EVANSTON, Ill. — For almost as long as there has been Big Ten basketball, Indiana has been near the top and Northwestern has been near the bottom.
No more.
Now it’s Northwestern making a run at the NCAA tournament and Indiana hoping to avoid a second straight last-place finish.
John Shurna led five Wildcats in double figures with 16 points Sunday as Northwestern defeated Indiana 78-61 for its first three-game winning streak against the Hoosiers in nearly eight decades.
“We’ve played pretty decent basketball, and ... they’re playing a lot of young guys,” Northwestern coach Bill Carmody said. “Things go in cycles.”
When it comes to Northwestern (16-7, 5-6 Big Ten), it’s been quite a long “down” cycle.
The Wildcats have never played in the NCAA tournament and haven’t even shared the Big Ten title since 1933. Before Sunday, they had to go back to the 1930s to find the last time they had beaten Indiana more than twice in a row — a five-game streak from 1930-33.
Though the Hoosiers lead the all-time series 108-44, they are 6-6 against Northwestern since winning 26 straight from 1988-2003.
Verdell Jones III scored a career-high 28 points for the young, rebuilding Hoosiers, who have won five NCAA titles and have made 35 tournament appearances but went 6-25 last season. They suffered their fourth consecutive loss and seventh in nine games.
Given Indiana’s woes, the Wildcats would rather measure their progress against a better barometer. They have beaten two ranked teams, have played others tough and are within one victory of matching the single-season school record of 17.
“It’s just us playing basketball the way we can,” said Jeremy Nash, who scored 13 points. “We know we can challenge any team in this country. We have room for improvement. Our best is yet to come.”
They jumped to a 13-2 lead Sunday, and Indiana, which had challenged Purdue and Illinois in its last two games, never really was in it.
By the 10:56 mark, the Wildcats had taken a 23-9 lead, Indiana coach Tom Crean had used two timeouts, the Hoosiers had been whistled for seven fouls (to none on Northwestern) and the Wildcats had outshot Indiana 67 percent to 33 percent.
“Things didn’t go right for us offensively, we didn’t get stops on them and we played an uphill-battle game the rest of the way,” Crean said. “We’re not good enough to take body blows early and then decide, ’OK, now we’re going to really come out and put the pressure on.’
“There’s too many times this year where we’re like Swiss cheese. We’ve got too many holes.”
Carmody hates to look too far ahead, but he acknowledged it’s impossible not to think about the NCAA tournament.
“We have to win four, five, six in a row, and the guys know it,” he said. “That’s a lot of teams. So many teams are in the middle of their conference standings. What are you going to do in the last month? But I like where we’re at right now.”
