BLOOMINGTON — Tucker DeVries sat down at the dais, sniffling into the microphone as he hung his head, doing his best to hold back tears.
DeVries has lost plenty of games in his long basketball career, but rarely have those defeats elicited the type of emotion he displayed in the Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall media room Tuesday. He barely made it through answering the first question of the press conference without breaking down, taking several pauses to collect himself.
Such is the weight of Indiana men’s basketball’s crushing 72-68 loss to Northwestern. The Hoosiers (17-11, 8-9 Big Ten) let a very winnable game against an inferior opponent slip through their hands in the second half, and they know they only have themselves to blame.
“I think for me, personally, I feel like I let this group down today. I feel like this was an opportunity for us that we really had to take advantage of, just seeing how few opportunities we have (left),” DeVries said after the game. “To have one of our last ones go like that is a tough one.”
DeVries was far from Indiana’s only culprit. The team shot just 30.8 percent from the field in the second half. Lamar Wilkerson, after a strong first half, went 0 for 9 after halftime. The Hoosiers made only two of their last 15 field-goal attempts, and they went nearly the entire final quarter of the game without a made field goal.
Northwestern (12-16, 4-13) has been a notably weak rebounding team this season. The Wildcats entered this game ranking 320th in the country (out of 365 teams) with 31.5 rebounds per game. Their 7.44 offensive rebounds per game ranked No. 321 in the nation. And their season-long rebounding margin at -4.6 going into Tuesday’s game was 341st in Division I.
And yet, Indiana allowed that very Northwestern squad to control the glass. NU out-rebounded the Hoosiers 34-23, with a 22-13 second-half advantage accounting for much of the damage. The Wildcats grabbed 11 offensive rebounds, only their fifth game out of 15 since the start of January in double digits.
Indiana has suffered plenty of tough losses over the last decade, and lost games in a lot of different ways. This — a good first half followed by an abysmal second half against a bad team — ranks among the worst of those defeats.
“It’s just a game we shouldn’t have lost. It’s one of those self-inflicted losses as you say. We was the reason we lost,” Wilkerson said. “Kudos to Northwestern. They played a good game. But there is no way in hell we should have lost this game. We just being frankly honest.”
This result is particularly damaging for Indiana’s postseason ambitions.
IU, even coming off of two straight blowout road losses against No. 10 Illinois and No. 8 Purdue, entered this game heavily favored to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in three years. Darian DeVries’ group was a projected No. 10 seed on Bracket Matrix, with -600 betting odds to make the field of 68.
That outlook will certainly change after the Hoosiers suffered their worst loss of the season. Their résumé already lacked the sort of quality wins typically required to get into the bracket, with a 2-10 record in Quad 1 games. And now they’ve added a Quad 3 loss to their team sheet.
“We’re at that point in the year where games have become very meaningful and it was an opportunity. We certainly wanted to get started off on the front of the home stand with a good note. Didn’t happen,” IU’s head coach said. “We’re going to have to really look in the mirror a little bit and get some things figured out before we play again on Sunday.”
That Sunday matchup against No. 13 Michigan State at Assembly Hall was already a critical opportunity for IU, but it’s even more important after losing to Northwestern. The Hoosiers couldn’t afford to take this loss on Tuesday; now that they did, they absolutely can’t drop any more games during the final week of the regular season.
It’s been an up-and-down campaign in DeVries’ first year at the helm in Bloomington. The highs have been tantalizingly sweet, when the team has played visually appealing basketball with crisp passing and lethal outside shooting. The lows have been equally frustrating, when this roster with clear limitations falls into the same patterns that lead to prolonged offensive slumps and spotting opponents additional opportunities.
Indiana seemed to turn a corner in late January and early February, with five wins out of six games including gritty overtime victories over UCLA and Wisconsin and a big win over archrival Purdue. The Hoosiers looked like a team rounding into form at the right time of year.
But now, momentum has clearly shifted. IU has lost three straight games, with the latest a particularly troubling performance. Players who thrive d during the winning stretch, like Nick Dorn and Conor Enright, have regressed. This now looks like a group that just can’t figure things out for long enough to win the games it needs to.
The Hoosiers are far from dead. A win over Michigan State could rejuvenate them, similar to their aforementioned stretch before the current losing streak. They have a winnable midweek home game against Minnesota, and then another Quad 1 game at Ohio State. If IU can turn things around heading into the Big Ten Tournament, it could save this season.
Indiana hasn’t played the last three games like a team capable of doing that, and its margin for error is gone.
But the Hoosiers still have a chance, if they can capitalize.
“This one hurts, but we’re not out of the mix by any means. Our season is not defined by this game,” Tucker DeVries said. “We’ve gone through a rough patch in the season. … We’ve responded, we know we’re capable of doing that. Coming off a loss like this, there’s no better opportunity than hosting a really good Michigan State team. We gotta come prepared for that one a lot better, a lot more hooked up and take advantage of these opportunities, cause they’re starting to get fewer.”
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