“We just weren’t playing our best basketball”: IU’s late-season collapse ends with early Big Ten tournament exit

IU basketball at the Big Ten tournament.

CHICAGO – Still donning their white Indiana uniform, Tucker DeVries and Lamar Wilkerson sat in the makeshift press room under the stands of the United Center.

Eyes puffy from waves of emotions, they both gazed at the stat sheet on the table in front of them. They didn’t say anything; they just wore blank stares at what happened to the team they captained.

No amount of numbers could explain it — not the 38–24 second half, nor the 5-of-20 shooting over the final 20 minutes. Indiana’s 74–61 loss to Northwestern in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament marked the culmination of an incomprehensible collapse in the season’s final month.

“We all came here wanting to lay the groundwork for this program and the culture and really set the tone,” Tucker DeVries said. “But just down the stretch of the season, we weren’t able to capitalize on some of the opportunities we had.”

To understand what led to Wednesday’s despair, go back to February 9th.

At that point, Indiana still had everything in front of it. The Hoosiers had just wrapped up a 2–0 homestand with wins over Wisconsin and Oregon and at 17–8 looked every bit like an NCAA Tournament team.

That momentum didn’t last.

The Hoosiers lost their next two games, laying down in the second half in blowout defeats on the road against Illinois and Purdue. Albeit against a pair of high-caliber opponents, Indiana went from a bona fide tournament team back to its familiar spot: the bubble.

It lost at home to Northwestern, then to Michigan State just a few days later. Suddenly, the Hoosiers were on the outside looking in on the field of 68.

Once a team playing for seeding was now playing with its season on the line in the last two weeks of the season. Yet, as each game came and went, Indiana didn’t meet the moment. Outmatched by the weight of the moment, the Hoosiers dropped five of their last six games of the regular season, losing four by double figures.

“We just weren’t playing our best basketball,” Wilkerson said. “We made a lot of self-inflictions that cost us the games through that last stretch. And we just weren’t hooked up like we were supposed to be.”

Even as Indiana faltered down the stretch and every loss appeared as the final straw of the season, so too did other teams on the bubble. Darian DeVries’ team received a mulligan, then another, and another, so on and so forth all the way to the Big Ten tournament.

With a chance to avenge its February 24 collapse against Nick Martinelli and Northwestern in Bloomington, Indiana had a runway to sneak into the tournament with a pair of wins in Chicago, starting Wednesday afternoon.

Needing more than one to be sure of hearing their name called on Sunday evening, Indiana needed to play with the elusive sense of urgency. And to its credit, Indiana came out inspired, but, as in the four weeks before, it couldn’t sustain the momentum.

Indiana’s nine-point advantage evaporated quickly in the first half. When its season was on the line in the second, the collapse mirrored the final three weeks of the regular season.

Everything the Hoosiers built before halftime crumbled, and in the do-or-die moments, it was the 14–18 Wildcats — playing for nothing — who looked like the team fighting to keep their season alive.

“We knew it was going to be an NCAA tournament type of game,” Northwestern coach Chris Collins said. “We knew what Indiana was playing for, and knew what their sense of urgency was going to be.”

Back at the podium, Tucker DeVries and Wilkerson stood up and walked away — seemingly for the final time in their collegiate careers. With jerseys untucked and shoulders slumped, they carried the weight of knowing their season wouldn’t continue past the moment they walked off the floor.

When Sunday arrives, and the 68-team field is revealed, Indiana will likely be left out of the NCAA tournament for a third straight year.

“It’s really frustrating,” Tucker DeVries said. “It really sucks that none of us are really going to put this uniform on again for a regular season or this tournament.”

A season that once held so much promise unraveled over seven games in 31 days — ending not with a postseason run, but with two dejected seniors walking away from the podium.

(Photo credit: IU Athletics)

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