SOUTH BEND – For the first time in 33 years, the Indiana women’s basketball team is marching on to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

IU fended off Georgia in a defensive turf war 62-58 on Saturday and will advance to play No. 1-seed and host Notre Dame at 6:30 pm Monday.

On the biggest stage of their collegiate careers, the young Hoosiers didn’t bow to the veteran Lady Bulldogs, who are among the top five winningest women’s college basketball programs in the postseason.

Head coach Teri Moren called it a gutsy win.

“I don’t think they fully understand the magnitude of this win for Indiana women’s basketball,” she said. “They might not fully recognize it until after the season is over, but we’re building something special here.”

As the 8-9 match-up would suggest, Indiana and Georgia were evenly matched as two teams could be in the field of 64 and went toe-to-toe for a full 40 minutes. Though IU led for 32:09, Georgia challenged at every turn and didn’t allow the Hoosiers to pull ahead by more than two possessions in the second half.

The Lady Bulldogs took their largest lead in the third quarter, capitalizing on five consecutive Hoosier turnovers to go up 34-32. The teams would go back and forth six times in the next five minutes, pulling even twice before the Hoosiers would take the lead and hold it through the final period.

“We’ve been in a lot of tight games where we’ve had to battle back from being down,” Moren said. “With this group, one of the things is they’re just resilient. They know that the next play is going to be the most important play, they had a great feel for what we needed to have happen, and I think they finally settled in.”

It was sophomore guard Tyra Buss who took control of the game to lead the Hoosiers to victory in the second half. For the 36th time this season, Indiana’s leading scorer finished in double digits with 23 points, 17 of which came after halftime.

In a physical contest, Buss took plenty of contact, including being slammed to the floor and being poked in the eye. But as she has done throughout the season, Buss motored through.

“It was very physical,” she said. “But the coaches told me going into the game that when I drive, a lot of players are going to come to me and the kick out would be open. The Big Ten is very physical as well, so it prepared me for this game.”

In a game that saw both teams finish with nearly identical shooting percentages and rebounding, the Hoosiers were left to do their damage on the free-throw line, where they outscored the Lady Bulldogs 16 to 1. Indiana entered the tournament seventh in the nation from the charity stripe and improved its free-throw differential to plus-218 on the season.

Though Moren said she would have liked to see her team make a few more free-throws down the stretch to extend its lead, she was able to joke about it in a win.

“They just like to make things a little more interesting,” she said.

As they were warming up in the practice gym, the players inquired about the score of the IU men’s game vs Kentucky, a game which Moren informed them Indiana had won, advancing the Hoosiers to the Sweet 16 for the third time in five years.

Three hours later, the women earned the right to continue their dance in South Bend, rounding out a historic Saturday for IU basketball in the NCAA Tournament.

“What a day for the Indiana Hoosiers,” Moren said.