Ohio
Young Indiana women’s basketball ‘not going to lose hope’ after 0-8 Big Ten start
It was a “tale of two halves,” Indiana women’s basketball coach Teri Moren said Thursday night.
Her team had a tall task heading to No. 11 Ohio State, but for the first 20 minutes, they lived up to it. Indiana started the game on a 13-4 run and maintained that advantage throughout the first half, leading by as many as 15 points and going into halftime with a 10-point lead.
Then, similar to much of Indiana’s losses so far this season, it fell apart in the second half.
“Tale of two halves. I thought we played very well in the first half,” Moren said following IU’s 81-67 loss in Columbus. “Loved how we shared the ball, kept them out of transition, did a lot of really, really good things (in the first half). And then, you know, the second half came, and we knew they were going to turn up their pressure. We didn’t handle it as we needed to.”
IU collapsed under Ohio State’s full-court press in the second half, with the Buckeyes guarding the inbounder and any receivers in the far backcourt.
Ohio State initiated 16 steals over 40 minutes, and IU had 26 turnovers to give Ohio State 34 points off them. So, even though IU shot 56% from the field (22 of 39) with a 64% mark from 3-point range (11 of 17), Ohio State had a clear advantage with 25 more shot attempts on 48.4% shooting from the field (31 of 64).
“Twenty-six turnovers is going to make it pretty hard to win a basketball game,” redshirt sophomore Lenee Beaumont, IU’s leading scorer with 20 points, said. “And I think that goes back to just kind of helping each other. You know, there were a few in the first half where we left people on an island, or I remember one specifically in the second half, where we got the rebound and then they went back and trapped Shay (Ciezki) and we’re all running and on the other side of the half court. So we got to be more aware.”
It was yet another learning lesson for the young Hoosiers, who are now 0-8 in Big Ten play with no end in sight.
With a lot of turnover because of graduations and transfer portal entries after the 2024-25 season, Moren has a young team — even younger, she says, than it appears on paper.
Maya Makalusky and Nevaeh Caffey, both in the starting lineup, are freshmen. Moren considers sophomore Zania Socka-Nguemen and Beaumont pseudo-freshmen, too, considering how little they played before this season.
Socka-Nguemen transferred to Indiana after one year at UCLA, where she played minimal minutes. Beaumont played minimal minutes off the bench as a freshman at Indiana in 2023-24, then was out the entire 2024-25 season because of a knee injury.
“Maya and Nevaeh are true freshmen, but you’re talking about two other kids that have had little to zero playing time in the Big (Ten) and this is a very, very great, this is a great conference,” Moren said. “And we’ve played all the ones, and you know that have been ranked so far, right? We haven’t had an easy path to start Big Ten play. And you know, that’s been part of it. It’s the league, it’s how good it is. And, you know, nobody feels sorry for Indiana.”
Moren’s job, too, is to teach her young players how to work through this tough slew of games. IU has seen a lot of success as a program over the past five years, including a Big Ten championship and No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, so this is uncharted territory — and likely not what players expected when they committed to the Hoosiers.
But this is where they’re at now. And Moren needs to make sure her players don’t lose hope in this stretch.
“It’s just the communication piece, right,” Moren said. “It’s making sure that we are showing them, you know, the things in film, those lessons that we have to learn. But it’s also showing them all the things that they’re doing well. And then, last night, at the end of the night, when we watched film, we had a deep dive of some analytics, some statistics. We’re so close, and that’s what we keep saying to them.”
IU may have some opportunities for its first Big Ten win in its games coming up; it plays in-state rival Purdue, who is 2-6 in Big Ten play, on Jan. 25 and Feb. 8, and Northwestern, also 2-6 in conference, on Feb. 1.
And Beaumont thinks her team will have the fight for it.
“Believe it or not, I do believe that the fight in the locker room is in a really good spot, and we’re not going to lose hope,” Beaumont said. “We just take tomorrow as a new opportunity to continue to grow and get better. It would be so easy for us to fall apart right now and not stay together, but I give credit to the people in the locker room that we’ve stayed together as one unit, the best that we could possibly do that.”
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GIRARD, Ohio (WKBN) – Over 100 athletes came together for the 5th Annual Trumbull County Special Olympics Invitational Saturday morning in Girard.
These athletes represent five different schools across Trumbull County to compete and spread the message of inclusion, achievement, and sportsmanship.
The Invitational continued its long-standing tradition of honoring the legacy of Randy Suchanek while celebrating the dedication and accomplishments of Special Olympics athletes throughout the region.
“You can hear all the excitement for this, for the athletes that are here today,” said superintendent Bryan O’Hara. “They work hard all year long to participate. We’ve always worked hand in hand with the rotary to get this accomplished is a lot of work behind the scenes.”
