Horizon League Tournament Preview

Welcome to the first annual conference tournament preview series at Off Tackle Republic!

We start with the Horizon League - a conference that is tied for the most arenas BoilerUp89 has been in.

Bracket

Format

The Horizon League has a very unique format. The opening round features seeds #10 and #11 facing off at the home court of the 10 seed. After an off-day, the remaining teams play on Wednesday with #1 v. the winner of #10/#11, #2 v. #9 and so on at the home court of the higher seed. The bracket is then reseeded and everyone left travels to Indianapolis and the Corteva Coliseum. The two remaining lowest seeded teams play a quarterfinal game for the final semifinal spot against the top remaining seed.

Kind of...: The Horizon has always done their own thing in terms of their tournament, but the current setup is performance art.

PerpeutallyAggrievedWildcat: As, for so many of these conferences, the formula has become "Good Team" + "Format That Gets Them To The NCAA Tournament" = "Profit".

That format, though, with the re-seeded 4/5 game being a one-off play-in, is wild.

Anyhow, I would prefer to call your attention to the beautiful Farmers Coliseum on the Indiana State Fairgrounds, a 1939 Works Progress Adminstration building:

Say what you will about the tenets of a social democratic welfare state (and I'll say a lot about them) – those bastards knew how to construct an edifice.

AlmaOtter: I think that this is the first OTR reference to the WPA. I hope (and assume that) this will not be the last. Just look at that thang!

How to Watch

ESPN+ for the 1st, 2nd, and quarterfinal rounds
ESPNU/ESPN2 for the semifinals (semifinal 1 on the U, semifinal 2 on the deuce)
ESPN for the championship game

Favorites

1 seed Wright State Raiders - Wright State had the best record in the Horizon League by 2 games. Dominic Pangonis and Solomon Callaghan can both fill it up from three (shooting over 40% from three). They (along with much of Wright State's rotation) are underclassmen.

2 seed Robert Morris Colonials (last season's champion) - The Colonials are considered the best Horizon League team by advanced metrics. They crash the boards with reckless abandon and let if fly from three where they are shooting 38.2% on the season. Robert Morris is on a 7 game winning streak and swept Wright State this season. There are some injuries the Colonials are dealing with and there aren't many returners from last season's squad, but they are rolling at the right time.

4 seed Oakland Golden Grizzlies - Oakland tied for third and are the 4 seed due to tiebreakers, but predictive metrics like them almost as much as Wright State and Robert Morris. The defense hasn't been very good this year and they've stumbled down the stretch but never count out an experienced team with four senior starters on their last go around.

Kind of...: 8 of the 11 teams are between 12-7 and 8-12 in conference play. Wright State is the clear favorite (though Bob Morris is ranked higher in KenPom), but, both for reasons of parity and history, you're probably better off taking the field.

Never Made the Tournament Club Members

Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons (joined Division I for the 2003 season)
Youngstown State Penguins (1982)

Kind of...: Both are part of that 8-team logjam. Might even face off in the opening round. Go ahead and cheer for the Penguins!

BoilerUp89: They will not in fact face off in the opening round but should they both win they could be the second round matchup.

Other Long Droughts

IU Indianapolis (2003 as IUPUI)

Kind of...: That team was in the old Mid-Continent conference and coached by Ron Hunter, who went on to Georgia State and is currently the HC at Tulane. They had a better team with George Hill in 2008 (as part of the Summit League), but Oral Roberts was quite good that year too, alas.

Rooting Interests

Most of us are big fans of Oakland's Greg Kampe and for good reason so Oakland is an easy team to root for.

NMTC fans have the Mastodons and Penguins to cheer for. The Mastodons are part of the giant collection of teams in the middle of the Horizon League pack but advanced metrics actually like Youngstown better.

Indiana & Purdue fans can root for their secondary campus I suppose although I'd be shocked if IU-Indianapolis does anything of note in this field.

Fans of the conference's potential 2 seeds (Illinois, Purdue, Nebraska, Michigan State) could root for any of the non-favorites to win. The favorites could give a game as a 15 seed. The rest of the field is unlikely to offer too much resistance in the Big Dance should they make it.

Finally, keep an eye on Detroit Mercy. The Titans are just two seasons removed from a 1-31 season. Head coach Mark Montgomery is doing good work.

Kind of...: Your rooting interest is easy: ANYBODY BUT GREEN BAY.

PAW: And not just anybody but Green Bay, but Green Bay to lose in hilarious fashion and Gottlieb to take out more frustration on more furniture.

Conference NCAA Tournament History

Last season 15 seed Robert Morris lost to Alabama in the Round of 64 81-90.

• The most recent NCAA victory for the Horizon League came in 2024 when Oakland shocked Kentucky as a 14 seed 80-76 before losing in overtime to NC State and DJ Burns. I hope you remember the heroics of Jack Gohlke but in case you've forgotten:

• Head coach Dick Vitale led Detroit Mercy to the 1977 Sweet 16 before they lost to Michigan.
• Cleveland State made the 1986 Sweet 16 by virtue of wins over Indiana and Saint Joseph's before falling by 1 to David Robinson's Navy.
• Milwaukee made the 2005 Sweet 16 under butthead Bruce Pearl before falling to 1 seeded Illinois.

