Indiana men’s basketball failed its nonconference slate. Now what?

The Hoosiers enter Big Ten play without a signature win on their resume.

Indiana men’s basketball exited this past offseason having remade its roster and schedule.

The Hoosiers had spent the previous few years playing the likes of Kansas, Arizona and UConn in the opening months of the season. This year’s schedule included just one marquee matchup, the Battle 4 Atlantis, which gave Indiana a potential shot at teams like Gonzaga and, well, Arizona.

After that? The schedule was mostly fluff. Sub-100 KenPom teams played at home without the customary game in Indianapolis that has become tradition in recent years for Indy-area alumni.

The move with this schedule and how to capitalize on it was obvious: blow out the lesser opponents and win a good game or two in The Bahamas to exit the nonconference slate with favorable metrics.

Indiana absolutely had the roster to make this happen. The portal was good to the program and gave them one of the top centers and multiple lead-guard caliber backcourt players. Last year’s poot overall roster construction and backcourt void would be a thing of the past.

Well. No.

This schedule just about completely blew up in Indiana’s face. The Hoosiers got blown out by Louisville in the opening round of the Battle 4 Atlantis before suffering the same fate to Gonzaga.

Think about that. A year one Louisville group beat the brakes off of a year four Indiana roster that had immense talent from the high school and portal pipelines. That alone is unacceptable.

A win over Gonzaga would’ve at least helped cancel that loss out but, again, that was another blowout. Something that’s become all too common for Mike Woodson-led Indiana teams.

So Indiana blew its lone shot at getting a resume-building win. It could just fall back on blowing out those buy game opponents at home, right? Wrong.

Another trend that’s emerged the past two years: Indiana lets those teams hang around in Assembly Hall all too often and almost dares them to beat them before barely pulling away late.

The Hoosiers did enough to beat Sam Houston State and Miami (OH) to improve their metrics, but fell right back down to 50th in KenPom after a blowout loss to Nebraska that got away from them in the closing minutes. Close wins over Chattanooga and Winthrop actually dropped them down to 54th.

That’s the second worst ranking Indiana has had exiting the nonconference slate of the Woodson era, following last season’s mark of 84. You can thank a win over South Carolina and those earlier performances over mid-majors for that.

And, to touch on the topic, Indiana is ranked far lower than the teams that ultimately ended the Indiana tenures of Tom Crean and Archie Miller.

It’s not good. Last year Indiana’s expectations were not all that high, the Hoosiers actually finished exactly where the preseason unofficial media poll put them in the Big Ten standings. This year Indiana was predicted to be among the top teams in the Big Ten and looks like a middle of the pack group at best.

Indiana is going to need a good year in conference play to have a shot at earning a decent seed or maybe making the tournament at all. I mean, 66th in the NET and 56th in KenPom does not scream “tournament worthy” at the moment.

Other teams like UCLA, Oregon, Illinois, Michigan (another year one team doing better than Indiana) and Purdue are going to be vying for those top spots in the conference. I’m not sure I’d pick the Hoosiers over any of them right now.

Indiana has a lot of questions and dwindling time to answer them.