Egregious no-call may have doomed Indiana’s fading NCAA Tournament hopes

Bloomington, IN — A whistle that never blew inside Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall on Tuesday night might echo all the way to Selection Sunday, after Indiana absorbed a 72-68 home loss to Northwestern that could relegate the Hoosiers to the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble.

For 30 minutes Indiana appeared safe. The lead ballooned to 13, settled at eight with 10:04 remaining, and the Wildcats still looked very much like a Quad 3 opponent the Hoosiers were supposed to handle. Then the offense vanished. IU’s next field goal came with 31.2 seconds left, a Tayton Conerway layup that trimmed the deficit to 67-65 and merely framed the controversy that followed.

With 4.7 seconds left, Tucker DeVries rose for a potential game-tying three from the right wing. Replay showed Northwestern’s Angelo Ciaravino making contact across DeVries’ wrist, yet no foul was called. The shot missed, and after a subsequent free throw the Wildcats led by four. Moments earlier, Conerway’s two-handed dunk with 8.4 seconds left had pulled Indiana within three, 69-66; he appeared to be bumped on the play by Jake West, but again the officials kept their whistles silent.

Had either call been made, the complexion changes dramatically. DeVries, an 84.8-percent foul shooter who had already buried three freebies after being fouled on a first-half triple, would have had three attempts to knot the score. Conerway, had he drawn the and-one, could have completed a three-point play to tie.

Instead, Indiana now owns a damaging Quad 3 defeat, its first of the season, and sits on the cut-line in most bracket projections. The Hoosiers entered Tuesday without a bad loss, but also without a signature win, and the back-to-back road blowouts that preceded this collapse left them zero margin for error.

The numbers tell the story of a game—and perhaps a season—slipping away: a nearly 10-minute field-goal drought, Sam Alexis splitting a pair of free throws with 14.5 seconds left, and a sixth straight loss to Northwestern, the latest coming courtesy of a silent whistle.

Indiana closes the regular season with home dates against No. 13 Michigan State and Minnesota, followed by a road finale at Ohio State before the Big Ten Tournament. A perfect finish plus a deep conference-tournament run now looks mandatory; even that may not erase the stain of Tuesday’s missed opportunity.

Selection Sunday is still weeks away, but in Bloomington it already feels like an eternity.