Give DeVries a mulligan for this year's IU failures, but patience will wear thin quickly
Another year, another missed opportunity to reach the NCAA Tournament. That's eight times in 10 years. Brutal.
All they needed was a victory over a sub-.500 Northwestern team. One victory, this one on a neutral court in Chicago, and the bubble-dwelling Hoosiers likely would have snuck into the NCAA Tournament for just the third time in 10 years. In a season characterized by a Charmin-soft bubble, Darian DeVries’ first team in Bloomington needed to accomplish the minimum, beat Northwestern for the first time in seven tries.
And they couldn’t even do that.
Not even close, falling apart in the second half and losing 74-61 to a Northwestern team that played one night earlier against Penn State.
And so the IU season is over early again, the Hoosiers almost surely missing the tournament for the eighth time in the last 10 years, an unthinkable, unspeakable failure for a program with IU’s increasingly distant history of success.
Has there ever been a more forgettable season and forgettable IU team than this one, at least in the recent past? Aside from Lamar Wilkerson finishing second in the Big Ten in scoring (and the leading scorer in conference games), there was absolutely nothing to recommend this group of low achievers. This is a team that began the season at 17-8, only to watch it all fall apart with six losses in the final seven games.
Which begs this question: Is DeVries the right man for the job?
