We trust 247’s Jeff Rabjohns unlike SOME people who only report the simplest information.
On Wednesday, 247 Sports’ Jeff Rabjohns published a quick blurb of an article on Peegs.com confirming some news that CBS Sports talking head Jon Rothstein had reported. We’re going with Rabjohns’ account of what’s going on, because he’s dug down a little bit deeper.
The original news from Rothstein was that Marquette and Indiana are “finalizing an agreement” for a neutral site men’s basketball game in the 2025-26 season at the United Center in Chicago. The Rabjohns report went a little bit further, and that’s where this gets a bit more interesting.
The plan is for the game to be a part of multi-team event.
That’s interesting!
These things are presumably well too far down the timeline for me saying this to make any changes to the agreement, but I have an idea! What if the United Center portion of whatever this event is ends up as a Marquette/Indiana men’s and women’s basketball doubleheader?? That seems like a pretty good time, and if you’re renting out the UC, may as well spend 6 hours there, right?
What will probably mean is that Marquette will play a home game against Team A on [insert day here] while Indiana plays Team B at home. Two or three days later, MU and IU will trade opponents. Two or three days later, MU plays IU in Chicago. Maybe that means it’s a doubleheader with Team A and Team B playing each other in Chicago as well. Like I said, if you’re renting the building, you may as well hold a big event.
The interesting part about this arrangement is that we already know that Indiana will have a new head coach next season, as the university has announced that Mike Woodson will resign at the end of the 2024-25 season. Indiana is 15-10 overall right now with a 6-8 mark in Big Ten play. If things continue the way that they have been going, the Hoosiers will not be an NCAA tournament team for the second straight year after going to the field of 68 in both of Woodson’s first two campaigns. With that coaching change in mind, it’s near-impossible to figure out who will or will not be on the IU roster when this proposed game tips off, so we won’t even try to analyze the Hoosiers in that way.
Marquette is 2-8 all time against Indiana. The first ever meeting was back in 1922 with the Hoosiers coming up to Milwaukee and getting a 20-17 victory. The most notable meetings in the history of the series came in 1973 and 1976 with Indiana coming out on top in the 1973 Sweet 16 and the 1976 Elite Eight. The 1976 game is the one that has radicalized me to thinking that no matter what happens when it comes time to seed and sort the NCAA tournament bracket these days, it’s still better than what happened in 1976. That year, because there was no true national seeding and everything was done regionally, the NCAA tournament gave you AP #1 and undefeated Indiana against AP #2 Marquette, which came into the game with a record of 25-1. In the Elite Eight. Today, those are two of the four #1 seeds and shouldn’t have a chance to meet until the Final Four at the earliest.
The most recent meeting between the two teams came back in 2018, and Indiana got the 96-73 win over #24 Marquette down at Assembly Hall. MU’s last victory in the series came as the semifinals in the 2001 Great Alaska Shootout, with the Golden Eagles knocking off the #20 ranked Hoosiers, 50-49. Relative to the fact that this rumored game is going to be a neutral site game, I should point out that Indiana hasn’t visited Milwaukee for a game since December 23, 1946.
(h/t @charlieweber45.bsky.social)
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