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The Indiana State Sycamores are in the middle of what must be an agonizing week.
Following their loss to Missouri State in the MVC Tournament Final, the Sycamores fate rests in the hands of the NCAA Selection Committee, who will decide if the Sycamores will play in the NCAA Tournament. Currently, they are ranked 29th in the NCAA Net Rankings, but that is no guarantee that they make it in. It really could go either way.
On Tuesday’s edition of The Ride With JMV, CBS bracketologist Jerry Palm joined the show, and he wasn’t enthusiastic about the Sycamores chances.
“I’m not optimistic, I think the worst thing to happen to them this season was to get ranked, and then they took their two worst losses of the season. Maybe if they’d only lost one of those, we’d be having a different conversation. I’m not going to say zero percent chance, it’s not that, but I don’t have reason to really be optimistic other than in 2019, [the NCAA Selection Committee] took Belmont, and Belmont wasn’t as good a team as this.”
Then on Wednesday, Mike DeCourcy of the Big Ten Network and Sporting News dove into if he thinks Indiana State will make the cut.
“The problem I have with their resume is that what they did was, they played Alabama, they played Michigan State, nobody’s going to penalize them for losing those games, and they played Michigan State very well so that was good. But then they play Drake twice, once away from home and once on a neutral floor and lost both of those. So now they’ve lost their four most difficult games. That becomes a problem…because they did play consistently well, that’s why they’re still alive in this. They did have a great season, they did win a good, solid league’s regular season…but that one big smudge on the resume is going to bother me until you get all the breaks you want.”
Listen to JMV’s conversation with Mike DeCourcy and more down below, and check out his interview with Jerry Palm wherever you find your podcasts. Tune into The Ride With JMV weekdays from 3-6pm on 93.5/107.5 The Fan!
