Celebrating our IU and IUPUI women’s basketball teams and Title IX’s 50th anniversary

Our love of basketball runs deep in the Hoosier state. The passion is obvious when our Indiana University community rises to its feet to cheer our student-athletes. Basketball is in the air, especially in March. 

IU has two women’s basketball teams who should be hearing their names announced for the NCAA tournament in the upcoming Selection Sunday. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX, there is no better time to highlight their achievements.

At IU Bloomington, coach Teri Moren’s women’s basketball program is ready for its third trip to the NCAA Tournament in four years – an unprecedented run of success that was interrupted only by the 2020 cancellation of the event due to COVID-19. After advancing to the Elite Eight in last year’s tournament, the team has a chance to earn a high seed this year when the bracket is announced March 13, and to host first- and second-round NCAA tournament games at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall for the first time.

Our IUPUI Jaguars women’s basketball program, led by coach Austin Parkinson, will also join the NCAA Tournament this year. The Jaguars won the Horizon League Tournament today, earning a spot in the upcoming NCAA tourney – an opportunity denied them when the 2020 tournament was canceled.

Among the skilled student-athletes making us proud both on and off the court are:

• Macee Williams, who earned her fourth consecutive Horizon League Player of the Year award this season. She is the Jaguars’ all-time leading scorer and rebounder, and she is a semifinalist for the 2022 Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year award.
• Grace Berger, who became just the fourth player in Hoosiers program history to be named first-team All-Big Ten three times. During the off-season, she earned a gold medal while playing for Team USA in the 2021 AmeriCup in Puerto Rico.

These accomplishments might not be possible if not for Title IX, the landmark federal law that ushered in a new era of opportunities in women’s intercollegiate athletics 50 years ago. One co-author of the legislation was the late U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, an IU Maurer School of Law graduate who represented Indiana in the Senate from 1963 to 1981.

The possibility that IU will have both Division I women’s basketball teams competing in March Madness during the 50th anniversary year of legislation that transformed women’s intercollegiate athletics is uniquely poignant.  

Pamela Whitten

President
Indiana University