The Indiana basketball team hasn’t looked great in their two Big Ten games, but neither has any other team. In a crazy start to the conference season, the Hoosiers are right in the thick of it.
The Hoosiers started their Big Ten schedule with a road game at Wisconsin and a home game against Nebraska. They haven’t looked great in either game and there had to be some concern if Indiana could compete with the top half of the conference. But it has been a strange start to Big Ten play and all of a sudden Indiana looks just as good as almost every other team.
With just one more conference game to play in the opening of the conference schedule, the home teams are currently sitting at 13-0. This includes Nebraska beating Purdue, Minnesota upsetting Ohio State, and Penn State handling Maryland. Throw in Michigan losing at Illinois and all the top teams have lost on the road.
The only team without a loss is Michigan State and they travel to Northwestern on Wednesday night. If the Spartans lose that game, every single Big Ten team will be 1-1. It would be one of the weirdest starts to conference play ever.
Because of how games have gone to start, the Hoosiers now look like they are just as good as anybody else. The overtime win against Nebraska looked like a bad game for the Hoosiers, but then the Cornhuskers beat a good Purdue team that had beat top ten Virginia by 29 points.
Losing on the road to Wisconsin again looked like a really bad loss, but it isn’t as bad as Ohio State losing at Minnesota. In a matter of a week, the Hoosiers went from looking like a pretender to be sitting exactly where everyone else is.
Two tough wins after their loss to Wisconsin have shown the fight that Indiana has this year. A fight that may have been lacking last year. During their 1-12 slump last year, Indiana looked like they wanted to be anywhere else but playing a basketball game. This year they look like a different team even when they are struggling.
They still have a long way to go this year to prove they belong, but the beginning of the conference play has shown they are just like everyone else and for now that is a good thing. The home teams won’t win every game this year in the Big Ten, but for the first 13 games they have and it has helped keep the Hoosiers and everyone else from getting behind in the standings.
Indiana will need to win some road games if they want to rise to the top, but after two games they are right in the thick of the discussion.