FOR THE THIRD consecutive year, the Indiana University men’s basketball team failed to make the NCAA tournament.
A tournament bid appeared to be there for the taking. On the cusp, a couple of late regular-season wins over Northwestern and Ohio State would have propelled the Hoosiers into a position where the selection committee is forced to look at IU’s body of work over the season and grant them either an opportunity at a First Four game or award an actual low-seed bid.
In a season that saw IU defeat Purdue when the Boilers were still ranked in the top five, head coach Darian DeVries and his team played their way out of the tournament. There was no spark, little enthusiasm in their play as they lost four of their last five games, including a defeat at the hands of Northwestern in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament. The “on paper” experienced Hoosiers went out with a massive thud, leaving no doubt as to their postseason fate.
Like many of the power conference teams that did not make the Big Dance, the Hoosiers also decided to get a jump on next season and not continue playing in any tournament. After all, DeVries leaned heavily on the portal experience this season with six seniors playing most of the minutes.
Now that college athletics are akin to professional sports, the NCAA changed the timing of the portal recruiting process, delaying it until after the completion of the tournament to reduce player and coach distractions during the championship. But the days the portal is open for business were reduced by 50 percent—from 30 days to 15—after this change.
This timing opens a whole new can of worms because, let’s face it, agents will be agents. Inevitably there will be talks or feelers put out to teams about scholarship money and NIL room for players before the window opens on January 2. This leaves room for the tampering game, which is reportedly running rampant through the sport already.
With basketball practice officially starting in late September or early October, all this open time allows schools, players, and agents more than enough time following the NCAA Championships to fill rosters with transfer players and new coaches without this two-week mad dash. So why just 15 days?
And speaking of longevity, because of Covid-19 and the junior college transfer rules that have been amended recently, some athletes can play NCAA Division 1 basketball for up to seven years if qualified. With the NIL money schools are offering to portal players, many choose this option over being drafted in the second or third rounds of the NBA draft because it is often more than a professional rookie contract.
These portal cycle days are the NCAA’s version of high-speed free agency, used to flip a roster in one offseason rather than waiting years for high school kids to develop. Some teams, like IU last year, bet on the portal and didn’t rely on recruiting high school players. Schools want immediate results. But, to use Purdue as an example, by putting in four years in the same program, which is extremely rare, incredible results can also be accomplished.
This upcoming portal period, following the NCAA Championship, will be interesting for Indiana. Will they go for all portal experience or choose to develop talent fresh out of high school? Or a little of both? Whatever transpires, after missing seven of the last 10 NCAA Tournaments, IU needs to do something quickly to stop this trend.
