BLOOMINGTON —  Fairfield point guard Janelle Brown drove to the basket looking to extend her team’s early lead Saturday over the Indiana women’s basketball team at Assembly Hall in the opening round of the NCAA tournament.

The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) player of the year brought some swag (and speed) to the proceedings for the No. 13-seeded Stags.

She had little trouble beating IU’s talented backcourt off the dribble — Brown was 5 of 5 to start the game with all but one of those looks coming at the rim — and anticipated another easy bucket with 3:41 to go in the half.

Enter Mackenzie Holmes.

Holmes stuffed the shot attempt at the baseline and grounded Brown in the process for the first of three straight stops. The All-American forward kept her eyes on Brown the entire way through. The veteran guard made a face and waved her hands in mock surrender, but Holmes’ message came through loud and clear.

Assembly Hall was her house.

Holmes’ physicality during that stretch proved to be a turning point in the 89-56 win. The No. 4-seeded Hoosiers went on to outscore No. 13 Fairfield 63-25 after Holmes’ blocked shot.

"I take pride in being the rim protector for our team," Holmes said. "I feel like earlier in the season, I hadn't been doing a very good job of that. Now that it's March, I knew I had to make plays. It's not always going to be on the offensive side of the ball."

More: When IU women needed Sara Scalia, she delivered: 'Sara took control of the game.'

Mackenzie Holmes' emotion sparked the Hoosiers to open March Madness

The first time Holmes crossed paths with Brown on Saturday came with 52 seconds left in the first quarter. Brown ended up guarding Holmes in the post and fouled her as she went up for a layup in front of IU’s rowdy student section.

They went wild for Holmes’ first stare-down of the day.

“It's fun to see,” Indiana point guard Chloe Moore-McNeil said. “She instills so much confidence in us when she does that.”

Moren saw the emotion Holmes displayed throughout the game as a sign of how much this weekend means to IU's all-time leading scorer.

Holmes' injury in the team's regular-season finale cast a shadow on Senior Night that made for a subdued celebration of her legacy, and she still hasn't forgotten about losing at home to Miami in last year's tournament.

While Holmes is always fairly demonstrative on the court, she took that to another level on Saturday whether she was in the middle of the play or not. She encouraged the crowd’s “Air Ball” chants down the stretch during one of Fairfield's extended scoring droughts and wagged her finger Dikembe Mutombo-style from the bench after Lexus Bargesser blocked a 3-point attempt.

"She's all the right things," Indiana coach Teri Moren said. "I think anytime her teammates see her getting fired up, they all get excited with her. They understand and realize how much it means to Mac."

Mackenzie Holmes puts knee injury in rear-view mirror in NCAA tournament

Moren got done with an early workout on Saturday morning at the team’s practice facility to find Holmes putting up shots with graduate manager Isaiah Specks

While that’s a normal part of Holmes’ routine during the regular season, she pulled back in recent weeks after suffering a left knee injury in the regular-season finale against Maryland.

Much of the discussion around IU’s first-round game against Fairfield was centered on Holmes' knee, a knee with a history of sliding out of place at inopportune times. It was the same injury that derailed Indiana’s run as one of the top seeds in last year’s NCAA tournament.

Holmes was full go during the week of practice leading up to the game, but Moren admitted to feeling a bit “paranoid” about injuries during those sessions. She didn’t even have the team take any full-court 5-on-5 reps against the scout team.

For Moren, seeing Holmes putting in work more than five hours before tipoff was a clear sign she was feeling like her normal self.

"She has anticipated this day, and looked forward to it being here and being out there on the floor with her team and feeling healthy," Moren said.

The knee got tested early in the game on Saturday as Fairfield pushed the pace and Holmes was knocked to the floor on three separate occasions. Fans were irate that a foul wasn’t called as the buzzer went off at the end of the first quarter and Holmes was thrown to the ground on a missed layup attempt.

Holmes probably wasn’t as quick to get back on her feet as she would have been a month ago in those situations, but the knee was never an issue.

She had 13 points (5 of 8) with six rebounds and three blocks in 27 minutes.  Holmes didn’t get a ton of touches on Saturday, but the five points she scored coming out of halftime set the tone for a Hoosiers team that went on to shoot 58.6% from the floor in the second half.

"The thing I'm most proud of Mac is that she didn't push it, she didn't press, she allowed the game to come to her," Moren said.

Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Mackenzie Holmes lifts Indiana women's basketball to March Madness win