Breaking news;Chloe Moore-McNeil announce her resignation letter Indiana miss….
Breaking news;Chloe Moore-McNeil announce her resignation letter Indiana miss….
Chloe Moore-McNeil
. – Chloe Moore-McNeil cuts to the top of the key at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall’s Branch McCracken Court and buries a three-pointer just as a song blasts through the cheers, shouts and claps of this Indiana NCAA tourney practice.
Pink rocks, “So What,” with fighting words. “I got a brand new attitude, and I’m gonna wear it tonight,” she sings, among other things. It’s a song of empowerment, of toughness and resiliency amid adversity. It reflects, in so many ways, Moore-McNeil and all the top-seeded Hoosiers in this most defining of basketball seasons.
“She’s done so much for us,” coach Teri Moren says. “She has to guard the best offensive perimeter players, then she has to run our team.”
Let others back down. Moore-McNeil, a 5-11 junior guard with a 6-3 wingspan, is too busy rising to challenges. That will continue Saturday as IU (27-3) faces No. 16-seed Tennessee Tech (23-9) in a first-round matchup.
That approach helped her earn second-team All-Big Ten and make the conference’s all-defensive team. It’s a big reason why she draws some of the nation’s toughest perimeter defensive assignments.
“It’s a challenge guarding such different, dynamic, great players,” she says. “I respect all of them. I embrace that role. It’s fun, that I get to guard the best players in the country.”
Moore-McNeil’s fun might be another’s misery, but as Moren says, “What sticks out is her toughness. This (defensive challenge) is something she embraces. For her to show up the way she has speaks to who she is.”
Moren saw the potential while recruiting her. Moore-McNeil was a slender, but fierce do-it-all player who twice earned Tennessee Class A Miss Basketball honors at Greenfield High School.
“That’s one of the reasons why we recruited her,” Moren says. “We liked her length, we liked her athleticism, but you have to do the work. You have to want to take on the role your coaches give you.”
That Moore-McNeil does reflects her deep basketball roots. Her mother played at Jackson State. Her father founded and helped coach a traveling youth team.
Beyond that was her fierce drive to improve.
“We’ve watched her get better every year,” Moren says. “As a freshman, maybe she weighed a buck-15. She got with Kevin Konopasek, our strength and conditioning coach, who is phenomenal. We watched her body develop.”
After reserve roles her first two years, Moore-McNeil broke into the starting lineup this season and has made the most of it, setting career highs in scoring (9.7 points), rebounding (4.0), assists (4.9), field-goal shooting (43.9 percent), free-throw shooting (85.7 percent) and steals (44).
For perspective, as a freshman, Moore-McNeil shot 47.1 percent from the line. Now, put her on the line at your own risk.
“We watched her compete in practice,” Moren says. “She has this toughness factor. It doesn’t show up in the stat sheet, but we know how competitive she is.”
IU standout senior guard Grace Berger saw this early on.
“She was always really mature, really competitive, really smart,” Berger says. “You could tell that even early in her freshman year. She wasn’t getting a ton of playing time, but she was competitive, almost like an upperclassman.”
Now, Moore-McNeil is an upperclassman with a major on-court responsibility. That amplified when Berger missed eight games earlier this season with a knee injury.
“She’s taken on the leadership role and being super-confident,” Berger says. “Seeing her put in the work to g
