2024-25 has been a rocky year for Indiana basketball, as the Hoosiers are fighting for their NCAA Tournament lives in every game. After making a ton of high-profile additions in the transfer portal, Indiana took a while to gel together and start playing some good basketball.

Things have gotten a little bit better in Big Ten play, but Indiana still has its fair share of late game collapses. Perhaps none of them have been worse than Sunday, when the Hoosiers allowed Maryland to close the game on a 9-3 run over the final two and a half minutes to pull out a 79-78 win in Bloomington.

Indiana failed to execute down the stretch as turnovers, missed free throws and defensive breakdowns doomed it in a critical conference loss. After the game, head coach Mike Woodson quickly pinpointed where things went wrong, via Todd Golden of Sports Illustrated.

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“We had our opportunities. We had a foul to give, which we talked about in the timeout, and didn't give it. So that was huge,” Woodson said after the Indiana loss, per Golden. “You've got to make plays down the stretch, and I got to get them to understand that. We missed a big front end of a one-and-one that could have put us back up three or four. It was just the little things that we didn't execute coming down the homestretch.”

This loss drops Indiana to 5-5 in Big Ten play and leaves it right in the middle of the pack in terms of the conference standings. Maryland improved to 6-4 with the win, so this result will likely have massive implications on the conference standings at the end of the season.

This Indiana basketball team is also still looking for a quality win over an NCAA Tournament team to boost its resume, which currently lands it squarely on the bubble. Woodson and company do have a win over Providence on a neutral court and a road win against Penn State, but those are the best results that they have so far. During the final month and change of the regular season, it is imperative that Indiana gets a few more quality wins if it wants to be dancing come tournament time.