There’s no shame in being the second-best college basketball team in the state of Indiana. If Notre Dame could consistently be the second-best college basketball team in the state of Indiana, we’d be in a good place. Most years, that would amount to splitting the Purdue–Indiana duopoly. In their better seasons, Butler and Valparaiso each would have challenged within the last two decades. Naturally, Notre Dame is probably the third-best basketball school in Indiana. If we could get to second and establish that as a floor, we’d really have something going.
Who’s currently the second-best team in Indiana? Not IU. The Hoosiers are better than Notre Dame, but they’re a bad Big Ten team, currently aimed somewhere south of the NIT. It’s not Butler either, though Butler’s on the rise again under Thad Matta. Despite the best efforts of their new nickname, Valpo is lost at sea. Thankfully, the PFW Mastodons (formerly the IPFW Mastodons) still trail us by a few dozen spots on kenpom.
The second-best team in Indiana right now is Indiana State, the program who, since Larry Bird’s departure, has gone 1–3 in NCAA Tournament games and 0–2 in the NIT.
What’s going on?
One of college basketball’s greatest qualities is its “anyone can win” nature. This mostly gets attention in March, when Fairleigh Dickinson and George Mason and Valpo make their moments. The tendency is broader than that. It’s not that any team can win on any given night, though that’s more possible than it is in college football or maybe even in the NBA. It’s that any school can build a good basketball program if they hire the right coach. Look at Houston, rated by many to currently be the best team in the country: There’s no natural right for Houston to be the nation’s best team, or to have been among the nation’s best ten programs of the last five years. Ten years ago, they were an AAC afterthought fresh off of being a Conference USA afterthought. After giving Kelvin Sampson a few years to work, though, they became great, and they’ve stayed that way under his leadership. Florida Atlantic, last year’s March darlings? Another former Conference USA afterthought, now thriving under Dusty May. The Owls’ surge has even less explanation than Houston’s in the realm of resources, market, or brand.
College basketball is not college football. In college basketball, dreams of a dynasty aren’t impossible. Resources help. But Gonzaga does exist.
Indiana State is not Gonzaga. Not yet, and not for a long time, and probably not ever. Josh Schertz, the man behind the magic, is only 48, and he has no long-term history in Terre Haute (his full story is a great one, if you want to know it before he gets the full ESPN and CBS treatment when one of his teams inevitably pulls off a March run). If Indiana State continues to do what Indiana State is currently doing, Josh Schertz will be on the short list in Bloomington and in plenty of other places. After 13 years spent building a D-II powerhouse at Lincoln Memorial, down in the Cumberland Gap, Division I finally found the guy, and he’s on his way to being its hottest name.
Currently, the top mid and low-major teams on kenpom rank as follows:
- #20 Gonzaga
- #25 Dayton
- #26 FAU
- #28 New Mexico
- #29 Saint Mary’s
- #32 Colorado State
- #40 SMU
- #42 Indiana State
The Sycamores are deep on that list, and being the eighth-best mid-major in the country is a lot like being the second-best team in Indiana. Unlike the seven teams above them, though, Indiana State has no history of success since 1979, and playing in the post-Wichita State MVC—rather than the WCC, A-10, AAC, or Mountain West—you could argue Indiana State is more a low-major than a true mid. Also? It’s a pretty good list. Behind the Sycamores are Utah State and Memphis, each of whom is currently ranked by the Associated Press, as well as James Madison (who started 14–0 and upset Michigan State), Princeton (15–1, fresh off a Sweet Sixteen run) and high-major programs like USC, Texas, and Miami, each of whom entered the season accompanied by a lot of fanfare. Against the Zags—top-ranked on that list—Indiana State would be a 2 or 3-point underdog right now on a neutral floor. What Schertz’s team is doing is right there with mid-majordom’s best college basketball.
How’s Schertz doing it? It’s not entirely clear. It’s the kind of thing where if it was obvious, everyone would do it. In college football, a big portion of the equation is to sign the biggest, strongest, fastest players. In college basketball, the recipe’s more mysterious. Talent identification plays a bigger role. Talent development plays a bigger role. Things like chemistry and momentum can take a team like 2022’s Notre Dame and turn them into 2023’s Notre Dame despite the perceived raw talent level of the roster only dipping slightly. Schematics and in-game adjustments make guys like Sampson, Rick Pitino, Grant McCasland varying levels of iconic. What we traditionally think of as coaching plays a much bigger role in college basketball than does the recruiting arms race. College basketball is about coaches.
We know, from 247 Sports, that Indiana State does not have a lot of highly touted guys. Robbie Avila, their “star” sophomore big man (a 240-pound man in goggles from the edge of Chicago), was a two-star recruit. He currently grades out as the 30th-most effective player in the country on EvanMiya. Isaiah Swope, their sharpshooting junior point guard, was all-state in high school in Newburgh, outside of Evansville, but he landed at then-D2 Southern Indiana for his first two years of college. Xavier Bledson, the team’s elder statesman, also came through the D2 path, spending his first three years at Lincoln Memorial and transferring to Indiana State in the 2021 offseason when Schertz inherited a roster with only two committed players. Avila is now around the top 100 in the country in kenpom’s assist rate, the poorest man’s Nikola Jokić. Swope is tied for fifth in the country in three-pointers made and is still shooting 42%. That 42% number matches Bledson’s rate as well, and that of the team as a whole. Indiana State, again per kenpom, is the most effective shooting team in the country. They take and they make a lot of open threes.
