#1 Indiana University Football Completes its Mission for a Perfect Season The #1 Indiana Hoosiers have completed one of the best turnarounds in all over sports winning the College Football Playoff National Championship Monday Night at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida with a 27-21 victory over the #10 Miami Hurricanes to become just the second team in FBS History to go 16-0 in a season joining Yale in 1894. The Hoosiers are 27-2 under Curt Cignetti and coming into the season Indiana had the most losses of any FBS Program with 715 and now second all-time behind Northwestern who has 716. Cignetti came to Bloomington with a mission to change a fanbase who was used to losing and made a lot of bold statements that he has backed up and believed form day one he could make Indiana Football one of the best College Football Teams in the nation. Indiana was 9-27 in the three years before Cignetti arrived and now, they have reached the pinnacle of College Football
Heisman Trophy Winner Fernando Mendoza who grew up 2 miles from the University of Miami Campus and dreamed of playing for the Hometown Hurricanes made the biggest play of the game to lead the Hoosiers to the title in his hometown. On a fourth and four at the 12-yard line Mendoza took off and willed his way to the end zone with 9:18 left in the game to give Indiana a 24-14 lead. Mendzoa finished the game 16-27 for 186 yards passing but did not throw a touchdown pass. Mendoza who is the first Heisman Trophy Winner in School History became the first player since Alabama Wide Receiver DeVonta Smith in 2020 to win College Football’s biggest award and a National Title in the same season.
Miami who ends the year 13-3 was the first team in the College Football Playoff/Bowl Championship Era to play for the title in its home stadium and were looking for their first National Title since 2001. The Hurricanes scored two rushing touchdowns two by Mark Fletcher Jr and with 6:37 left in the game Carson Beck found Malachi Toney on a 22-yard touchdown pass that made it 24-21 as Indiana led throughout the entire game and always came up with an answer for the Hurricanes. Nico Radicic hit a field goal to make it 27-21 Indiana with 1:42 left in the game. Miami had one more chance and with 44 seconds left Carson Beck was picked by Miami Native Jamari Sharpe who played at Northwestern HS to seal the deal for the Hoosiers and lift the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy in front of a crowd of 67,227 fans and majority wearing cream and crimson as the Indiana Fan Base showed up in force during this run to the National Championship.
Beck finished the game 19-32 for 232 yards passing with a touchdown and an interception. Mark Fletcher Jr. had 112 yards rushing with 2 touchdowns on 17 carries. Malachi Toney caught 10 passes for 122 yards and a touchdown. Carter Davis missed a 50-yard field goal with 33 seconds left before halftime as the Hoosiers led 10-0 at the break holding Miami to 69 yards offense which was the fewest by a team in a CFP Championship Game. Indiana scored with 2:42 left in the first quarter with a 34 Yard field goal by Nico Radicic to make it 3-0. Riley Nowakowski scored on a yard run with 6:13 left in the second quarter to make it 10-0. Fletcher Jr. ripped off a 57-yard run 11:06 left in the third quarter to make it 10-7 Indiana. Special teams came up big as Mikail Kamara blocked a punt and Isaiah Jones recovered it in the end zone as the Hoosiers went up 17-7 with 5:04.
Miami opened the fourth quarter with a 3-yard run from Mark Fletcher Jr. to make it 17-14 with 14:57 left in the game. Indiana made another fourth down gamble when Mendoza found Charlie Becker for 19 yards to keep the drive alive and then four plays later Mendoza scored. The Hurricanes outscored the Hoosiers 14-10 in the fourth quarter, but the Indiana defense made the play it needed with the Jamari Sharpe Interception to seal the victory and send the largest living alumni fan base into a frenzy. In 1976 Indiana won the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship with a 32-0 record under Hall of Fame Coach Bob Knight and no team has gone undefeated since now 50 years later Indiana does it again in Football and joins UCLA as the only school to finish with an unbeaten season in both sports. Curt Cignetti and Indiana have silenced all of the critics once and for all and what was a long history of losing has changed, and they are here to stay and now there will a be a National Championship Trophy in the Case at Memorial Stadium and that is something most thought was only a dream is now a reality.
Indiana University Men’s Basketball travels to Michigan Indiana University is set to begin a brief two-game road trip in Big Ten Conference play at No. 3/2 Michigan tonight at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor. Tip is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET on Peacock with John Fanta (PxP), Robbie Hummel (Analyst), and Caroline Pineda (Sideline) on the call. Michigan (16-1, 6-1 B1G) is under the direction of second-year head coach Dusty May, a former Indiana basketball manager and graduate (‘00). The Wolverines are led by a pair of transfer bigs in graduate forward Yaxel Lendeborg (14.1 points, 7.1 rebounds) and sophomore forward Morez Johnson Jr. (14.1, 6.8). Junior center Aday Mara had added 10.8 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 2.6 blocks per game. Junior guard Elliot Cadeau (10.0 points, 5.2 assists), freshman guard Trey McKenney (9.8), senior guard Roddy Gayle Jr. (9.6), and graduate guard Nimari Burnett (8.9) all chip into the high-powered U-M offense that has posted 93.1 points per night. Michigan is ranked inside the top 10 nationally in two-point shooting percentage (2nd), scoring margin (2nd), points per game (5th), blocks (6th), assists (7th), field goal percentage (8th), and rebounds (9th).
