INDIANAPOLIS — Dec. 6, 2025 will forever be known as the day Indiana football played in its first Big Ten Football Championship game. But that was not the only thing on the docket of the Hoosier athletic department and its fans in the Circle City of Indianapolis.
No. 22 ranked Indiana basketball faced off with the No. 6 ranked Louisville Cardinals out of the ACC at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. A matchup between two like opponents, two great offensive identities that pride itself on 3-point shooting. In the end Louisville edged out the Hoosiers 87-78.
The Cardinals, the second ranked offense in KenPom, gave Indiana its toughest six and a half minute stretch it will probably see the rest of the season, jumping out to a 16-0 lead.
Indiana got into a little bit of a groove to make the deficit a little more manageable with 18 combined points from Tucker DeVries, Lamar Wilkerson and Trent Sisley. But UL kept its foot on the gas. Indiana went into the halftime locker room down 14 at 41-27.
Indiana cut the Louisville lead to eight with just over 13 minutes to go but Louisville had an answer for what seemed like every Hoosier score. After IU cut the lead to 52-44, Ryan Conwell had his second 3-point make and made three free throws on the next possession after being fouled to push the lead back to double-digits, 58-46.
Louisville went on to extend its lead to 17 with under five minutes to go and Indiana had no worthy rebuttals given.
IU did a good job maintaining Louisville’s best threat offensively in freshman Mikel Brown Jr, holding him to nine points, but none in the first half. The problem is that the Hoosiers did not account for Isaac McKneely and Conwell the same. The two finished with 15 and 21 points, respectively, hitting a combined eight 3-balls.
The first way both these teams want to beat you is getting it out to their shooters and chucking 3-pointers. Early, Louisville did that better than Indiana and that was ultimately the tell all. Indiana got pushed around by a no-better-than-decent defense and couldn’t find itself out of the early hole. For reference, Indiana’s defense is 16th in KenPom, Louisville is just 38th.
“They did a really good job early, defensively,” Indiana head coach Darian DeVries said. “Overall, it was too big of a deficit to overcome.”
Indiana did what it usually does in wins, with Tucker DeVries and Wilkerson both eclipsing double-figures with 26 and 12, respectively. But after those two, there was not that much supporting scoring. For the Cardinals, that was the opposite.
Indiana is now on a two-game skid and will have to pick up the pieces, thankfully, in spots it has just played in — a conference game against Penn State on Tuesday and then another potential Quad 1 non-conference game against Kentucky next Saturday.
The Hoosiers and Penn State will tip at 8:30 p.m.
