INDIANAPOLIS — If this Indiana men’s basketball season has been defined by its ebbs and flows, perhaps it’s only fitting for the Hoosiers to encounter one more speed bump before Selection Sunday.
IU fell to Oregon on Thursday in the Big Ten Tournament second round. Mike Woodson’s team made several surges after halftime, but never gained a second-half lead in a 72-59 defeat.
So now, Indiana no longer has its March Madness fate in its own hands. And as much as some of the IU players enjoy casually watching other games, it’s tough for them to have such little control on whether they’ll make the NCAA Tournament.
“We really got to watch and hope there’s not a ton of bid-stealers, I think that’s a big thing. We need Memphis to win their conference. We need other bubble teams to lose. So that’s stuff that I pay attention to. I don’t know if everybody else (does). But I’m a big basketball guy, so I’m always watching games,” senior Luke Goode said in the locker room after the game. “But it’s something that you got to pay attention to now. You really got to know kind of what teams are there, and really hope things shake out our way.”
The Hoosiers (19-13) sit squarely on the bubble going into Selection Sunday. They remain in the field of 68 in the Bracket Matrix, but most of those bracket predictions likely haven’t updated since the Oregon loss became final. IU is projected to be one of the last four at-large teams, which would mean a trip to Dayton for the First Four.
But given how things looked entering February, all Indiana can ask for is an opportunity. This team has won five of its last seven games, with the only two losses in that span coming against the Ducks.
“We’ve been playing really good basketball the last seven or eight games down the stretch. I think we’re kind of a team that people kind of really don’t want to see,” sophomore guard Myles Rice said in the locker room. “And if Sunday comes and we’re in, then we’ll just go out there with the same confidence that we had and how we’ve been playing down the stretch and take it into March.”
Indiana wasn’t overly focused on the potential NCAA Tournament implications of Thursday’s game. But the players know where they stand.
The key aspect of IU’s résumé is, as Rice said, improvement at the right time. The Hoosiers went 4-13 in Quad 1 games this season, with the wins coming against Penn State at The Palestra, at Ohio State, at Michigan State, and at home over Purdue. But all the losses came in Quad I — Indiana went 5-0 in Quad 2, 6-0 in Quad 3, and 4-0 in Quad 4.
The Hoosiers wasted some opportunities along the way for some other quality wins that would’ve made their NCAA Tournament standing more secure right now, but they avoided any particularly damaging losses.
“I don’t know the last time that a team that didn’t have a Quad 2, 3, or 4 loss didn’t make the tournament. We don’t have a single bad loss this year,” Goode said. “We just got to stay the course, and we’re going to prepare the next two days like we’re in, regardless, whether or not. If that opportunity does come, then we’re ready to go, and we can make some noise.”
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