Indiana’s Basketball Misery on Full Display in Men’s National Title Game

INDIANAPOLIS — Fortunately, Indiana is a football school now. Otherwise, this backyard Final Four would really be excruciating.

There’s Dusty May, who grew up 20 minutes from Bloomington and graduated from Indiana—he’s here coaching a runaway freight train Michigan team. And there’s Braylon Mullins, a native of Greenfield and the 2025 Indiana Mr. Basketball—he’s here making huge shots for UConn. One of them will win a national championship Monday night.

There were other Indiana products competing Saturday. Illinois starter Jake Davis is from McCordsville, 20 miles outside Indianapolis, and Illini rotation player Ben Humrichous, who made a significant late three against UConn, is from Tipton, 50 miles north of Lucas Oil Stadium. Arizona didn’t have a player from Indiana, but director of player relations Jason Gardner was Mr. Basketball in 1999—and his son, Jason Jr., is a four-star Class of 2027 prospect.

So many ties to the Hoosier State. So few Hoosiers.

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Indiana should probably give Curt Cignetti another raise for providing substantial relief from the disrepair of the men’s basketball program. The Hoosiers’ streak without a Final Four is now 24 years, and the national championship drought is 39 years. Heck, the Hoosiers have even whiffed on simply making the NCAA tournament the last three seasons, something that used to be taken for granted.

It’s bad. And Monday night represents the self-inflicted nadir.

In a four-month span in late 2023 and early ’24, Indiana made arguably the best and worst coaching decisions in its athletic history. Hiring the low-profile Cignetti from James Madison was an unforeseeable master stroke, leading to a 28–2 record and a national title in two seasons. But the subsequent decision to retain men’s basketball coach Mike Woodson for a fourth season has had calamitous aftereffects.

Put it this way: If the Hoosiers had jettisoned Woodson after three seasons, they might have May as their coach and Mullins as their star player. Instead of competing against each other, they might have joined forces in Bloomington and be jointly repping Indiana in the title game.

Admittedly, the Woodson decision was harder to make in real time than in hindsight. He’s a former great player from the Bob Knight era. He got the job with the backing of many other former greats—including key members of the 1976 undefeated team, who are royalty in the Indiana hierarchy. (Particularly former point guard Quinn Buckner.) Everyone wanted to see Woodson succeed.

His first two seasons were solid—the Hoosiers won 20 games, made the NCAA tournament both years and won one game in each appearance. Not great, especially after retaining star big man Trayce Jackson-Davis for his sophomore and junior years, but solid building blocks. Then the 2023–24 season was a backslide to 19–14, with a 27-point Big Ten tournament loss to Nebraska while on the NCAA bubble.

At that juncture, the tension point had less to do with Woodson’s performance than May’s availability. That should have forced Indiana’s hand.

The former manager under Knight had already worked a certified basketball miracle. He took Florida Atlantic to the Final Four with a 35–4 record in 2023, and followed that up with a 25–9 mark and another NCAA bid after upgrading conference affiliation from Conference USA to the American. He was ready to move.

Louisville jumped into the Dusty Derby. So did Vanderbilt. And, of course, Michigan, which landed the hottest guy on the coaching market. Indiana assessed the situation and never got involved, opting to retain Woodson for the 2024–25 season.

Armed with considerable NIL resources, Woodson’s Hoosiers again failed to win 20 games and again failed to make the Big Dance. He was fired, sparking a flicker of hope that May would come home, but he wasn’t leaving Michigan after one season.

Indiana turned to West Virginia’s Darian DeVries. That may ultimately work out, but his first year produced another in an Indiana series of blah bubble teams.

Meanwhile, May has quickly turned Michigan into a monster. His first team went 27–10 and made the Sweet 16; now this season’s group appears to be on a collision course with the national title.

All of this dovetails with the recruitment of Mullins, a Greenfield-Central High School sharpshooter who blew up into an elite prospect in the spring and summer of 2024. UConn, which had never recruited Indiana, saw him and sensed an opening.

Braylon Mullins is hitting monster March Madness shots for UConn despite receiving an offer from Indiana. | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

“I’d seen a bunch of his film his junior year and I thought he was sort of a perfect fit for how we play,” says UConn assistant Luke Murray, who spearheaded the recruitment of Mullins. “I showed Coach [Dan] Hurley a lot of it during that year, and then the first time that [Hurley] saw him live was at an AAU tournament in Texas that April and he loved him. We were all over it after that.

“By the summer he had [offers from] Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, North Carolina—I mean, every big school, and obviously Indiana and Michigan. So it was a tough recruitment.”

Mullins whittled down his final list of schools to UConn, North Carolina and Indiana, with an October decision date looming before the start of his senior season. Michigan probably would have been in the mix—his father, Josh, is a huge Wolverines fan and knew May—but May hadn’t yet coached a game in Ann Arbor. Indiana was heading into a Woodson lame-duck season that made it difficult to land a high school star. UConn was coming off consecutive national titles.

Thus the future Mr. Basketball relocated to the Northeast.

“My first official visit was to UConn and it kind of set the standard,” Mullins says. “It wasn’t difficult leaving home; I wanted the freedom.”

Mullins has had a good freshman season, stepping into the starting lineup Dec. 12 and never leaving it. But he took things to a far different level the last two games.

His 35-foot buzzer beater to shock Duke in the East Regional final will go down as an all-time March Madness moment, and he followed that up with 15 points in the Huskies’ mild upset of Illinois on Saturday. Once again, Mullins made the biggest shot—this time a wing three off a curl with 52 seconds left, pumping the lead over the Illini up to seven points.

“It’s almost a 180,” Murray said of Mullins’s makeover from when he first set foot in Storrs, Conn., until now. “Even like the last couple of weeks, he just seems to really be coming into his own.”

Watching May leading Michigan and Mullins swishing shots for UConn is brutal for Indiana fans, but it’s also not a new Final Four sight. There has been a recent parade of in-state products in major roles for teams other than the Hoosiers in early April.

Purdue had four Indiana guys in the rotation when it made the NCAA championship game in 2024: Braden Smith of Westfield; Fletcher Loyer of Fort Wayne; Trey Kaufman-Renn of Sellersburg; and Mason Gillis of New Castle. NC State 2024 starter Jayden Taylor is from Indianapolis. May’s Florida Atlantic Final Four team was led by Johnell Davis of Gary. And Virginia doesn’t win the 2019 national title without former Indiana Mr. Basketball Kyle Guy (Indianapolis) making three key free throws to win the semifinal game against Auburn.

Winning the home-state recruiting battles doesn’t guarantee national championship contention, even in a fertile state like Indiana. But the Hoosiers need to win some of the big ones.

The last five Mr. Basketball winners have gone to UConn, Kansas, Notre Dame and Purdue (twice). The last nine Mr. Basketball winners who played in a Final Four went somewhere other than Indiana: two apiece at North Carolina, Ohio State and Purdue; and one each at UConn, Virginia and Kentucky.

Indiana quite possibly could have broken free of its long basketball malaise with a different coaching decision two years ago. Instead, it will watch Dusty May and Braylon Mullins compete to become the latest Hoosier expatriate to win it all.

For Indiana fans who need a distraction Monday: the football spring game is April 23.

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