Outside of a five-minute run late in the first half, Indiana struggled offensively all day against Iowa on Saturday and lost 74-57 at Assembly Hall. It was their third straight loss, with two of them coming at home.

In two years, coach Curt Cignetti has taken a program known for failure to the doorstep of euphoria. Monday, Indiana faces Miami in the College Football Playoff national championship, a sentence that doesn’t seem real, no matter how many times it is written, read or screamed at such volume that it startles the neighbors.

The Hoosiers fell below .500 in Big Ten play with their third straight loss Saturday afternoon in Bloomington.

IU has lost consecutive games to ranked opponents, while Iowa has lost three straight overall: Score, live updates, start time, how to watch.

Don Fischer never saw this coming. The play-by-play voice of Indiana basketball and football was behind the microphone a half-century ago when the Hoosiers — the basketball Hoosiers, coached by Bob Knight — won the 1976 national title with a perfect 32-0 record.

Yes, the Hoosiers have been historically elite in basketball over the years, winning a total of five NCAA crowns, though the latest one came in 1987 and IU hasn’t so much as reached a Final Four since 2002. But when you add their football history to the mix, it’s one of the most anemic Power Four Conference records anywhere.

I grew up in Indiana and saw attitudes about football change with the Colts. Now the Hoosiers are capitalizing in an unlikely Playoff run.

Indiana's storybook season demands media covering Hoosiers shift attention from hoops to football originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.