It’s almost everybody’s favorite time of the year again, March Madness. The most anticipated tournament in all of college basketball, where 68 teams have a shot at making history. It’s a month where upsets are just around every corner, where teams that are stuck in the shadows of power house schools can shock the world and finally make a name for themselves. With Selection Sunday in just 11 days, let’s take a look at the status of our favorite Indiana schools.
Starting off with the “Tournament unlikely” teams, we are presented with Butler, Notre Dame, Indiana State, Evansville, Southern Indiana and Valparaiso. These three teams have struggled a bit during the regular season, as none of them currently have a winning record. This puts most of these teams on the verge of elimination, but there is one scenario that grants a few of these teams one last chance to qualify for the National tournament. This would be winning their conference tournaments. Now it seems unlikely for a team such as Butler or Notre Dame to emerge as champions in their rather difficult conferences.
Moving up a big step, we have Indiana and Purdue. Purdue is just about as close to a tournament lock as it gets, putting up a solid record of 21-9, earning themselves a rank as the 20th best team in the country. This projects Purdue to be granted a top 5 seed. IU, on the other hand, is still relentlessly fighting for their spot. Their regular season record is currently 18-12, but with multiple recent impressive wins, they have found themselves to be projected to start as an 11 seed, where they might have to compete in the “last four in”. This means that they would have to participate in a play-in game right before the tournament starts to officially solidify their place in the bracket.
Any team that doesn’t put up the resume to compete at the NCAA championship can always compete in the next best tournament, that being the NIT. These teams would much rather favor the NCAA tournament over the NIT, but getting court time is important no matter what to continue to practice and improve for the following seasons. We wish each Indiana school the best of luck to reach their fullest potential and end their season with a bang. A lot of these talented teams have the odds heavily stacked against them, but in March, anything is possible.
