BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — You all know I've been doing this a long time, writing sports in and around Indiana for about 50 years now. I've seen it all, the good, the bad and the ugly.
I grew up around Indiana basketball in its golden era, the 29 years of Bob Knight. The three national championships, the five Final Fours — five-plus if you still want to count his role with the 2002 team — and hundreds of wins over three great decades.
Knight arrived the first year of Assembly Hall and during his 29 years there, he went 26-0 against lowly Northwestern, the worst team in the Big Ten during his tenure. Never lost a home game to the Wildcats.
During that same time, I watched a ton of bad Indiana football, too. I've written about that a lot the past two years during this amazing turnaround under Curt Cignetti. I've said it often — it's the greatest college football story ever told that the Hoosiers are now football national champions.
But want to hear something amazing? If you would have asked me 30 years ago to choose between Indiana winning the most unlikely of football championships or Northwestern suddenly owning the basketball rivalry with five straight wins over the Hoosiers, I would have picked the football title.
Yep, really.
Because when you watched Indiana own a series forever, you can't ever imagine that would change. The fact that the Hoosiers haven't beaten Northwestern in basketball since 2020 is mind-boggling.
I ndiana and Northwestern meet again on Tuesday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall as the Hoosiers try to snap that five-game losing streak. Indiana is a 9.5-point favorite, but that doesn't really matter. They've been favorites in all three home games that they lost during this streak.
The Wildcats didn't singlehandedly get Mike Woodson — one of Bob Knight's all-time favorite players — fired at Indiana, but they came pretty darn close. Woodson was 0-5 against Chris Collins, and each lost was devastating to the Hoosiers' postseason future.
Lest wer forget:
Northwestern beat Indiana 59-51 at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, Ill. during Woodson's first year. That night, Woodson suspended five players for a game — including starters Xavier Johnson and Parker Stewart — and the Hoosiers lost a game they should have won.
Indiana finished 18-12 in the regular season, and 9-11 in the Big Ten. IU won two Big Ten Tournament games to the make the NCAA Tournament, but they had to play in the First Four in Dayton. They beat Wyoming there, but then had to travel all the way to Portland, Ore., where they got killed by Saint Mary's. If they had beaten Northwestern that year, they probably would have avoided the First Four and all that crazy travel.
The 2023 Indiana team was Woodson's best, finishing 21-10 and 12-8 in the Big Ten, the most league wins by an IU team since 2016. This was Trayce Jackson-Davis' senior year and the Hoosiers were really good.
They also lost to Northwestern twice , losing 84-83 in Bloomington on Jan. 8 and 64-62 in Evanston five weeks later. Beat the Wildcats, and a 23-8 team with a 14-6 mark certainly would have been seeded higher than No. 4 and would have avoided Miami — and eventual Final Four team — in the second round.
They could have been a No. 3 seed, and two of them (Gonzaga, Kansas State) made the Elite Eight. Creighton, a No. 6 in on the same line, reached the Elite Eight, too. That could have been Indiana, but for those two losses to Indiana. A long NCAA run would have bought Woodson more time for sure, and probably helped even more with recruitiung.
Indiana was fighting for its postseason life in late February when it lost at home to Northwestern 76-72. It was part of a four-game losing streak that left them at 14-13 and 6-10 in the Big Ten. Somehow, the Hoosiers won their last four conference games — including upsets of Wisconsin and Michigan State — to finish 10-10 in the league.
The Hoosiers beat Penn State in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament, but lost by 27 points to Nebraska in the quarters. It was their eighth double-digit loss of the season and with a final record of 19-14, they didn't get in the NCAA Tournament.
Had they beaten Northwestern as a big favorite, the 20 wins and 11-9 Big Ten mark certainly would have been enough to get in the NCAAs. And there would have been no Mike Woodson hot seat heading into the 2025 season.
The beginning of the end of Woodson startedf on Jan. 22, when Indiana lost at Northwestern 79-70. It started a five-game losing streak and a 2-8 stretch that forced Woodson out, announcing he would resign at the end of the season.
But then the Hoosiers beat No. 11 Michigan State on the road and No. 13 Purdue to get back in the postseason chase. The Hoosiers finished 19-12 and 10-10 in the Big Ten and once again came up just short of getting an NCAA bid.
Much like 2024, a 20-win season and and 11-win Big Ten year would have gotten them in if they had beaten Northwestern.
See what I mean? It's one thing to lose to Northwestern — a team that never even played in the NCAA Tournament until 2017 — but it's another thing to lose five times in a row, and three times at home.
What compounds it all — and times a hundred, really — was just how much each lost cost the Hoosiers every season.
We can't rewrite history, of course, but it's clear as a bell that things could have been very different for Indiana. And for Mike Woodson, too.
Bob Knight could have never imagined it.
