Indiana sports fans know championship defeats. Which loss hurt most?

Indianapolis Star

03-07-2025

Indiana sports fans know heartache all too well.
There were Injuries to Peyton Manning, Paul George, Scott May, Victor Oladipo, Robbie Hummel... you get the idea. And then far too many near misses.
Don't get us wrong, we've had our championship moments. The Colts won Super Bowl XLI. IU basketball has five banners — albeit dusty. The Pacers owned the ABA. Purdue and Notre Dame women's basketball teams have titles. The Fever won in 2012. Notre Dame football has 11 national titles, though none since 1988.
But we've had more championship letdowns than most can bear. And last month's NBA Finals loss by the Pacers in Game 7 with their star player in agonizing pain brought a lot of those "Why always us?" sentiments.
Here's a look back at some of state's hardest-to-swallow championship defeats, if you can stomach it.
This was the Fever's first trip to the WNBA Finals and they were trying to win Indianapolis' first professional basketball championship since the 1973 ABA Pacers.
The Fever had a 2-1 series lead in the best-of-5 series with a home game in Game 4, but behind Diana Taurasi, the Mercury rallied to win the next two games and the title. Indiana was within two points with a minute left, but got no closer.
"We're really pissed off right now because we had a golden opportunity, and we let it slip in Indiana," Fever forward Ebony Hoffman said afterward.
"It's emptiness," Fever guard Katie Douglas said after her 4-of-14 shooting night in the clincher. "There's not a better word for it."
"This year has been amazing, being a part of this team," Tamika Catchings said. "The will we've had as a team, the drive, the motivation, the inspiration we've provided our city. We're going to back home and we're going back with our heads held high... this is not going to be the last time you're going to see us in the Finals."
The Fever did return to the Finals, in 2012, and this time, left with the championship — the franchise's only to date.
Notre Dame took a 7-0 lead, and things were looking good... until they weren't. The Buckeyes then blitzed the Irish, taking a 31-7 lead and that was that.
"Can't we just celebrate that is almost happened at all?" IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel wrote. "Can we just celebrate that Notre Dame football is back, and not back like it was under the previous coach, whatshisname -- the guy with the red, raging face and funny Southern accent -- but back, as in back?
"... But this 2024 Notre Dame football team, this was the one that brought back the echoes. Knute, Touchdown Jesus, Rudy -- this was the season when it was OK to get misty-eyed over all that stuff again, because this was the season when you realized Notre Dame wasn't just back, but likeable."
Notre Dame hasn't won a national title since 1988.
This was No. 1 vs. No. 2. And it was no match.
Both teams entered the title game undefeated, but Notre Dame had lost its star forward, Natalie Achonwa, to injury earlier in the NCAA tournament. It wouldn't have changed the outcome: UConn 79, Notre Dame 58.
"It's hard right now to remember what a great season this was," Irish coach Muffet McGraw said. "I think that's what we need to reflect back and think about, getting here."
"Losing was difficult, especially since it hadn't happened. But a 21-point thumping was really hard to process...," wrote South Bend Tribune's Al Lesar. "This loss is going to sting a while as well it should. A 37-win season shouldn't end with such a lopsided loss. So much of the work that went into fashioning such an amazing run will be clouded with a 'yeah, but...' It's a big step back for a program that took so many paces forward this season. The long faces in the locker room acknowledged the regression. It just didn't make sense."
It was Notre Dame's third championship game loss in four years, and they'd lose the following year to UConn again — albeit in a 10-point game. The Irish finally broke through in 2018 with a title win over Mississippi State.
"They had hoped to trade in the perfect season for the perfect ending, but in the end the Indianapolis Colts were left with nothing. Just a bitter, hollow feeling that will last well into the offseason and they try to figure out how another brilliant season could end so badly," IndyStar columnist Bob Kravitz wrote.
Peyton Manning had already won one Super Bowl, and Jim Irsay had long talked about his desire to bring more than one Lombardi Trophy back to Indianapolis. This was as close as the Colts came — and have come since.
"What's sad is, the Colts could have achieved so much this day. They could have fully validated a decade's worth of excellence with a second Super Bowl title in four seasons. And Manning could have become one of 11 quarterbacks to win multiple titles, and insinuated himself into the conversation about the greatest quarterback of all time. Immortality was within reach, for the franchise, for the quarterback," Kravitz wrote. "A disappointing season? Absolutely not. A disappointing finish? Without a doubt."
Facing elimination in Game 5, the Pacers absolutely walloped the Lakers in a 120-87; Pacers fans had real belief Indiana had a chance to knock off the Shaq and Kobe-led Lakers.
And in Game 6, the Pacers won each of the first three quarters, carrying a five-point lead going into the fourth and looking like they'd push the series to an improbable Game 7. But in the end, Shaq was just too much.
