Indiana defeats Virginia Tech to win WNIT tournament
After struggling throughout the Big Ten season, senior guard Tyra Buss and the Indiana Hoosiers beat Virginia Tech 65-57 to win the WNIT championship. This marks the second straight year a Big Ten team has won the WNIT championship. The Michigan Wolverines beat Villanova 65-61 in the WNIT tournament last season.
The Big Ten has seen teams like Maryland and Ohio State be the two teams to beat every year. However, the conference has sent at least eight teams to the postseason for the 18th consecutive year. Ten teams have been sent, making this the most second most sent in conference history.
This was a historic year for the Lady Hoosiers. They won their first WNIT tournament championship, and they also drew a program record 13,007 fans to watch them win the title.
Indiana started the conference season losing four out of the first five games, all of which were blowouts. Then after very close 74-70 loss to Maryland, Indiana went on a roll and won their last eight of nine games to end the season.
It’s a trend with Indiana and Maryland. In the Big Ten tournament, Maryland defeated Indiana 67-54. After that, they would never lose again when they entered into the WNIT tournament. In a sense, Maryland beating them those two times have, may have Indiana thanking them a lot.
Indiana and Michigan winning the WNIT proves to be a very good look for the Big Ten. The conference does not have the best reputation of the ACC or the SEC, but that all may start to change as time goes on. For starters, the Maryland and Ohio State rivalry alone has proven to be more must see television. The dominance of Maryland has also spiked interest in viewership in the conference. They won three straight regular and conference tournament championships since their first year in the Big Ten in 2014.
It’s definitely certainly that it would not be too long that the women’s big ten conference will be viewed as threat to the ACC and SEC conferences in the future. Suddenly, these ACC/Big Ten matchups will mean a lot more going forward.