Indiana missed out on a massive opportunity Friday evening.
Coming off an upset win at Michigan State, the Hoosiers probably would have appeared in most projected NCAA Tournament brackets at this moment with a win against UCLA in Bloomington.
But you know how that went, and now the Hoosiers (15-11, 6-9) continue to find themselves facing an uphill battle when it comes to the Big Dance. With that said, it’s still possible with the right wins down the stretch.
The Big Ten regular season ends on March 9, and NCAA Tournament Selection Sunday is on March 16. And both pictures seemed to gain some clarity as it relates to the Hoosiers over the last week.
The win at MSU did significantly boost the Hoosiers Big Ten Tournament chances. Any wins from here out will be quite meaningful in that regard.
The Big Ten Tournament field will be fully determined in less than three weeks. And as a reminder, only the top 15 teams in the 18-team conference will make the field for the 2025 Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis.
As of Monday morning, IU is alone in 12th place in the league standings. A win over UCLA would have placed them in a three-way tie for eighth. So things are very fluid at the moment. The Hoosiers are only one game ahead of 16th-place Washington in the loss column. The current bottom three in the conference standings are Washington (4-10), Northwestern (4-11) and Penn State (3-12).
Penn State has lost seven in a row and seems to be cratering. Northwestern lost two critical starters to injuries since they played IU, and they’re struggling big time as well. Indiana still plays at Washington. That game, along with a home contest against Penn State seem like the key ingredients when it comes to clinching a spot in the Big Ten field.
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Now let’s look at what Indiana’s 1-1 week with the win at Michigan State and home loss to UCLA did to their NCAA Tournament chances.
Indiana did appear in at least one prognostication at Bracket Matrix following that MSU win. They were also fairly popular in the “Last Four Out” and “Next Four Out” groupings. But the UCLA loss set them back.
The model at Bart Torvik gives IU an 11.6% chance to make the field as of Monday afternoon, an improvement from 3.6% when we checked last week.
For the third straight week IU moved up in the NCAA’s NET rankings, from No. 62 to No. 57 as of Monday morning. That was largely due to a nice bump from the Michigan State win. Quad-1 losses like UCLA generally have not harmed IU in the NET. Indiana did lose a Quad-1 win because of Penn State’s continued decline. The road win over the Nittany Lions has turned into a Quad-2.
So IU now has a 2-11 record in Quad-1 games, and a 13-0 record in the other three quads.
The fact that IU is moving up in the NET despite losing highlights the fact that they’d still be in the hunt for the Big Dance with a strong finish. But they’ll still need a couple more Quad-1 wins to get there, while maintaining a perfect Quad 2-4 mark.
The Hoosiers still have multiple chances to pick up Quad-1 wins and play their way into the bracket. Three of their last five games currently fall in the Quad-1 category.
Here are Indiana’s remaining five regular season games:
- vs. Purdue – Quad-1
- vs. Penn State – Quad-3
- at Washington – Quad-2
- at Oregon – Quad-1
- vs. Ohio State – Quad-1
As a reminder, here’s how the NCAA NET rankings divide games into quadrants:
- Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
- Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
- Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240
- Quadrant 4: Home 161-353, Neutral 201-353, Away 241-353
You can always find links to the latest NET rankings and other national ranking sites and services here:
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