Indiana Basketball's 1975-76 Championship Team Unconcerned with Being Last Unbeaten

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The players from Indiana basketball's 1975-76 team, which finished 32-0 and won coach Bob Knight's first national championship in Bloomington, still have a group chat and stay in touch 50 years removed from the last unbeaten season in college basketball history.

But the text chain doesn't automatically light up whenever their last challenger falls, and the players don't mirror the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who celebrate each year when the final unbeaten team suffers its first loss.

"We don't celebrate," said Quinn Buckner, a senior guard on Indiana's team. "I have not been to a celebration. The Miami Dolphins thing does not happen, where they pop the champagne because they're last undefeated. We don't do that.

"If they do, they've done it without me, and I think they would at least tell me about it."

Tom Abernethy, who started at forward and averaged 10 points per game as a senior starter, said over the past 10-to-15 years, his 46-year-old twin sons have begun calling him whenever the last unbeaten team falls. Though they don't heavily celebrate, Abernethy said his family laughs about it.

Indiana's 1976 roster has an invitation, Abernethy said, to the Final Four should it have a chance at losing its crown.

Almost poetically, one of the final two undefeated teams lost Monday night, as No. 1 Arizona fell on the road to No. 3 Kansas. No. 23 Miami (Ohio) is the last unblemished team remaining. The RedHawks have +380 odds to finish the regular season undefeated, according to DraftKings Sportsbook, but face an uphill climb to completing the mission in the NCAA Tournament.

But no matter if it happens this spring or beyond, Abernethy said he'd enjoy passing the torch to the next undefeated team.

"Part of the celebration, they're going to remember the old guys, but they said we may have the opportunity to crown the new champion if we want to," Abernethy said. "And to me, I personally would love to crown (them).

"So really, we hold it. It's not ours. A lot of IU fans probably don't want to see that happen, but it would be cool."

Finishing unbeaten was relatively common when Indiana accomplished the feat in 1976. The Hoosiers were the seventh team in two decades to do so when they celebrated their first of three national championships under Knight.

But that team — one that spent the entire year ranked No. 1, had a pair of first-team All-Americans, produced National Player of the Year Scott May and won its two Final Four games by a combined 32 points — was uniquely uncommon.

And to Jim Roberson, then a freshman guard, the 1975-76 Hoosiers would have stood the test of time.

"I don't see Arizona being able to beat that team," Roberson said. "They couldn't have held a candle when they were in their prime. I'll leave it like that."

But Roberson's message came with an additional note: If Arizona would've finished unbeaten, he and his teammates planned to accept and usher them into the fraternity of undefeated teams.

Indiana proudly holds the title as college basketball's last team to navigate an entire season without losing. But the Hoosiers have placed the identity of the 1975-76 team less in record and more in the proficiency of it all.

There were memories made, legacies formed and, perhaps most relevant today, a banner secured in the Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall rafters. Those are forever immortalized — no matter if another team unseats them in the realm of unbeatens.