Indiana basketball’s season is over, source says, just missing March Madness, skipping others

BLOOMINGTON — After missing out on the NCAA Tournament for a third straight year, a source confirmed to IndyStar on Sunday that Indiana basketball does not intend to participate in any secondary postseason competition.

Darian DeVries’ first season at IU is officially concluded.

The Hoosiers retained a slim hope of reaching the back end of the field, thanks to relatively strong predictive metrics and a clutch of quality wins (Purdue, at UCLA, Wisconsin). But a 1-6 slide to end the season — including five losses by at least 13 points — did too much damage to an already thin tournament resume, leaving DeVries’ team on the outside looking in.

Sunday’s bracket reveal showed Indiana as the fourth team out of the field, reflecting just how far off the bubble the Hoosiers had fallen.

Their performance this winter would still likely have landed them a place in a lesser postseason event, like the NIT or the eight-team, Fox-backed College Basketball Crown, hosted in Las Vegas.

But with half his roster gone to eligibility exhaustion following this season, never mind potential further attrition, DeVries and his staff have a significant rebuilding job to execute in the coming weeks. Alongside Ryan Carr, IU’s new executive director of basketball, DeVries can now turn immediately to that challenge, in an effort to ensure his Hoosiers are not in the same position a year from now.

IU last participated in the NCAA Tournament in 2023. The Hoosiers have not played past the first weekend in a decade.

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