Does the Indiana basketball program have a strong enough resume to keep them in the discussion for an at-large NCAA Tournament bid?
When Romeo Langford committed to Indiana University last spring, hope and joy filled the hearts of IU basketball fans. With further additions such as Rob Phinisee, Damezi Anderson, Jake Forrester, Evan Fitzner and Jerome Hunter (has not played this season), things were only looking up for Indiana this season and a 12-2 start confirmed this team can play. However, the Hoosiers are now just 1-9 in their last ten games and their season is in the balance.
What was once a guarantee is now a dream in terms of their tournament hopes, but just how good is their resume and chances?
To start the year, they had some high quality wins, including victories over Marquette, Louisville, and even Butler. Also, their only win in their last ten games came on the road vs Michigan State, which is another very high quality win.
However, the losses at Rutgers and Northwestern were the two losses this season, even though it was in the middle of their losing streak, that may hold them out of the tournament.
These were games that would break Indiana out of their slump and keep them with a respectable record, and 10 game stretch, but instead has helped them fall flat on their faces. These losses are detrimental to their tournament hopes as Rutgers is currently 11-12 (5-9) while Northwestern is 12-12 (3-10).
Just this past week Indiana had the chance to improve to 15-9 with home wins over No. 20 Iowa and Ohio State. Unfortunately, they blew both those chances and currently sit at a mediocre record of 13-11, with an abysmal Big Ten record at 4-9.
Other stats needed to be taken into consideration are strength of schedule.
For Indiana, this doesn’t sit well with a current non-conference ranking of 112th in the country along with a .5236 SOS rating (Strength of Schedule). In comparison to other bubble teams, Syracuse, Alabama, Arizona State and Auburn all have top 70 non-conference SOS rankings.
What is working on Indiana’s side is the conference they play in. Sitting at 33 in the country in overall SOS, their Big Ten results, even losses, have in turn helped in comparison to the Pac-12, and SEC, when it comes to Alabama, Auburn and Arizona St.
Also, the Hoosiers sit with the best non-conference wins compared to all four listed, and have a higher ranking in the NET (49) than Arizona State (72) and are just slightly lower than Syracuse (47), and Alabama (43).
When it comes to wins against top talent, Indiana has a record of 4-8 against Quad 1 opponents, while Alabama is 2-6, Syracuse is 2-3, Arizona State is 3-1, and Auburn is a terrible 0-6, but somehow ranked no. 20 in the NET.
Even with all the early wins, don’t get any hopes up for this team as they will likely need to win five or even six of their final seven games this season to reach 18 or 19 wins and would also need to show up with an impressive run in the Big Ten Tournament.
With Minnesota, Purdue, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan State still on our schedules, the opportunities are there, but you can essentially start looking forward to next season.