Indiana
Wisconsin women’s basketball makes second-half run but falls to No. 14 Indiana
MADISON – Wisconsin’s comeback only went so far Wednesday night.
The Badgers women’s basketball team played host to No. 14 Indiana and after trailing by 16 points at the half, trimmed the deficit to six 5 minutes into the third quarter.
Three days after coming back from 17 points down to beat Penn State, Wisconsin was putting some heat on the Big Ten’s second-place team. The coals of the comeback, however, ran cold in the fourth quarter and the Badgers suffered a 68-54 loss at the Kohl Center.
Box score: Indiana 68, Wisconsin 54
“We feel like we were struggling to put the ball in the basket,” Wisconsin coach Marisa Mosley said. “I don’t know if they did anything in particular to take that away from us, but a lot of what was tonight was really self-inflicted wounds, not taking care of the ball well enough, not getting great shots at the basket each time down. Those are things that are in our control and things we have to clean up.”
Sophomore forward Serah Williams recorded her 10th straight double-double (18 points, 14 rebounds). UW (11-12, 4-9 Big Ten) also got 11 points from sophomore guard Ronnie Porter and 10 points and five rebounds from senior forward Brooke Schramek.
Indiana (21-3, 12-2) remained one game behind No. 2 Ohio State, an 80-47 winner over Nebraska on Wednesday. Graduate student Mackenzie Holmes, a 6-3 forward, had team highs in scoring (24 points) and rebounding (eight). Holmes had 10 points on 5-for-7 shooting in the fourth quarter. Indiana also got 12 points on 4-for-4 three-point shooting from senior Chloe Moore-McNeil.
Despite the loss, the game was a step forward for the Badgers in terms of their competitiveness with high-level teams.
UW has played four teams that are either ranked or received votes plus another (Kansas State) that climbed into the polls after it faced the Badgers. The margin of defeat in those games was 29.6 points.
UW held Indiana, which had shot 53.0% in Big Ten play, to 44.4% shooting, though the Hoosiers connected on 10 of 20 attempts from three-point range.
The Badgers also won the battle on the boards, reached the free throw line more and once there shot a higher percentage.
“Coming into this game there was definitely a confidence and a belief that despite the fact Indiana was coming in and they’re 14th in the country, we’re coming in to compete against them,” Moseley said. “I don’t think there was any point where our team didn’t believe that we could be on the floor with them.”
What UW didn’t do was connect from three-point range (1 for 7) and the Badgers had two many empty possessions during the second quarter when Indiana turned a one-point edge into a 41-26 lead at the half.
The Hoosiers had 14 points off turnovers in the second quarter. They weren’t as successful in that regard in the second half, but after Halle Douglass beat the shot clock buzzer with a bucket that cut the IU advantage to 45-39 with 3 minutes 8 seconds left in the third quarter, the Badgers closed the quarter with three turnovers on their final five possessions.
Indiana’s 7-0 run stretched into the first 2 minutes of the fourth quarter and pushed its lead to 52-39. Wisconsin pulled no closer than 11 the rest of the night.
“I don’t think anything is a moral victory,” Moseley said, “but for us to know that we have the ability to be in these games with a team of their caliber and to be competing and have an opportunity to win it if we take care of business, I think that makes a statement to our team.”
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A man is dead after a shooting Thursday night on Indy’s near east side, police say.
According to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, just after 8 p.m., officers were called to the 2000 block of East Washington Street on a report of a person shot.
When officers arrived, they found an adult male inside an apartment with injuries consistent with gunshot wounds.
Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services transported the man to a hospital in critical condition, where died shortly after arriving.
Homicide detectives responded to the scene to begin the investigation.
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Gov. Mike Braun asked state regulators to reconsider their decision to greenlight a $71 million rate increase for AES Indiana, doubling down on his condemnation of a move that could leave Indianapolis residents with higher electrical bills for years.
Braun wrote in a June 18 news release that he had asked Indiana Utility Counselor Abby Gray, who heads the office representing ratepayers in proceedings before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, to petition for a rehearing of the AES rate case.
Gray indicated in the release that her office would submit the petition shortly. No petition had been posted on the IURC’s online docket as of this story’s publication.
