Indiana Basketball: Hoosiers drop out of next in line in latest ESPN Top 25

The Indiana basketball team has stood pat with their team, but yet still take a drop in ESPN’s latest early basketball top 25.

ESPN came out with their new way-to-early college basketball top 25 on Monday morning and Indiana was nowhere to be found on the list. When they did their first one in late March the Hoosiers were on the next in line group of teams.

All the Hoosiers have done since that time is stand pat with the team they have. They haven’t added any players, they haven’t lost any players, and to our knowledge, none of them have gotten any worse.

We wrote last week about how just about every team in the Big Ten has suffered from players declaring for the NBA draft or have transferred. Some even lost very good players to graduation, but that was something that was already known.

The Hoosiers have not lost anyone to the draft or to transfer. They haven’t added any transfers or any new commitments. They could still add Khristian Lander if he reclassifies and it looks like the path might be clearer for him to do that, but it is still unclear if he will or not.

Obviously they aren’t taking into account Lander being on the Hoosiers because that is not known yet, but what have the Hoosiers done to drop out of the next in line list? Yes, I get that this is all way too early and a bunch of guessing, but it is still nice to see the Hoosiers getting some respect.

The critics are going to say, yes but the Hoosiers have to prove it and I agree with that to an extent. But Indiana also returns almost all their scoring to a team that had five ranked wins last year and played a few others very close.

This is a Hoosiers team that was a few bounces away from being a top-half team in the very competitive Big Ten. They return Trayce Jackson-Davis who will be one of the best players in the conference next year and they are bringing a great recruiting class that again could be even better with Lander.

We get that being on a top 25 list like this means absolutely nothing, but it is still nice to get the respect that it seems like the Hoosiers aren’t getting. Is this a top 25 team? We will have to see how they play next year, but with so much upheaval from teams around them, they have to be right there if they aren’t in.

But apparently according to ESPN, keeping the same team isn’t good enough to keep them on the list.

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