Indiana Basketball: Important stretch coming for the Hoosiers

Indiana basketball has lost four games in a row and is in the midst of their most important stretch of the season, looking to remain in the NCAA Tournament hunt.

After starting the season 12-2 and 3-0 in Big Ten play, the Hoosiers have lost four in a row and are playing like an entirely different team than a couple of weeks ago.

Sitting at 12-6, Indiana is trending in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

With quality wins early in the season over Marquette, Butler, and Louisville, the Hoosiers have also lacked quality wins in conference.

The Big Ten is projected to get 10 bids in the NCAA Tournament, so almost every game in conference is a quality, resume boosting win.

Though the Hoosiers are treading water right now, there are many games to finish the season that will give Indiana the confidence they need heading into March.

The next six games are extremely crucial though, with three of them on the road, and five of them coming against the top 60 in the KenPom rankings.

Obviously, already losing to the Purdue Boilermakers, the Hoosiers still have three games on the road, starting with Tuesday night at Northwestern, then Rutgers. Although neither of theses two games would be ‘quality’ wins, they are must wins in order to stay afloat in conference play.

If the Hoosiers are able to steal two games on the road, they will be set up for three of their other four games being at home.

The two most important games in this stretch come at the end of it, with Iowa and Ohio State, both at home.

With Iowa’s stock continuing to rise, with wins over Iowa State, Ohio State and Nebraska all in their last 11 games, they are now up to No. 19 in the country.

Ranked 25th in KenPom rankings, they are now sitting at 16-3 with no real bad losses as a projected seven seed, and quickly rising.

As for Ohio State, though they have also lost four straight games, they still rank 37th in the KenPom rankings and still have the talent the top 20 team they were just a couple of weeks ago.

If the Hoosiers are to make the NCAA Tournament, these are games they must win, as they defend homecourt.

With a game at home against Michigan sandwiched in between Northwestern and Rutgers, and at Michigan State before coming back home to host Iowa and Ohio State, all they would need are two quality showings, not necessarily wins, to make this a very positive and much needed six game stretch.

Going 4-2 over the next six games would put the Hoosiers back at 7-6 in conference play and 16-8 overall with a very much reasonable end to conference play.