Selection Committee on IU basketball: Hoosiers ‘didn’t take advantage’ of the handful of opportunities to strengthen résumé

With the NCAA Tournament set to tip-off on Tuesday night with the First Four in Dayton, it’s a place a lot of fans and media assumed the IU basketball team would be. Despite a shaky year, the strong end of year play for the Hoosiers, with a weak bubble field, gave way to a potential spot in the ‘Last Four In’ category on selection Sunday when the NCAA Tournament field was announced. However, that wasn’t the case and it left a lot of people looking for answers.

The last four teams in the field were Texas, Xavier, San Diego State and North Carolina — in that order. The first two teams out? West Virginia and Indiana.

Following the bracket reveal, the discussion began and it revolved around North Carolina’s addition to the field as the last team in. The Tar Heels held a 1-12 record against Quad 1 opponents, compared to 6-10 for the Mountaineers and 4-13 for the Hoosiers. Add in Quad 2 and 3 and West Virginia had three additional losses, the Tar Heels posted a Quad 3 loss all while Indiana was perfect in that area — with no losses outside of Quad 1 games.

So, what did UNC Athletic Director and Selection Committee Chair Bubba Cunningham have to say to reporters when asked about IU’s emission?

“Yeah, I’ll tell you, it was tough,” Cunningham said. “Indiana didn’t have a single loss outside the first quadrant. But they didn’t play that well in the challenging non-conference schedule. So the metrics were just slightly below the ones that ended up getting in.”

Indiana, who played in The Bahamas, lost to both Louisville and Gonzaga by double-digits while beating zero tournament teams — just South Carolina and Providence — in the overall non-conference slate. Both teams finished 12-20. Its non-conference ranking was 64, according to ESPNs BPI. North Carolina was 4 and West Virginia was 62. IU was 64th in the NET rankings while West Virginia was 51st and UNC was 36th.

KenPom? More of the same. North Carolina 33, West Virginia 53 and IU 48.

Since the conversations amongst the selection committee couldn’t include Cunningham when it came to comparing North Carolina to the other bubble teams, Vice Chair Keith Gill added more to IU’s case.

“When look at the opportunities that they had in the Quad 1 area, they didn’t take advantage of those opportunities in a way, and then their metrics also were down relative to the teams that got into the field,” Gill said. “That’s really kind of what it came down to, as it looks in terms of some of the metrics that we use that are really important, and then kind of the opportunities that they had and what some of those results were.”

Another metric — new to the selection committee this season — was WAB, or Wins Above Bubble. Indiana was 50th, while West Virginia was 41st and UNC was 42nd

“I think the use of WAB was helpful. I don’t know that I would say it was such a difference maker in terms of the process change significantly, but it was another tool that we could use to try to evaluate things that sometimes aren’t like, in terms of different schedules, in terms of people playing uneven conference schedules and not round-robins,” Gill said. “So the Wins Above Bubble allows us to provide a look that can make look at that in a more consistent way, and I do think the committee used that, but I don’t know that I would say the use of the quads was diminished in that regard. I would just say that this was additive and certainly didn’t subtract from some of the other processes that we currently use.”

While it’s a head-scratcher to some in terms of how or why IU basketball didn’t make the field, the Hoosiers have a very similar resume to other programs also left out of the field in recent years. Indiana, which finished at 19-13 overall and 10-10 in Big Ten play, had a resume similar to Mississippi State in 2023 which made the field, as well as Ole Miss in 2015. Mississippi State was in the First Four while Ole Miss made the initial field. BYU in 2022, Marquette in 2018 and Tennessee and Kentucky in 2013 all missed the field with extremely similar metrics. Similar UNC resumes to make the field? Eight of 10 potential options, and a team in three of the last four years. West Virginia? Also eight of 10 similar resumes made the field.

Indiana has now missed back-to-back NCAA Tournaments after making two in a row. The Hoosiers have missed nine of the last 15, as well.

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