What Went Wrong For Indiana? Schedule Set Hoosiers Up For Failure

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – If you had asked Indiana fans in October 2024 when their plans would be for the day after Selection Sunday, most would have answered that they would be making their travel arrangements to go follow the Hoosiers to whatever their NCAA Tournament site happened to be.

That, of course, did not happen. Indiana was the second team left out of the NCAA Tournament field when selections were made to the field of 68 on Sunday.

Indiana’s exclusion from the tournament in favor of North Carolina and Xavier – teams with one Quad 1 each compared to Indiana’s four Quad 1 victories – was somewhat controversial.

What is not controversial is that expectations coming into the season were not met. Indiana was picked second in the Big Ten preseason poll and had a preseason ranking of No. 17 in the Associated Press poll.

Preseason rankings are a dime a dozen, but the reality for the Hoosiers was sobering. Indiana didn’t finish second in the Big Ten; it finished ninth. For the second straight year, Indiana failed to get to 20 wins – a relatively low bar to clear given how much control Indiana has over its own schedule.

That schedule is the first aspect of a failed season Hoosiers On SI will examine. Throughout the week, we’ll go into the causes of Indiana’s fall from grace.

Scheduling, for most fans, is boring stuff. It’s the province of wonks and those who focus on what shapes the games rather than the games themselves.

However, scheduling is an extremely important factor in setting the table for any team.

What table did Indiana want to set in 2025? The Hoosiers were caught between different and conflicting trends in college basketball and how to apply them to their own situation.

One thing Indiana did not want to repeat were the embarrassing losses it suffered against fellow power conference schools in both the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Indiana was on the wrong end of heavy defeats against Kansas and Arizona in 2023 and Connecticut and Auburn in 2024.

So after coach Mike Woodson admirably scheduled attractive games in his first three seasons, the Hoosiers walked away from one-off games or home-and-home series against marquee teams.

All of the high-profile teams Indiana would play outside of the Big Ten would be in November’s Battle 4 Atlantis. The only other power conference school Indiana would play was South Carolina of the SEC.

This proved to be a mistake. It was bad luck for Indiana that South Carolina was one of the only SEC teams to not have a quality season, but the Battle 4 Atlantis emphasis was built into the very basis of the schedule.

In a best-case scenario, Indiana would have beaten Louisville, Gonzaga and then perhaps Arizona in the championship game. If the Hoosiers won them all, their NET Quad 1 haul would be significant. Not only that, but without any other high-profile opponents to play, their good metrics and nonconference strength of schedule numbers would be baked in for the rest of the season.

We all know that the Hoosiers did the exact opposite. The Hoosiers were beaten badly by Louisville in the opening round. Indiana got an unexpected second chance at a quality win when Gonzaga also lost their first-round game, but the Bulldogs hammered the Hoosiers, too.

Louisville Battle 4 Atlantis. — Louisville Cardinals forward Khani Rooths (9) reacts in front of Indiana Hoosiers guard Trey Galloway (32) after scoring during the second half at the Atlantis Resort. | Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

Indiana defeated Providence in its final Battle 4 Atlantis game, but the damage was done. Indiana had no quality wins from the only source of quality nonconference wins it created for itself. It would be fighting uphill for quality wins for the remainder of the season.

Apart from the faux pas of putting all of its eggs in the Battle 4 Atlantis basket, Indiana also tried to follow another scheduling trend.

With the increased importance of the NCAA NET rankings and the prominence of websites like Kenpom and Barttorvik.com, beating lesser Division I teams by margins beyond what was predicted was thought to crack the code of the NET rankings.

Much was made of the Big 12’s efforts to schedule and play games this way in the 2023-24 season. A multitude of Big 12 teams played poor teams in nonconference play, and they racked up big margins against those teams. The analytical benefit was huge in conference play. Every Big 12 team had good metrics, so nearly every conference game was a Quad 1 opportunity.

Add to this that Indiana was the poster child for not being effective in this area in 2024. Indiana finished the 2024 season with a No. 98 NET ranking, very low for a Big Ten team. Close wins against Florida Gulf Coast, Army, Wright State and Morehead State were one reason Indiana’s metrics suffered.

So Indiana didn’t want to schedule too aggressively, but the idea for most Division I power conference teams was to schedule home games where they could run up high margins to massage their NET ranking.

Yet Indiana never really did that. Only two of Indiana’s nonconference foes were ranked above 200 in the NET rankings, so they didn’t schedule overly weak to beat up on foes.

Oumar Ballo. — Indiana's Oumar Ballo (11) shoots over Chattanooga's Collin Mulholland (21) during the Indiana versus Chattanooga men's basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Saturday, Dec. 21, 2204. | Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

However, without the component of some high-quality games to balance things out, it meant Indiana got only a middling bump for beating solid mid-majors like Miami of Ohio, Chattanooga and Winthrop, all of whom won 20 games in 2025.

Indiana could have scheduled as other Big Ten teams did. Ohio State, for example, played Texas, Texas A&M, Auburn, Kentucky and Pittsburgh. The Buckeyes only won two of those games – Texas and Kentucky – but those wins were enough to keep Ohio State on the bubble to the bitter end even though it was only two games over .500.

Whoever takes over as the next coach needs to adopt a scheduling formula that is consistent and that puts Indiana in an advantageous situation.

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