The Hoosiers lead the all-time series between the two long-time Big Ten rivals with 111 wins compared to 66 losses. Michigan is one of five programs (Northwestern, 120; Ohio State, 114; Minnesota; 111; Iowa, 107) in which Indiana has defeated at least 100 times in program history. IU has four of the last five matchups with U-M. Indiana won by a score of 62-61 on Feb. 11, 2023, and 78-75 on Dec. 5, 2025, in their last two visits to the Crisler Center. Indiana (12-6, 3-4 B1G) dropped its third straight game in a 74-57 contest against Iowa on Saturday, Jan. 17, at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall. Sixth-year senior guard Tayton Conerway led the Hoosier offense with 16 points, his eighth game with 15-plus points this season, on 8-of-12 shooting from the floor. He added four assists, two rebounds, and two steals in 31 minutes. Senior forward Sam Alexis provided his best statistical game of the Big Ten slate to date with 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting from the floor and eight rebounds. He grabbed three of the 12 Indiana offensive boards in the game.
Indiana has averaged 10.3 made 3-pointers per game, fourth in the Big Ten and t-38th nationally. The Hoosiers have buried 10 or more triples in 11 games. In those contests, IU holds a record of 8-3 and averaged 89.2 points per game. The Hoosiers buried 14 triples in consecutive games against Marquette (Nov. 9) and Milwaukee (Nov. 12), the first time an IU team converted at least 14 3-point field goals in consecutive games since November of 2005. Indiana canned 17 3-pointers against Penn State (Dec. 9), the most in a game since 2016 (19). The Hoosiers have made 17-plus triples in five games in program history. Fifth-year senior Lamar Wilkerson is tied for ninth nationally and tops the Big Ten with 3.4 made 3-pointers per game. Redshirt senior forward Tucker DeVries (2.7) is fifth in the B1G. Junior guard Nick Dorn (1.7) is 23rd in the league. The Elon transfer has made 27-of-63 attempts (42.6%) from long range this season. He has made at least one triple in 11 of his 16 appearances.
Don Fischer’s 50 year wait ends with a National Football Title as Voice of the Indiana Hoosiers 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. And Monday, he described for listeners how the Hoosiers’ football team matched that feat of becoming an undefeated national champion. Indiana beat Miami 27-21 at Hard Rock Stadium for the College Football Playoff national championship, with the Hoosiers becoming the first 16-0 team in major college football since Yale in 1894. “From my perspective as a broadcaster, that’s the ultimate — to be a part of something, a national champion,” Fischer said in the Hoosiers’ radio booth a couple of hours before kickoff Monday. “And now I’ve got a chance to do the same thing in football. I mean, it’s a special night for me.”
It got more special a few hours later, when Fischer got to make the call he’s waited 50 years to say. “The rags to riches story for Indiana football comes to conclusion and they are the national champions of 2026,” Fischer said after Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza hit the ground for the final play. “What a football team! What a football team! And this crowd goes crazy here tonight. The confetti starts to fly.” Fischer has seen some things in his time as the voice of Indiana football. Most of those things were, well, bad.
There was a stretch of 24 seasons during which the Hoosiers managed exactly one winning record — and that was just a 7-6 mark in 2007. There was an 0-11 year. There was an 83-20 loss at Wisconsin. There was a 62-0 loss at Iowa. There was a 28-game losing streak against ranked opponents. “I’ve seen a lot of bad football,” Fischer said. Then came Curt Cignetti, who is now 27-2 in his two seasons at Indiana and a national champion. Fischer got introduced to Cignetti during the coach’s infamous “Purdue sucks … so does Michigan and Ohio State! Go IU!” speech that he gave during an Indiana-Maryland basketball game. Fischer’s broadcast aired Cignetti’s remarks live from midcourt during a timeout. “I just started laughing,” Fischer said. “Nobody’s ever said that in Indiana before, you know? And I said, ‘This is something different.’ So, from that point forward, I was intrigued by the guy.”
Cignetti, for his part, loves the Knight comparisons. Cignetti isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind, with little concern for repercussions. Knight was the same way. They aren’t carbon copies — to the best of all knowledge, Cignetti has not thrown a chair across a field — but it’s easy to see parallels. Also, they both win. “I was a big Bob Knight fan as a little kid,” Cignetti said. “I liked sort of the shenanigans and the faces at the press conferences and throwing the chair across the court. I thought that was pretty cool. And the guy I bought my house from was a big friend of Bob Knight, actually.”
