With four wins in its last five games, Indiana has flipped the script on its 2024-25 season.
Let’s get the easy part out of the way. As we reported yesterday, the Hoosiers are in the Big Ten’s 15-team tournament that starts on March 16.
And their possible seed range for the league’s March 12-16 event in Indianapolis is fairly tight at this point. The Hoosiers could finish anywhere from the No. 8 seed to the No. 12 seed. And by beating Ohio State this weekend, IU would be guaranteed a spot in the 8/9 game.
As the No. 8 or 9 seed IU would get a first round bye and play in the 8/9 game on Thursday at Noon. As a No. 10-12 seed the Hoosiers would play in the first round on Wednesday against the No. 15-13 teams, respectively.
Now let’s look at what Indiana’s 2-0 week with the wins over Penn State and Washington did for their NCAA Tournament chances.
To put it simply, the Hoosiers (18-11, 9-9) now appear to be fully in control of their own destiny just by closing out the regular season 2-0.
Of the 28 bracketologies at Bracket Matrix that have been updated through Saturday’s games including IU’s win at Washington, 27 have Indiana in the tournament. The seed range is 10-12, and the average is 11.09.
ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has IU as one of the first four team receiving byes and thus avoiding the first four in Dayton. That’s an improvement from last week when they were the first team out of the field. Moving out of the First Four is probably the biggest development of the week.
The model at Bart Torvik gives IU a 46.6% chance to make the NCAA field as of Monday afternoon, an improvement from 28.5% when we checked last week.
For the fifth straight week IU moved up in the NCAA’s NET rankings, from No. 56 to No. 55 as of Monday morning. That marks their best NET ranking since Dec. 10. At the moment IU has a 4-11 record in Quad-1 games, and a 14-0 record in the other three quads. The Quad-1 wins are at Penn State, at Ohio State, at Michigan State and vs. Purdue.
The Hoosiers still have at least one more chance to pick up a Quad-1 win and play their way into the field of 68. And a win at Oregon would likely put the Hoosiers in the field to stay. But they also risk suffering their first Quad-2 loss with a misstep in the home finale vs. Ohio State.
Here are Indiana’s remaining two regular season games.
- at No. 31 Oregon – Quad-1
- vs. No. 36 Ohio State – Quad-2
- Big Ten Tournament – ?
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
The NET isn’t the only measurement tool the NCAA Selection Committee considers. There are actually seven, and IU is ranked higher in the other six vs. the NET:
- NET – 55
- Torvik – 52
- Wins Above Bubble (WAB) – 43
- KenPom – 43
- Basketball Power Index (BPI) – 51
- KPI – 33
- Strength of Record – 46
You can always find links to the latest NET rankings and other national ranking sites and services here:
Rankings Page: Links to the Top NCAA Men’s Basketball Ranking Services Including the NET
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