Indiana’s path back to the Big Ten title game is suddenly clear.
The Hoosiers don’t need help anymore after Ohio State’s latest stumble. With the Buckeyes dropping back-to-back conference games, Indiana is alone in second place in the Big Ten standings and now controls its own fate for a trip to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Dec. 5.
That’s a sharp turn from where things stood after IU’s painful loss to Ohio State last month. The Hoosiers took that one on the chin, but it didn’t end their conference hopes. It just made the margin for error thinner.
Indiana sits at 5-1 in Big Ten play, one game ahead of Ohio State, which fell to 4-2 after a 41-28 home loss to Oregon on Saturday. UCLA is sitting at 6-0, with everyone else chasing.
The Buckeyes also lost last weekend to Indiana’s next opponent, USC.
IU and Ohio State both came out of their Oct. 17 defensive slugfest with quarterback injuries, and neither offense has looked the same since. Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin is out indefinitely, while Indiana’s Josh Hoover has been trying to play through an undisclosed injury.
Since that loss to the Buckeyes, Indiana has steadied itself with two straight overtime wins, both low-scoring affairs against Michigan and Minnesota. The Hoosiers are off this weekend before getting back to work.
If Indiana drops another Big Ten game, the standings could get messy fast. A second conference loss would send the Hoosiers into a pile of teams with two losses - there were seven of them as of Saturday night after Ohio State’s defeat.
From there, the league’s tiebreakers would come into play in this order: head-to-head results, record against common conference opponents, record against common opponents with the best conference record and then through the rest of those shared foes based on their place in the standings, best cumulative conference winning percentage of all conference opponents, the highest SportSource Analytics team Rating Score after the regular season, and finally a random draw by the commissioner or designee if needed.
Indiana’s message is simple now: win out, and the road to the Big Ten title game is theirs.
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Urban Meyer added another layer to the College Football Playoff debate this week by questioning how the committee is sorting out Indiana and Ohio State. He said he was confused by the gap between No. 4 Indiana and No. 12 Ohio State, especially with the Buckeyes holding a head-to-head win over the Hoosiers, and he took aim at the committees approach to nonconference schedules while arguing Ohio States ranking does not match how it has played.
For Indiana, the comments only sharpen an argument that has already been simmering around the programs place in the playoff picture. The Hoosiers record and rsum have kept them in the upper tier of the rankings, while Ohio States own profile includes a notable win over Indiana, creating a messy comparison the committee will have to keep defending. Meyers history with Ohio State also hangs over the discussion, which makes his criticism hard to separate from his old ties to the program. [Read more 🡒]
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What comes next leaves no room for a slip. Indiana still has USC, Washington and Purdue on the schedule, and the path to the Big Ten championship game is still there if the Hoosiers can run the table. It is the kind of setup that makes every remaining week feel heavier, because the margin for error is now about as thin as it gets. [Read more 🡒]
Indiana Volleyball Delivered Two State Title Stories Fans Will Remember
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For Benton Central, the victory carried a special kind of weight because it delivered the school its first team state championship in any sport. Both programs entered the championship matches ranked No. 2 in their classes, and both left with a bigger place in the state conversation, even if the paths they took to get there looked a little different. [Read more 🡒]