The rate increase, which was approved by the IURC on June 17, was substantially less than the $192 million increase that AES initially requested. It was also less than the amount proposed in a settlement last October between AES and major electricity consumers.
But the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, which Gray leads, came out strongly against any increase to AES’s base rates. In September, the OUCC called for a $21 million reduction instead.
As the Republican Party grapples with rising discontent over affordability, Braun has used opposition to rising utility rates to telegraph that he’s committed to keeping costs down for Indiana residents. He signed a law in February that allows the state to make rate-setting decisions that reward or penalize utilities based on metrics including affordability.
In March, he told reporters that he would take on Indiana’s five investor-owned utilities, describing himself as the “new sheriff in town.”
And after the IURC voted 3-1 to approve the AES rate increase, he wrote in a post to X that he was “deeply disappointed.”
Braun wrote in the June 18 news release that he had appointed Gray, a longtime OUCC lawyer and judge, to her current post because he knew she “would help me fight for Hoosiers.”
According to AES’s estimates, the rate increase will cost households an additional $5 per month for every 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity they use, beginning in July. A second hike will take effect in January.
Tilly Robinson is a Pulliam fellow for the Indianapolis Star. She can be reached at tilly.robinson@indystar.com.
The Protect College Sports Act, legislation meant to introduce and codify sweeping reforms related to college athletics, passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday morning.
It now heads to the Senate floor.
The bill passed out of committee by a 19-9 vote. Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young voted no, his decision reflecting Big Ten concerns over the bill.
A spokesman for Sen. Young told IndyStar, “Senator Young hopes that additional changes can be made to the bill to address concerns raised by the Big Ten.”
Co-sponsored by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), the Protect College Sports Act represents Congress’ most substantial success so far in a yearslong effort to bring legislative reform to college athletics. Since before the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders in college sports — including the NCAA, member conferences and schools, and other major players — have lobbied for national solutions to what have become state and regional problems.
Several pieces of legislation have been introduced across the last several years, only to fizzle long before reaching the floor of either chamber. The SCORE Act, introduced last year in the House of Representatives, gained some traction and passed out of committee, but was never brought to the floor.
Which makes Thursday’s news meaningful. Moving the Protect College Sports Act to the Senate floor, while not a guarantee of any outcome, potentially takes the bill past a threshold no other such piece of reformative legislation has yet been able to cross.
Cruz told Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger on Thursday that Cruz believes Sen. Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is committed to introducing the bill to the Senate floor soon.
The bill provides a legal framework for a host of potential reforms and protections for college sports. It grants limited antitrust protection to the NCAA, places limits on certain things including potential conference realignment, builds safeguards meant to protect non-revenue and Olympic sports, addresses potential broadcast rights reforms, and more.
It enjoys significant backing, and not just among leaders in college sports. This week, the NFL, its players’ association, the National Basketball Players Association and Major League Baseball all voiced their support for the bill.
Two key constituencies not in lockstep on the bill voiced their own concerns Thursday.
In a joint statement issued just after 10 a.m. Thursday, the Big Ten and SEC — far and away the two most powerful conferences and arguably two greatest power centers, full stop, in college athletics — suggested they still hold significant reservations over the bill.
“From the outset, we identified a set of essential revisions to the PCSA necessary for the long-term sustainability of college athletics,” the statement read. “We have worked with both majority and minority staff to advance those revisions, which focus on better supporting student-athletes and stabilizing the college sports environment. We continue to believe revisions are needed to secure our support for the bill.
“Despite our sustained engagement and good faith efforts, these critical revisions have not been accepted.”
The statement went on to note the “several Commerce Committee members that share our concerns and support these recommendations.”
Young is one of several members of the committee representing a Big Ten state, including one of three Republicans. He is the only Republican member of the committee whose state contains multiple schools in the conference.
Allowing for those reservations, Thursday’s news is still significant. It marks the first time a bipartisan bill on the subject has reached this point in the Senate and, should it be brought to the floor, it would be the first such legislation to reach that stage, in either chamber.
The bill could be brought to the Senate floor as early as July, though that timeline remains fluid.
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