Kind of...: That '86 Cleveland State team was immortalized in John Feinstein's classic study of Bobby Knight: A Season on the Brink.

I'd also note that Green Bay, though never making the Sweet 16, gave 5-seed Michigan State all they could handle in '91, losing 60-58, and did the same with 3-seed Purdue in '95, falling 49-48. As the low scores might make clear, these were Phoenix teams coached by Dick Bennett. In '94 they got their only NCAA win, upsetting Jason Kidd and California.

PAW: Yeah, but fuck Dick Bennett.

Storylines and Likely Seeds

Former radio host, credit card thief, and trend setter of wearing your shorts backwards Doug Gottlieb coaches Green Bay. The economy must be doing poorly because after giving up his radio show in December, Gottlieb had to restart broadcasting weekly on Sundays in January.

The Horizon League has been an incredibly tight race. Every time a favorite has emerged, the middle of the conference has pulled them back into the crab bucket. Any of the top 7 teams would not be a surprise if they won in Indianapolis.

Otherwise the conference can be defined by its extremes. IU Indianapolis plays fast (4th quickest tempo), Green Bay plays slow (12th slowest), and Cleveland State has a matador defense (2nd worst in the country).

Greg Kampe is in his 42nd season as Oakland's head coach and has 715 career wins.

Any of Wright State, Oakland, or Robert Morris are likely 15 seeds. The rest of the conference probably is looking at the 16 seed line and hoping to stay out of Dayton. The good news is that they've all made the bus ride to Dayton already this season to play Wright State.

PAW: Because it turns out I had a lot of thoughts here (see below), one thing of note for me is the continuity in the Horizon League – of the top teams, Wright's Clint Sargent (2nd year) had been an assistant there since 2016. Bobby Mo's Andrew Toole is in his 16th year in charge (and he's only 45). And, of course, there's Kampe.

I like experience in this tournament – since Cleveland State's 2021 run under Dennis Gates, the winners post-COVID have been experienced coaches: Wright State under Sargent's predecessor Scott Nagy, Northern Kentucky's Darrin Horn, Oakland under Greg Kampe, and last year Bobby Mo under Toole. I think a Sargent-Toole [/salutes] showdown here makes sense, though perhaps Oakland– who reverse split with Green Bay–crashes the party unless the Phoenix drag this all the way into the mud. Gimme Wright State to take it.

Of note, given how fast IU Indy plays – their first-year head coach, Ben Howlett, played ffrom 2005-2009 and then spent all but two years of his coaching as an assistant and then head coach at West Liberty University, a D-II school in West Virginia.

What should make you care about WLU (go Hilltoppers!) is its legendary coach, Jim Crutchfield, now the coach at D-II Nova Southeastern in Florida. After spending 15 years as an assistant, then teacher, then assistant again at West Liberty, he got the head coaching job and completely revolutionized Hilltoppers basketball. A 2024 profile in The Athletic goes into more depth, but Crutchfield is just wild – he is not a "basketball guy," just a guy who coaches basketball.

Crutchfield knows he’s a little unconventional. He wakes up most mornings and goes to the gym to get in a short lift and a swim, then sundries outside. He has an office at Nova Southeastern, but he never visits it. Instead, he works out of his townhouse across the street.

Breaks for pickleball and tennis — he estimates he plays five days a week — are a necessity. “The Japanese proved that when they started playing games and exercising in the middle of a workday, saying it refreshes your mind and body,” he said.

His teams press, press, and press, nonstop, for all 40 minutes. The Hilltoppers pressed after makes, they pressed after misses, they pressed out of timeouts. They won, and won, and eventually–after seven straight NCAA D-II Tournament appearances and two Final Fours–Crutchfield moved to Nova Southeastern:

At the height of that run, Crutchfield told his agent to start looking for a new job for him. This is when most look to move upward. Crutchfield wanted to go to a place that had never won before.

The Sharks went 17-10 in Crutchfield's first season (up from 6-20 the year before), 29-4 and to the Elite Eight the year after. After a COVID-shortened and then COVID-canceled season, NSU has gone Elite Eight, NCAA Champions, Runners-Up, Champions. They are 24-1 (19-1) this year.

The point of all this: IU Indy head coach Ben Howlett was a Crutchfield player and then assistant. Howlett gives off big Ben McCollum vibes, with a white shirt and colored tie, unapologetically devoted to "The System" and all its demands.

Can that work at the D-I level? Can it work especially at IU Indy, a program that won 10 games under Paul Corsaro in 2024-25 for the first time since 2018-19, only to fire Corsaro for (alleged) mistreatment of players?

Nobody has won at IU Indy since Ron Turner. I hope Howlett's the first to fix that.

...anyway, that's a lot of detail for a team that's going to be out of the Horizon League Tournament by Monday evening at 8pm CT.

Tell us who you are rooting for in the Horizon League tournament and who you think will represent the conference in the Big Dance. Or, you know, just shoot the shit in the comments as per usual.