Indiana Basketball & A Weekend in Bloomington

I often joke that I am a fan of certain sports teams by marriage. I married a Notre Dame, Cubs & Indiana University fan and have grown to love each of these teams almost as much as my own sports teams. While football and baseball are sports I’ll enjoy in person, I’m not all that big on following them when the teams are not playing. College basketball, on the other hand, is a sport that I have followed since college and is the one sport that everyone in our house will sit and watch…especially Indiana basketball. 

A few years ago my husband took me down to Bloomington, IN for my first Indiana Basketball game. I had bought him tickets for Christmas and we made a weekend out of it. We watched Indiana just miss the win against Iowa in 2011 and then in 2012 we headed back down to see them play Penn State, again just missing the win. Then Little Man came along, Indiana made two back to back sweet sixteen runs & the prices of tickets sky rocketed. It has been four years since we last made a trip down to Bloomington so I decided this year for Christmas that we were due. 

This was Little Man’s first trip down to Bloomington and his first Indiana basketball game… We couldn’t have a picked a better one this season. 

We headed down to Bloomington and despite a ton of rain made it down there at a decent time. Since it was his first Indiana Basketball game we decided to pick up a jersey for Little Man. Unfortunately a lot of the stores were closed by the time we got down there but we got lucky and found one with a few toddler size jerseys left. He was so excited about his “Yogi shirt” so we had to try it on when we got back to the hotel.

My husband wanted to have dinner at Mother Bear’s Pizza and it was worth the 25 minute wait! He said it was a favorite when he lived down in Bloomington and it still is clearly a Bloomington favorite. I had a pizza covered in spinach and a pesto sauce. It was so incredibly good. The best part of the meal was definitely the breadsticks. 

After a fun night, we did not expect to wake up to a couple inches of snow. From all weather reports we had read that it was going to get cold but the snow would miss us. Oops. It was cold but we were excited for the basketball game.

Indiana Basketball vs. Ohio State Basketball

As much as I love the food options down in Bloomington, it is safe to say the main reason we were there was for the Indiana Basketball game. They were taking on Ohio State on Sunday afternoon and all predictions lead to it being a good, yet close game. 

Boy were they wrong. 

The was not good, it was AWESOME and it was far from a close game. Indiana very quickly took a 10-0 lead and it only got better from there. Yogi Ferrell described the first half of the game: 

The most fun basketball … that I think I’ve played here.

There were dunks, there were three pointers, there were steals and those of us in the crowd was on our feet more than once. It was so much fun. At half time Indiana lead by 30 points. Ohio State had a lot of ground to make up to be competitive coming back. 

We enjoyed our mandatory nachos and hot dogs as well as picked up a few souvenir cups for our collection. Little Man yelled “Go Yogi” but also slept through the intros of the game. Clearly he had too much excitement staying in a hotel for the night. 

While technically Ohio State scored more points in the second half, it wasn’t close to enough to make up for the points they were missing in the first half. Ohio State missed easy baskets and turned the ball over a lot. I would not want to be on the bus ride home with them. In the end Indiana won 80-65. 

Basketball is a fun sport to watch. Not only are there a ton of upsets (hats off to Michigan for taking down Maryland last night), but it is a high energy sport. We love to watch it on TV but the games are even more fun in person. The crowd is on their feet, people are into it and the players very clearly feed off of the energy. There are not many sports like that. A lot of times we don’t get to see as much of that when we watch on TV.

One player that stood out to me was Thomas Bryant. We see a lot of him on TV (he dunks a lot) but we don’t always see him when the play is over. He was excited and sitting as far away as we were, you could still feel his energy. At one point the rest of the players were headed towards a timeout huddle with the coaches and he was so fired up he was still celebrating. That kind of energy just kept them going. He was incredible to watch and not just for the14 points and 10 rebounds he had. He deserved the Freshman of the Week honors he received. 

Even with the snow and the added time to our trip home thanks to construction it was a really fun trip to Bloomington. I can’t wait to see what the Hoosiers have in store for the rest of the season!

Do you have a college basketball team that you follow?