Participating schools included Ashtabula, Geauga, Columbiana, Kent-Portage and Trumbull Fairhaven
“There’s a lot of nice participation from girard students as you see behind us, and a lot of participation from the community helping out,” Girard-Liberty Rotary co-president Andy Kish added.
O’Hara added that the event keeps everything in perspective, seeing the athletes compete in the spirit of fun, along with the courage and determination that they show.
Alex Sorrells contributed to this report.
Out of prison, Indiana’s caviar king back on Ohio River to find fishing holes taken
David Cox, of English, Indiana, says once he began setting his nets again after a two-year prison sentence and a three-year ban on commercial fishing, all of his once-secret spots were taken.
Can you eat fish from the Ohio River?
In 1975, future presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, bet 20 pounds of New England cod that the Red Sox would defeat the Reds in the World Series. If things went south for Boston, Ohio governor James Rhodes promised to send Dukakis 10 pounds of Lake Erie perch and 10 pounds of Ohio River catfish. The Reds ended up winning and the cod was sent to the Convalescent Home for Children, in Cincinnati.
At the time, people were still eating catfish from the Ohio without too much concern. The fish were also served at several restaurants along the river.
There were warnings in 1977
But two years later, in 1977, The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission released the results of a study of contaminants found in the tissues of Ohio River fish. They warned anglers in cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Wheeling and Gallipolis that man-made chemicals known as PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, had been discovered in the river fish. Later, high concentrations of mercury were discovered in the fish, too.
Thanks to the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the environmental regulations that followed, the river is now cleaner than it was in the seventies. And it’s still teeming with a variety of fish, including catfish, striped bass, drum and black bass, among other species.
But even though PCBs were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979, they are still found in fish, since they remain in the sediment in the bottom of the river. “Organisms live in the sediment and fish feed on them,” Rich Cogen, the executive director of the Ohio River Foundation told The Enquirer. Mercury is also a big problem, according to Cogen.
So the question is: Can you eat fish caught in the Ohio River?
The short answer is yes. But it depends on what species you are eating and where along the river you caught it.
There are also very strict limitations on how frequently you should eat them, according to the web site for the Ohio Sport Fish Consumption Advisory, part of the Ohio Department of Health.
In areas of the river between the Belleville Lock, located 204 miles downstream from the river’s origins in Pittsburgh, to the Indiana border, the advisory agency currently recommends consuming Ohio River fish no more than once a month max. That area includes Adams, Brown, Clermont, Gallia, Hamilton, Lawrence, Meigs and Scioto counties.
Here’s where to check
Recommendations change throughout the year, but you can keep up by visiting the Ohio Department of Health’s Sport Fish Consumption Advisory page, which provides updated information on when certain fish, usually bottom feeders such as carp, are deemed too dangerous to eat at all.
Here’s who should take a pass on Ohio River fish
The agency also warns that people who are more likely to have health effects from eating contaminated fish, includingchildren younger than 15 years old, pregnant women and women who are planning to become pregnant to avoid Ohio River fish altogether.
Just because you have to limit the amount of fish you eat, doesn’t mean the river is a bad place for fishing, as long as you limit your intake or do catch-and-release fishing. Just make sure you have a proper fishing license before casting your line.
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It isn’t over until it’s over. That’s the case for both the UCLA Bruins football program recruiting and for quarterback Brady Edmunds. Edmunds is currently committed to head to Ohio State but he took a visit from UCLA offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy earlier this week.
Kennedy met Edmunds on Thursday despite the fact that the quarterback has been committed to the Buckeyes since December of 2024 but could the UCLA Bruins be making a run at flipping the quarterback?
Edmunds has only had an official visit with Ohio State but could UCLA heave a heat check on the 6’5” quarterback? New UCLA head coach Bob Chesney is off to an unbelievable start to his recruiting with the Bruins and flipping a recruit of Edmunds’ caliber would be his most impressive move yet.
247 Sports has Edmunds as the No. 16 quarterback in the class, which would give UCLA a clear predecessor for Nico Iamaleava whenever the Bruins current starting quarterback decides to head to the professional level.
It’d be a full circle moment for the Bruins, as Edmunds was originally recruited to Ohio State by former UCLA head coach Chip Kelly, who bailed on UCLA to go run the Buckeyes offense. Ohio State is a great spot for a developing quarterback, as the Buckeyes produce tons of NFL talent, especially at the wide receiver position, which would help Edmunds put up some gaudy numbers in Columbus.
Chesney and the Bruins have geography on their side, Edmunds attends Huntington Beach High School in Southern California, which could potentially become a factor if Edmunds views UCLA as a program on the rise that’d be much closer to his friends and family than out in Ohio.
Time will tell if Kennedy’s visit will make a difference but UCLA’s recruiting has made waves in the first offseason under Chesney and the new regime.
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