My Two Cents: We Know Crazy, and Northwestern’s Domination of Indiana Ranks Right Up There, Too

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — You all know I’ve been doing this a long time, writing sports in and around Indiana for about 50 years now. I’ve seen it all, the good, the bad and the ugly.

I grew up around Indiana basketball in its golden era, the 29 years of Bob Knight. The three national championships, the five Final Fours — five-plus if you still want to count his role with the 2002 team — and hundreds of wins over three great decades.

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Knight arrived the first year of Assembly Hall and during his 29 years there, he went 26-0 against lowly Northwestern, the worst team in the Big Ten during his tenure. Never lost a home game to the Wildcats.

During that same time, I watched a ton of bad Indiana football, too. I’ve written about that a lot the past two years during this amazing turnaround under Curt Cignetti. I’ve said it often — it’s the greatest college football story ever told that the Hoosiers are now football national champions.

But want to hear something amazing? If you would have asked me 30 years ago to choose between Indiana winning the most unlikely of football championships or Northwestern suddenly owning the basketball rivalry with five straight wins over the Hoosiers, I would have picked the football title.

Yep, really.

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Because when you watched Indiana own a series forever, you can’t ever imagine that would change. The fact that the Hoosiers haven’t beaten Northwestern in basketball since 2020 is mind-boggling.

Indiana and Northwestern meet again on Tuesday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall as the Hoosiers try to snap that five-game losing streak. Indiana is a 9.5-point favorite, but that doesn’t really matter. They’ve been favorites in all three home games that they lost during this streak.

The Wildcats didn’t singlehandedly get Mike Woodson — one of Bob Knight’s all-time favorite players — fired at Indiana, but they came pretty darn close. Woodson was 0-5 against Chris Collins, and each lost was devastating to the Hoosiers’ postseason…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/two-cents-know-crazy-northwesterns-202202836.html

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Publish date : 2026-02-24 20:22:00

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