IUHoosierJoe

I'm sure you noticed this, but the metric the tournament committee appeared to rely very, very heavily on last year was Wins Above Bubble. The selections tracked those rankings with the lone exception of Xavier (#49) jumping over West Virginia (#43) and Indiana (#48) to make the tournament. (So, Xavier getting in over West Virginia was the only deviation). With just a few exceptions, the seedings generally tracked the WAB rankings as well. Right now, we have a lot of the season left, and we have some work to do, as we rank #62 in WAB. Of course, there are a ton of opportunities upcoming to improve that.

Indiana 36, Alabama 20

Indiana 81, Siena 59

Didn’t he originally commit to us out of high school?

Indiana 96, Chicago St 57

True. It's also true that Louisville finished #28 in the NET rankings after being #58 on 12/14/24. So, improvement is possible. If we improve even somewhat from our current #26 ranking, I'd think we'll be just fine, even though our competition will certainly be tougher than Louisville's was last year.

Just FYI, the NET is mostly a predictive model. There is a small percentage of result-based metric in it, but it is probably 90% predictive. It will closely match KenPom, especially as KenPom gets rid of its pre-season data.

I'm certainly not here to tell everyone how they should feel, but here are some facts that y'all might find interesting: As of December 14, 2025, we are currently #26 in the NET rankings with a record of 8-3. On December 14, 2024, Michigan, in Dusty May's first year, was #27 in the NET rankings with a record of 8-2, and Louisville, in Pat Kelsey's first year, was #58 in the NET rankings with a record of 6-5. I don't have any statistics on what percentage of those two fan bases thought their respective seasons were over.

Kentucky 79, Indiana 77

Well, I’m 60, and we’ve scored more than 113 points in a Big Ten game three times in my lifetime. So, no, last night wasn’t quite “normal.”

Flu

Indiana 84, Penn St 70

Any network that would allow this nonsense over its airwaves is not a serious sports network. I would suggest they change their name to EPN.

This is spot on. There is nobody else coaching right now at any level that has the ability to demand what Cignetti demands and keep everyone bought in. There is no “next Cignetti” out there right now. The answer he gave in yesterday’s press conference about whether the loser of the OSU-IU game deserves a bye is very telling. We know how every other coach in the country would have answered that question. Cignetti said his team needs to go out and earn it. Because he knows they will. Enjoy and appreciate what we have right now, my friends. We are the envy of every fan base in the country.

There is a long way to get there with lots of scrolling, but Inside The Hall posted a direct link a little bit ago, and that is the fastest way to get there.