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CHICAGO — Back in December right before Indiana’s Big Ten basketball schedule started, I was in Bloomington with my old college roommate and his son, both astute and passionate fans of several of the Hoosiers’ teams.
We were talking IU basketball, and I had a question for his son. “If the over/under on Big Ten wins for Indiana was 10 wins, would you go over or under?”
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“Oh, over for sure. This is the best shooting team we’ve had in a long time. I can see 11, 12 wins.”
My reaction? “Really? Because I just don’t see it. And I don’t see it for a lot of reasons.”
I bring this story up not to brag, because I had predicted an 18-13 record with a 9-11 mark in the Big Ten. That’s exactly how it played out. And it went to 18-14 when they were upset in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament by Northwestern, a team that beat them twice in the past three weeks — and practically single-handedly knocked the Hoosiers out of the NCAA Tournament in DeVries’ first year.
The thing is, I didn’t think this was an NCAA Tournament at the beginning of the year. This was a team with 13 brand new players, and only one that had had success as a Power Five starter — Tucker DeVries. All the others transferred in from mid-major schools, or were reserves on good teams, like Sam Alexis at Florida.
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I was well aware that Darian DeVries was hired in mid-March, his staff wasn’t in place until a few weeks later and they were very far behind in working the transfer portal. Lamar Wilkerson was far better than I expected, but no one else exceeded my expectations.
I didn’t think they were very good, and that proved to be true.
As it turns out, I was not in the majority there. Every time Indiana lost a game, fans railed at coaches and players alike. They were disappointed in each loss — and it was the same routine 14 times in a row — and they were upset that the Hoosiers didn’t play better.
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And I always asked why.
Why did everyone think this was an NCAA-level team? Why…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/two-cents-indiana-basketball-disappointment-170359970.html
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Publish date : 2026-03-15 17:03:00
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