Sanders: Looking back at a rough year for Indiana college hoops
By BROCK SANDERS
ISL Correspondent
INDIANAPOLIS – “In 49 states it’s just basketball, but this is Indiana.”
Unfortunately, this college basketball season, that wasn’t a good thing.
There are ten Division I basketball teams in the state. This will be the first year that not one of them makes the NCAA Tournament since 2005. Before that, the last time no team from Indiana made the tournament was in 1973 when there were only 25 teams selected.
Purdue was the state’s last hope. The Boilermakers stayed with Ohio State at the Big Ten tournament on Thursday and even had a shot to win it in the final seconds, but Terone Johnson’s last-second attempt was off the mark. Purdue finished with a mediocre 15-17 record and tied for last in the Big Ten regular season.
In the game before Purdue-Ohio State at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, the state’s basketball fans left less than satisfied as well. Indiana took a tough loss to Illinois 64-54 and finished with a 17-15 record.
It was a huge drop-off from last year, when the Hoosiers won the Big Ten regular season title, were ranked first for most of the year in national polls and obtained a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Granted, a team will always have some work to do when they lose the second and fourth picks in the NBA draft in Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller, but Indiana fans definitely had higher expectations than a less-than-certain bid to the NIT.
A team that Indiana lost to earlier in the season in the Crossroads Classic, ironically also at Bankers Life, was Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish beat Indiana 79-72 in an entertaining game, but that was one of the lone highlights of the season for a struggling squad. The only other “big win” they had was over Duke. Notre Dame finished 6-12 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and with a losing record of 15-17 for the year.
Of course it didn’t help that leading scorer Jerian Grant was ruled ineligible 12 games into the season. Grant averaged 13.3 points per game last year as a sophomore and 19.0 points per game this season before being suspended.
Notre Dame took a loss to a just as weak Wake Forest team 81-69 Wednesday night in the first round of the ACC Tournament.
Butler made the change from the Horizon League to the Atlantic 10 two years ago, and then this past offseason made another transition from the Atlantic 10 to the Big East. It was a big jump in two years going from the mid-major Horizon League to arguably one of the best conferences in the country with tradition that is unmatched. Butler finished 4-14 in the Big East and 14-17 overall. The Bulldogs lost their best player before the season even started. Junior forward Roosevelt Jones had season-ending wrist surgery in August. It was a perfect storm for the Bulldogs with the combination of all of these things, leading to an early exit in the Big East Tournament after a 51-50 loss to Seton Hall.
As for the mid-major teams in Indiana, IPFW came oh-so-close to securing an automatic bid in the tournament, but couldn’t hold a late lead against North Dakota State in the Summit championship game. The Mastodons will likely receive an invitation to the College Basketball Invitational (CBI), another post-season tournament along with the NIT.
Valparaiso had a solid season but lost to Milwaukee in the semifinals of the Horizon League tournament. The Crusaders will also likely receive a CBI invitation, and since the CBI is scheduled by area, we could see a potential IPFW vs. Valparaiso matchup coming soon.
Evansville had an average season, but sophomore guard and Kokomo product D.J. Balentine scored nearly 23 points per game, including a 43-point performance earlier in the year vs. Northern Iowa.
Indiana State had a very good year, finishing with a 23-10 record, but unfortunately the Sycamores and Evansville were both ousted by national No. 2 Wichita State in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.
Ball State and IUPUI both had less than stellar seasons, and were both eliminated in the first round of their respective tournaments. Ball State lost to Ohio 76-64 in the MAC Tournament and IUPUI was beaten by IPFW 85-47 in the Summit League Tournament.
On the bright side, Indiana basketball can only go up from here! It’s hard to imagine much worse than what fans experienced this year, a whole lot of downs and not too many ups.
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