Iowa.
The former All-Big Ten forward averaged 14.4 points per game during her career while shooting 48.2% from the field and still ranks ninth all-time in scoring for the program.
Based on what Baranczyk’s current players said on Sunday, she hasn’t lost a step either.
“She’ll step in and she doesn’t mind banging with us on the court,” Oklahoma Big 12 co-player of the year Skylar Vann said, with a laugh.
Moren doesn’t have to worry about Baranczyk checking into the game on Monday night when No. 4 seed Indiana faces No. 5 Oklahoma in the second round of the NCAA tournament, but the Sooners’ motion offense has her full attention.
“Really, really good team and great offense,” Moren said. “A lot of body movement, a lot of ball movement.”
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They previously crossed paths in the Missouri Valley Conference while Moren was at Indiana State and Baranczyk was starting out at Drake. The Sycamores went 5-1 during that two-year stretch from 2012-14 against their conference rival.
Baranczyk would go on to earn three NCAA tournament bids at Drake and win three consecutive regular season conference titles (2017-19).
They reunited over the summer as coaches for the USA Basketball U19 National Team.
“Very intense,” Moren said. “Very smart. You know, very, very good offensively. So that’s what I remember of all of her teams. Not that they’re not good defensively, but I think if she chooses to spend time on one side it’s probably more offense than it is defensively. So I consider her a friend, and a very, very good coach.”
Oklahoma goes into Monday night’s game averaging 76.7 points per game (No. 24th in the country). They averaged the second most field goal attempts per game (67.2) and rank second with 20.3 assists per game.
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Moren expects the Sooners to try and push the pace like Fairfield did in the opening round. She said 60% of their shots go up within the first 10 seconds of the shot clock.
“What we can’t do is let it become a track meet for us,” Moren said. “If we come down, we miss a shot, we go back down, and don’t want to trade misses with them. We want to understand what a good shot looks like for us.”
Moren said there was still more prep work to be done on OU’s motion offense when she talked to reporters on Sunday afternoon.
“I think we have in watching all the film we watched and even watching them live yesterday, maybe picked up on two play calls and that makes it hard,” Moren said, of their motion offense. “It makes it hard when we go into preparation to say this is the call for this action, so that’s where they make it a challenge.”
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana women’s basketball pin Sweet 16 hopes on slowing down Oklahoma
