The regular season has come to a close, so now IU men’s basketball has the postseason ahead of it — the Big Ten Tournament.
“I know they're excited to get through the regular season just like everybody is and get into this setting,” IU head coach Archie Miller said.
With Selection Sunday less than four days away, the Hoosiers would need to pull off a miracle in the Big Ten Tournament after finishing under .500 during the regular season if they wanted to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament.
IU is the 10 seed in the tournament and will face seven-seed Rutgers at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The Hoosiers will be looking for their first win against the Scarlet Knights this season.
“We have a difficult matchup with Rutgers,” IU head coach Archie Miller said. “We've played them twice and haven't had a whole lot of success.”
The team will most likely be without sophomore guard Armaan Franklin and junior forward Race Thompson, who are both out with injuries, Miller said.
Miller said he wants his team to concentrate on being as good as it can be during this third matchup with Rutgers. That means being strong on both ends of the floor and tough-minded.
It’s been two weeks since IU last lost to Rutgers. In the Feb. 24 game, the Hoosiers allowed guards Geo Baker and Ron Harper Jr. to combine for 40 points. Since then, IU lost three more games to close out the season on a five-game losing streak.
Sophomore forward Trayce Jackson-Davis said the team’s confidence has been really depleted because it hasn’t won a game in three weeks. But he said the team has been able to reset now after the Purdue game Saturday.
“I think we've been playing really well on the defensive end of the floor,” Jackson-Davis said. “It's really just our offensive that's struggling. So hopefully getting shots up, getting in the gym, just being able to work for more than two days, one day and being able to get more shots up will really help the guys make them feel better about themselves and how they're playing.”
Miller said he’s really excited about playing in the tournament and that the Big Ten was able to pull off the location change from Chicago to Indianapolis. He said even in an odd year with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Big Ten still stood out over any other conference in the country.
“The tournament should be interesting because a lot of different teams are playing well right now,” Miller said. “I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a number of different teams advance and have an opportunity to win the Big Ten Championship here in Indy.”
If IU is able to pull off its first win of the season over Rutgers, the team would advance to the next round of the tournament and play two-seed Illinois on Friday.
