Indiana hurts NCAA Tournament case with embarrassing loss to Northwestern in Big Ten Tournament

The Indiana Hoosiers — a program that has won five national titles and historically been one of the best teams in college basketball — have not made the NCAA Tournament since the 2022-23 season. After an embarrassing 74-61 loss to Northwestern in a second-round game in the Big Ten Tournament on Wednesday, they will likely not be playing in this year's tournament, either.

A win over Northwestern (15-18, 5-15 Big Ten) would not have entirely cured Indiana's worries on the bubble, but for a team that had lost five of its six games entering Wednesday, it needed a different result than the one it got.

Indiana's crushing loss to Northwestern may be the last straw in its NCAA Tournament hopes

It was bad enough that the Hoosiers (18-14, 9-11 Big Ten) already lost to the Wildcats, 72-68, back on Feb. 24. With a second loss to one of the bottom-dwelling teams in the Big Ten and a chance at a second win over a ranked Purdue team in Thursday's third-round action no longer possible, Indiana will instead be sitting at home anxiously waiting to see if its name will be called on Sunday.

Indiana led 37-36 at the break and was at least in position to pull out the victory until an abysmal second half ensued. The Hoosiers could only muster 24 points out of the locker room and even went six minutes without making a shot and 3-of-15 from the floor in the last 14 minutes and change of the game.

Aside from struggling to find the bottom of the net, the biggest issue for the Hoosiers was finding any answer for Northwestern's Nick Martinelli, who had a game-high 28 points (10-of-18 FG).

For Indiana, senior guard Lamar Wilkerson was the leading-scorer with 17 points (7-of-16 FG), while senior guard Tayton Conerway contributed 14 points (5-of-7 FG) off the bench. Senior forward Tucker DeVries, who averages the second-most points on the team (13.9 PPG), was held to just six points on 2-of-9 shooting.

The Hoosiers were the 10-seed in the Big Ten Tournament and ESPN's Joe Lunardi currently projects nine teams from the conference to be dancing on Sunday. Not only that, but Indiana is his first team out of the 68-team field as of Wednesday, so it was clear that it needed to put together a solid run in the conference tournament to eliminate any doubt.

After failing to even win one game and losing a seventh straight to Northwestern in the process, Indiana is in deep trouble. Its NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking of 38 is solid, but when you consider it has a combined record of 6-13 against Quad 1 and Quad 2 opponents, that does not bode well when the selection committee is comparing resumes.

A soft bubble overall could benefit the Hoosiers, but you do not want to rely on the results from other teams and give the committee any reason to consider keeping you out of the NCAA Tournament.

With an embarrassing second-half performance and a second-round loss to Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament, Indiana likely played itself out of the field and made the committee's decision a lot easier barring a lot of help from the teams around it on the bubble.