New-look Indiana Hoosiers ready to take next step in 2024-25 season

It’s impossible to replace All-American Mackenzie Holmes. There’s not one single player who can do so. 

“I don’t think you can,” Indiana coach Teri Moren told On3. “You’d be silly to think that there’s going to be another Mackenzie Holmes. Those are the once-in-a-lifetime kind of players that you get to coach.”

Holmes was the program’s all-time leading scorer with 2,530 career points, its lone first-team All-American and most importantly, she won more games (123) than any other Indiana women’s basketball player.

So, the Hoosiers will have to fill that hole via committee and play a different style of basketball for the first time in a long time – and while Moren was sad to see Holmes step off the court for the final time last March – she is also excited to see what the Hoosiers will look like in 2024-25. 

“In the last five years, it’s been putting the ball inside and surrounding Mack with a bunch of really great shooters,” Moren said. “I do think we’re going to be more dependent on the outside shooters with Syd [Sydney Parrish] and Chloe [Moore-McNeil] and Yarden [Garzon]. We’re not going to go away from the amount of times that we’re going to feed the post, but I think it will look different.”

Indiana looks for the next inside threat

Although the Hoosiers will rely on their shooters more than in recent years, the question of who will start in the post remains important.

Junior Lilly Meister has been with the program since her freshman year, playing behind Holmes and learning from the star post player – but the Hoosiers also added Tennessee transfer Karoline Striplin for her final year of eligibility. They will look for her, as a veteran, to aid in Indiana’s post-presence this season.

The 6-foot-3 Meister is a versatile threat who loves taking shots from deep and is hoping to expand her game this year. She averaged 3.7 points and 2.7 rebounds last year in 10.5 minutes as Holmes’ backup.

“What Lilly has proven for us, in doing some of this early stuff, is the feel she has for the game,” Moren said. “If we’re going to play five-out a little bit more, if we’re going to do some things differently, then you have to have that five that has a great feel.”

Striplin, also 6-foot-3, averaged 7.2 points and 3.1 rebounds last season and brings another level of physicality to the Hoosiers. Striplin played 91 games in three seasons with the Vols, including starting 39 contests over the past two years.

Moren is familiar with Striplin, as she scored 13 points in 22 minutes a year ago in Tennessee’s loss to Indiana in the Fort Myers Tip-Off. 

“I mean, with her body, I don’t think we knew what we were going to physically get with her until she arrived,” Moren said. “We were like, look at those calves. Look at that body. When we played Tennessee, when we were prepping against her, we knew she was a kid that could step out, but she’s been such a natural.”

Lilly Meister is ready for her Indiana opportunity

While the season is still more than a month away, Meister’s growth over the last two seasons in Bloomington has set her apart early. 

“She’s been in our system,” Moren said of Meister. “So, I think that the advantage is clearly with Lilly in terms of how we do things and how we guard. Although, offensively, we’ve got to play differently now that we don’t have Mack, and we’ve been trying to figure that out.”

Both Meister and Striplin are both excited for the opportunity to earn a starting role and aid in the program’s consistent growth. 

“It’s definitely something I’ve been waiting for,” Meister told On3. “I’m ready for it. I’ve been patient and I think you earn things from being patient. It’s taught me to value everything a little bit more. I’m ready to take that, have fun, play more and just enjoy it.” 

“They’re just looking for me to be myself and just bring that physicality piece,” Striplin told On3. “Obviously, we’ve expanded the Big Ten with a couple new teams that bring some big-body post players, and I think that they’ll look to me to help spread the floor with Lilly, alongside her… I feel like things are just going to look completely different this year and that’s nothing to be afraid of.” 

The two posts will have the opportunity, though, to learn from Holmes. While she’s rehabbing from recent knee surgery, Holmes will be in Bloomington serving as a graduate assistant for the Hoosiers this season. 

‘It’s always fun to sort of reinvent ourselves’

“I think it’s just gonna be doing things a little bit differently,” Holmes said of the team. “Not luckily, but luckily, there’s been spurts where I’ve been hurt and I’ve had to sit, so they’ve had to adjust on the fly. Now we have a whole offseason to adjust. I think that the girls are sponges, and they’ll listen to anything that we tell them. Anything we throw at them, they’ll adjust. I think that’s been the biggest thing.”

While the Indiana Hoosiers will surely look different this season, Moren is excited about the possibilities it will bring to the team. 

“I think it’s always fun to sort of reinvent ourselves in a different way and play differently…,” Moren said. “It’s not gonna look perfect, but can we be competitive? And that’s the one thing that I don’t have to worry about with this group.”