It’s too early to declare victory over Indiana State’s season, or over Schertz’s career as a Division I head coach. The Sycamores are 0–3 against teams better than Bradley, a mark that has them still very much on the at-large bubble. Their rotation relies heavily on only six players and mostly only goes eight deep even in the event of blowouts. They’re vulnerable to injury. Their defense is questionable, though they’re certainly adequate on that end of the court. They might be the best mid-major in the country. They could very conceivably wind up in the CBI.
For a program like Notre Dame, though, up across the state, Indiana State’s makeover is a valuable reminder of how fickle and mysterious the formula is which determines college basketball success, and of how a good coach can make up for NIL deficiencies, tight standards around transfer admissions, and an institutional culture in which men’s basketball is a heavy afterthought. This is why what we know about Micah Shrewsberry is so encouraging, and why this current team’s immense struggles are so easy to brush aside. Shrewsberry has shown he can do what Notre Dame needs him to do, and we know well from the Mike Brey era how far a team can land from its on-paper projection. This year? It’ll be great if we can hold off the Mastodons. But next year, for the first time in 45 years: It’ll be great if we can do what we’re seeing at Indiana State.
Quick(er) Hitters
Kiki Van Zanten and Maddie Mercado were each selected in the NWSL Draft, while Eva Gaetino pulled her name out on the heels of a reported one-week trial with Paris Saint-Germain earlier this month. One would assume that means she’s going to go pro in Europe, where the level of play covers a broader range than the NWSL but is thought to be a lot stronger at the top.
Kasey Choma and Jackie Wolak were named First Team Preseason All-Americans by USA Lacrosse, with five other Irish receiving honorable mention. In terms of total presence on the list, Notre Dame tied for third, trailing Northwestern and Boston College, who played in last year’s national championship.
Roundup
It was a tough one at Boston College on Monday, and as plenty have pointed out, it was the third time in the last five games Notre Dame has had a decent-sized lead it couldn’t keep. One of those was against Duke, which shouldn’t be counted against this team given the current talent gap, but yes: A young, challenged roster failed to protect two leads against mediocre teams. That’s kind of how college basketball goes. It would have been nice to have one of those, but ‘struggling to close out games’ is around the top of the expected issues list that accompanies a college basketball expansion team like this year’s Irish.
The program gets Miami on Wednesday and then a rematch with BC on Saturday. Both games are at home. We’d expect the Irish to be an underdog against the Hurricanes, but somewhere in the one or two-possession range, especially if Norchad Omier, Miami’s best player, is still out with the “lower extremity injury” which sidelined him at Syracuse on Saturday. Miami’s been playing badly (they lost to Louisville, who is 3–24 in ACC play in the Kenny Payne era), but they weren’t playing much better at this time the last two years and they still went on deep runs in March. Some of that had to be luck, but they probably think they’re going to hit their stride, and confidence goes a long way in college basketball. Against Boston College, ND might be favored. It’ll be close.
A split would meet expectations and would inch the fellas closer to that 14–19 bad–but–not–embarrassing finish we’re looking for. 15–18 would look better (18’s a nice round number), but if we can stay shy of 20 losses with this roster, having lost to The Citadel, we should feel pretty good about that as a season.
The women’s team had a good road trip, handling Virginia in Charlottesville and Wake Forest in Winston-Salem. They’ve got a solid Syracuse team at home on Thursday and then UConn on the road on Saturday in a nonconference special. UConn will be fun, but getting Syracuse back for the home loss is a bigger deal. Winning the ACC is a realistic goal, and while Syracuse probably isn’t as good as its record, Syracuse does lead the league, tied with UNC, the other conference foe to beat Notre Dame so far.
It was a great weekend for hockey, and Notre Dame needed one. The Irish swept Penn State, winning by three goals each night. This was enough to get back to .500 in the Big Ten and move into third place in the seven-team league (but really fourth, because Minnesota’s played two fewer games). The team’s off this week before hitting the home stretch in February.
The swimming and diving teams return to action on Friday and Saturday for the Tim Welsh Classic, hosted by Notre Dame. It’s unclear who all will be there, but Ohio State will be among them, and Ohio State’s men’s team is near Notre Dame’s in the national rankings.
The fencing teams might have underperformed their rankings over the weekend out on the East Coast. I’m not sure how much randomness is expected in fencing (where does it fall between football and baseball on the better–team–wins spectrum), but the men went 7–3 while the women went 6–4. In fencing, the majority of teams are ranked because there are so few, so the losses coming to ranked teams is sometimes meaningful (#1 Princeton on the women’s side, #2 Columbia on the men’s) and sometimes not (men’s #11 Yale). Notre Dame hosts the circuit this weekend at the DeCicco Duals.
The women’s tennis team beat Iowa and Columbia at home this weekend, 6–1 and 5–2. The men’s team beat Wisconsin 5–2 on the road. The women play Ohio State and then either Kansas or Arizona State in Columbus for the ITA Kickoff Weekend. The men play Kentucky and then Alabama or Nebraska in Lexington. Those matches will be Friday and Saturday. Kentucky and Ohio State are the favorites to get the 2–0 weekend and accompanying invitation to ITA National Indoors. (They do a sort of draft for this, using ITA rankings to name national seeds.)
Not a lot of news from track and field. They hosted an invitational, but I don’t personally have the context to know how important the results were. I’m not even sure how exactly to read the Indoor Nationals qualifying lists (men, women). We will keep an eye on those. It looks like at least some Notre Dame athletes will compete at an invitational up at Michigan this weekend.
The women’s lacrosse team plays an exhibition this weekend against Michigan ahead of their season opener on February 9th.
Coach Shrews
God bless him.
