For the third time in five years, IU reached the Sweet 16. For the third time in five years, IU lost by double digits to end its season.
The Hoosiers lost 101-86 against North Carolina on Friday without sophomore guard Robert Johnson. IU also reached that game and won its second outright Big Ten title this year without sophomore guard James Blackmon Jr.
Both players should be back and healthy for next year, but they will be without the man who led the Hoosiers to the Big Ten title and Sweet 16. Senior guard Yogi Ferrell is graduating.
“He’s one of the guys I’ve been with the most,” Johnson said. “Just to see how hard he’s worked, not only personally but to be a leader for this team.”
Ferrell is gone. So is senior forward Max Bielfeldt and senior guard Nick Zeisloft. After IU’s loss Friday, both junior forward Troy Williams and freshman center Thomas Bryant deflected questions about their futures at IU and whether they will declare for the NBA Draft.
“I feel like in my years here I’ve been getting better,” Williams said. “I feel like Coach Crean has prepared all of us just in case we want to make that move, but like I said, I don’t know.”
With the new rules in place this year, it’s possible for players to now declare for the draft, go through the combine and workouts but still return to school. So even if both declare, it does not mean both will leave.
Freshman forward OG Anunoby said he is definitely returning for his sophomore season despite some NBA scouts saying he could be drafted in this year’s draft after his performance in the NCAA Tournament.
If both Williams and Bryant come back and no players transfer, the Hoosiers have a full team for next season. If any players leave, however, IU has scholarship offers open to five different players.
What the Hoosiers will have returning is experience. Ferrell and Bielfeldt were the only two players on this year’s team who had won an NCAA Tournament game.
So even with the losses, Bielfeldt said he expects the Hoosiers to return stronger next year.
“Coach is going to do what he does and really bring this team together,” Bielfeldt said. “This team is really something to go off of. We had a really productive year. Guys got better, and next year you can only go up.”
The Hoosiers also won these games without Blackmon Jr. and a limited Johnson. They made it this far even after the criticism following the offensive struggles at the Maui Invitational and the defensive breakdown at Duke a week later.
All this adversity, and the winning that followed, will make IU a stronger team next season.
“The guys next year are going to know that whenever they get hit in the mouth to bounce back because we accomplished a lot despite everyone having written us off at that point,” Zeisloft said. “We stuck with it every single day and got better.”
The Hoosiers also learned how to lead, mostly from the player they’ll miss most next year — Ferrell. The only player who could’t quite put into words what IU might learn from Ferrell next year was his roommate, junior forward Collin Hartman.
Hartman couldn’t get past the feeling of losing Friday night to look forward to next season.
Bryant was able to look forward. Even after staying noncommittal on his future, he remembered what Ferrell and the rest of the seniors taught him.
He also said he can’t wait to do the same for next year’s freshmen class.
“All the stuff he taught me I’m going to bring to the incoming freshmen,” Bryant said. “I got to be ready to take that role. I wish I had that work ethic as much as he did each and every day. He had that passion of work. It rubbed off on me, and I’m going to continue to do it.”
