Just about 15 minutes before tip-off, Northwestern announced that starting center Courtney Shaw wouldn’t play against No. 16 Indiana, as she suffered a lower-body injury. Immediately, alarm bells rung. In what was going to be one of the Wildcats’ toughest matchups of the season, true freshmen Paige Mott and Anna Morris were going to have to carry the load down low.
Indiana knew this. They were already a team with valuable size, as three key plays in MacKenzie Holmes, Aleksa Gulbe and Grace Berger stand in at 6-foot-3, 6-foot-3 and 6-foot, respectively. They were bound to try to exploit the less-experienced Mott and Morris, and exploit they did.