Fischer started going to Cignetti’s practices shortly after the new coach came to Indiana, to watch what makes him tick. He saw Cignetti was spending as much time, if not more, coaching his assistants than he did coaching players. He was the CEO, which is what he learned in four years working under Nick Saban at Alabama. Fischer would get asked how he thought Cignetti would do. He predicted Cignetti would win big. “I knew he was going to win. I could tell,” Fischer said. “You can tell if you’ve been around long enough that the coach has got it or if he doesn’t got it. I could after watching those practices in the spring that he had it.” And after more than 2,000 games, his voice echoing across the state of Indiana, Fischer had a chance at reliving those perfect memories of 1976. “How do you get to this place in two years’ time and get to the playoff both years and get to the national championship game in the second year?” Fischer said. “It’s a miracle.”
Noblesville Boom completes the Two-Game Sweep against the Delaware Blue Coats The Noblesville Boom (6-6), the NBA G League affiliate of the Indiana Pacers, swept the Delaware Blue Coats (6-7) with a 127-112 wire-to-wire victory on Monday at The Arena at Innovation Mile. The Boom were led by Kam Jones, on assignment from the Pacers, who posted a career-high 23 points on 9-of-16 shooting from the field, including 3-of-5 from beyond the arc, along with eight assists and five rebounds. Two-way guard Ethan Thompson followed closely behind with 22 points, six assists, and five rebounds. Cody Martin added 19 points, while Samson Johnson totaled 18 points on 8-of-11 shooting from the field. The Blue Coats were paced by MarJon Beauchamp, who finished with 24 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Malcolm Hill contributed 23 points, while DeAndre Williams added 21 points and eight rebounds.
The Boom came out firing on all cylinders, knocking down three consecutive threes, including a four-point play, sparking a 16-3 run that forced the Blue Coats to burn an early timeout. Cody Martin went perfect from the field (6-of-6), scoring 12 of his 19 points in the period to help the Boom build a 41-26 advantage — their highest-scoring opening quarter of the season. Delaware clawed back with a 22-9 run to cut the deficit to two in the second quarter, but the Boom responded and pushed the lead back to double digits at halftime (70-60). Coming out of the break, Noblesville extended the margin to 17 early in the third before stretching it to 19 behind Kam Jones, who poured in 13 points on 6-of-8 shooting in the quarter. The Boom kept the Blue Coats at bay in the fourth, growing the lead to as many as 23 — their largest of the night — before cruising to the wire-to-wire win. As a team, the Boom shot 54.8 percent from the field and 45.5 percent from three-point range, a significant leap from their 27.5 percent clip the night before, to complete the back-to-back sweep. The Boom hit the road for a two-game series beginning Thursday against the Wisconsin Herd at Oshkosh Arena. Coverage streams live on NBAGLeague.com, tipping off at 12:30 p.m. ET.
Purdue University Men’s Basketball Rises to #4 in the AP Poll Arizona is the unanimous No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 men’s college basketball poll for the first time. The Wildcats received all 61 votes from a media panel in Monday’s poll, a week after picking up all but one first-place vote. Arizona (18-0) won both of its games last week to remain among the three undefeated Division I teams and earn the program’s first unanimous No. 1 ranking — according to Sportradar — after Iowa State lost twice. The Cyclones, who received one first-place vote last week, dropped seven spots to No. 9 after their undefeated season ended. Arizona has been ranked No. 1 for six straight weeks, its longest run since eight straight in 2013-14 when the Wildcats opened 21-0. UConn, Michigan, Purdue and Duke rounded out the top five.
No. 7 Nebraska (18-0) won both its games last week to remain undefeated and moved up a spot this week to notch its highest ranking ever. No. 24 Saint Louis (17-1) is ranked for the first time since reaching No. 22 in 2021 after stretching its winning streak to 11 straight. No. 25 Miami (Ohio) is ranked for the first time since a three-week stint in the AP Top 25 in 1998-99. The RedHawks blew out Central Michigan on Tuesday, but needed overtime to beat Buffalo 105-102 on Saturday, pulling it out on Pete Suder’s 3-pointer with just over a second remaining.
No. 18 Clemson made the biggest move among teams already in the poll, climbing four places with wins over Boston College and Miami. Texas Tech moved up three places to No. 12 following wins over Utah and then-No. 11 BYU. No. 22 North Carolina had the week’s biggest drop, losing eight places after being swept by the ACC’s Bay Area schools. No. 9 Iowa State lost seven spots following losses to two unranked teams, Kansas and Cincinnati. No. 15 Vanderbilt dropped five places after seeing its undefeated season come to an end with losses to Texas and No. 16 Florida.
