The old sports cliche that it’s hard to beat a team 3 times held true for IU Indy, as they were knocked out of the 2025 Barbasol Horizon League Basketball Championships in Round 1 at home against Oakland, 62-56, less than a week after the Jaguars beat the Golden Grizzlies by 15 in The Jungle and just less than 2 months after beating them by 6 on the road.
Oakland’s win snapped an 8-game losing streak that they were on for the season and also a 3-game losing streak to IU Indy.
“The one thing that we talked about the most is that we know them,” Oakland interim head coach Deanna Richard said.
That familiarity would have surely gone in both directions, but the Jaguars looked a little flat early in the game, though they got a spark from Logan Lewis–the senior who averages just 3 points a game scored a season-high 12, 10 of which came in the 1st half–who helped placate some time in the 2nd quarter when recently-named All-League 1st-team selection Katie Davidson sat due to foul trouble. The home team clung to a 33-31 lead as they headed into the locker room.
Davidson, the Jaguars’ leading scorer on the season and in the game had only 6 in the 1st half, but she came out with a vengeance in the 3rd quarter, starting with a strong drive on the left side of the floor and finishing through contact. She would go on to score 13 total points that quarter, as the offense kept isolating her in the high post and letting her go to work to help extend the lead to 6 going into the 4th quarter.
It was Richard’s squad that dominated the 4th quarter, though, holding the Jaguars to just 4 points, 2 of which came in the final second on Davidson free throws after a technical foul was called on Macy Smith for entering the court from Oakland’s bench before the buzzer had sounded. It was the third technical foul called in the game.
“I think we took some pour shots down the stretch,” Davidson admitted. “…I feel like throughout the whole entire season our fourth quarter has just not been really good for us, and we’ve let games get away from us.”
The last time IU Indy played (and beat) Oakland, they benefitted from balanced scoring; they had 5 players in double figures. This time it was just Lewis and Davidson.
Davidson finished with 21 points on 50% shooting from the field while going 7-for-7 from the free throw line (she shot almost 90% from there on the season), but it was Oakland’s Maddy Skorupski, a Michigan State transfer who was recently named All-League 2nd Team who was the high scorer in the game with 25.
Skorupski has given IU Indy fits all season, also scoring 25 the 1st time the 2 teams played each other and 28 more recently.
She gave the credit to her team’s game plan: “With how they are guarding some of our players…I know what’s going to be open.”
Richard mentioned the game plan as well. “(We) set a lot of all ballscreens with Royal because they’re not guarding her. We can’t not use her because she’s our anchor on defense.”
She was talking about Madison Royal-Davis, her starting guard who is an astonishing 0 for 1 from 3-point range for the season.
The Grizzlies move on to the next round of the Horizon League Tournament to face top-seeded Green Bay, who also swept them during the regular season by an average of 33 points in those games.
As for IU Indy, while Davidson has played 4 seasons of college basketball (2 at Miami of Ohio and 2 for the Jags) and was included in the recent Senior Day festivities, she does have 1 more year of eligibility left, though she said she hasn’t made a decision yet about what’s next.
“Here’s the thing” Richard said about Davidson, “…she’s one of those kids who you just don’t want to play against because (she’s) so good.”