No. 19 Kansas returned to the poll after being left out last week after handing Iowa State its first loss and beating Baylor by 18. Saint Louis and Miami (Ohio) were the only other teams to join this week’s poll. Tennessee dropped out from No. 24 after blowing a 17-point lead in an 80-78 loss to Kentucky. Utah State’s road loss to Grand Canyon knocked the Aggies out of the poll from No. 23. Seton Hall didn’t receive a single vote and dropped out of the poll from No. 25 after losses to UConn and Butler. Kansas’ return to the poll gives the Big 12 Conference a nation’s best six ranked teams. The Southeastern Conference, Big Ten and ACC each have five ranked teams. The Big East, West Coast, Atlantic-10 and Mid-American conferences have one each.
The Indiana Pacers Fall to the Philadelphia 76ers VJ Edgecombe rocked the basketball with his right hand and posterized a Pacer with a dunk that would have made Dr. J proud. Edgecombe tumbled to the floor – yes, the 76ers rookie said, he felt that one – sat up and waved toward the bench. The dunk counted for two points. It shot to No. 1 on the highlight reel of the short NBA career for the No. 3 overall pick out of Baylor. Just don’t expect to see a repeat next month during All-Star weekend. Edgecombe said he won’t participate in the dunk contest, even as he’s making stupendous plays that have the Sixers in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race. The Sixers were in awe of the throwdown that helped fuel a second-half comeback in their 113-104 win over the Pacers. “You must have dunked on someone,” teammate Joel Embiid cracked as the media horde swelled around Edgecombe’s locker. “I haven’t seen this many people around you since you got drafted.”
Edgecombe scored just 11 points — Embiid with 30 points and nine rebounds and Tyrese Maxey with 29 points and eight steals did the heavy lifting. But it was his slam in the third quarter that rocked the rim and more than 18,000 fans present to root on the Sixers. The 6-foot-4 Edgecombe took a feed from Maxey above the 3-point line, drove through the lane and soared high above 6-10 Pacers center Tony Bradley for the dunk. He was fouled, but missed the free throw. “That hurt,” Edgecombe said. “I landed too hard. It feels good to dunk on somebody. But it hurt because I landed bad.” No surprise for those who follow him — Edgecombe finished in the draft combine’s top 10 with a 38.5-inch max vertical leap. Edgecombe has been a welcome addition to the Sixers since he scored 34 points in his NBA debut on opening night against Boston and is since only one of three rookies in the league this season with at least 10 games of 20-plus points. Edgecombe expected he would be sore in the morning, but ready to go when the Sixers complete a back-to-back Tuesday against Phoenix. Edgecombe laughed as he joked the dunk wasn’t even his best one of the season. Only no paying customer saw it. “I’ve dunked on Jo in practice before,” Edgecombe said as he smiled in Embiid’s direction. “I don’t know if you’ve got any clips, though.”
Noblesville Boom beat the Delaware Blue Coats 126-102 The Noblesville Boom (5-6), the NBA G League affiliate of the Indiana Pacers, earned a convincing win over the Delaware Blue Coats (6-6), 126-102, on Sunday afternoon at The Arena at Innovation Mile. Jalen Slawson (28 points, 10 rebounds) and Gabe McGlothan (16 points, 12 rebounds) each posted a double-double to lead the way for the Boom. Slawson added five assists, three blocks and two steals to his final stat line. Two-way guard Ethan Thompson finished with 28 points and three assists, while Cameron Hildreth contributed 13 points, four rebounds, four assists and four steals. The Blue Coats were led by MarJon Beauchamp, who totaled 28 points and seven rebounds. Johni Broome (16 points, 12 rebounds) and DeAndre Williams each notched a double-double, while Jared McCain posted 15 points and five rebounds.
In a first half that Delaware led wire-to-wire, the Blue Coats had four starters reach double figures, led by Beauchamp, who recorded 19 of his 28 points on 6-of-12 shooting from the field in that span. Despite struggles from three-point range, the Blue Coats edged out a 62-57 advantage at the break after outrebounding the Boom 32-18 in the half. Slawson helped keep things close for Noblesville with a 16-point first half. After falling behind by seven points early in the third, the Boom scored eight consecutive points to take their first lead of the game, forcing a Blue Coats timeout with 8:00 remaining in the period. Both teams continued to battle throughout the quarter, producing nine lead changes, until the Boom managed to take an 85-82 lead into the fourth. Noblesville took control of the game after opening the final quarter on a 26-9 run en route to a 20-point lead midway through the frame. As a team, the Boom shot 62.5 percent from the field, including 58.3 percent from beyond the arc, to outscore Delaware 41-20 in the period — their highest-scoring fourth quarter of the regular season — on their way to a 126-102 victory.