"There was no victory for the Indiana Pacers... which means there will be no NBA championship. Not this year, anyway," IndyStar columnist Bill Benner wrote. "But there was valor. There was vindication. And while those values feel empty when so determined and prolonged a quest finally has been denied, when the path to defeat feels like a stake being driven through the heart, in time the Pacers should look back with pride on their resiliency, resolve and effort, if not the final result."
"They didn't surprise us. They played well," Lakers guard Rick Fox said. "They played like champions. One team had to lose."
"I think it was remarkable the way they played," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. "They gave us some wonderful ballgames."
"On this night, there was a gnawing sense of emptiness, of what-might-have-been. Nobody was taking solace in the way the Hoosiers had performed the past month. In time, though they will know what they've done. They will know. And appreciate it all," wrote IndyStar columnist Bob Kravitz.
The 2002 run is remembered mostly for the Sweet 16 upset of Duke (and that A.J. Moye block on Carlos Boozer). Few remember the unranked Hoosiers actually led 44-42 with 9:52 left in the second half of the national title game.
"I'm disappointed because this isn't what we came here for," senior Dane Fife said. "We came here expecting to win. No one else thought we could do it, but everyone in this locker room believed that were going to win this thing. And when we took the lead in the second half, I think we all just thought right then that we were going to do it."
"What we've done is special," Fife added. "What we've done is get Indiana basketball back where Indiana basketball is supposed to be."
More than 20 years later, Indiana basketball hasn't been back to a Final Four — or past a Sweet 16.
This one hurts personally because I was a freshman at IU, and let me tell you, tear gas stings like a *****.
A year after the Fairleigh Dickinson debacle, Purdue's long Final Four wait was finally over. The Boilermakers, behind the National Player of the Year Zach Edey, had broken through and reached their first Final Four since 1980 and were one win away from a national title.
Waiting for them was the defending national champions, who were on a historic heater. Yet, the Boilers led UConn 23-21... and then the Huskies did what they do. They went to work, eventually pulling away for a 75-60 win.
UConn set a new record outscoring its NCAA tournament opponents by a combined 140 points.
"Yes the Boilers could've won something remarkable, could've capped this comeback by going from chumps to champs over the next 40 minutes, but one thing they couldn't do was lose," wrote IndyStar's Gregg Doyel. "By getting to the Final Four, then to the 2024 title game, their redemption was complete. Imperfect, but complete."
"We were able to partially silence all the haters," redshirt senior Mason Gillis said. "If we would've won the national championship, we would be able to say we silenced the haters."
"It hurts because these opportunities are slim," Matt Painter said. "You say you're going to get back here, but…"
It was Bird vs. Magic. The first chapter of a saga that would change basketball forever.
And it ended it disappointment for the Cinderella Sycamores.
Led by Larry Bird, Indiana State was 33-0 and ranked No. 1 coming into the title game. The Sycamores had captivated the country: A team that came from nowhere with a chance to pull off the seemingly impossible.
But in the final vs. the Spartans, ISU didn't put its best foot forward. You could credit MSU's zone defense or the brilliance of Magic Johnson, but there were self-inflicted wounds, too. The Sycamores made just 10-of-22 free throws. Bird scored 19 points, 10 below his season average, and made just 7-of-21 shots.
"When you come down to the final night, you have to have a great game to win, and this wasn't one for us," ISU coach Bill Hodges said. "I'll tell you, though, we had a great year and we're proud of that. Of course, we're disappointed. Our goal was to win the NCAA. Michigan State played extremely well and it's difficult to come from behind all night... We gave it our best shot. I couldn't be more proud of these guys. They never gave up and fought to the end."
The Sycamores got within 52-46 midway through the second half, but got no closer as MSU won 75-64.
"I hate to lose, just like all the other guys on our team, but I guess we did all right," Bird said. "We won 33 games."
Playing in their own backyard, Gordon Hayward's last-second heave was just inches wide of the what could have completed the greatest underdog story of all-time.
Butler, with an enrollment of 4,200, was trying to become the smallest school to win it all since Holy Cross in 1947.
Before Hayward's last-second heave, the future NBA standout had another shot in the game's final seconds and the Dawgs down just one.
Hayward caught the ball and tried to dribble to his left, but Duke's Kyle Singler forced him right. Hayward dribbled toward the baseline, picked up the ball, leaned back and arched the ball over the extended arm of 7-1 Brian Zoubek.
'If that ball goes in, game over,' Horizon League commissioner Jon LeCrone said.
'Man, I wish I could have that one back," Hayward said. "I wish I could just go back and shoot that shot once more.'
He'd get one more shot. This one from about 50 feet and the Bulldogs trailing by two. If it goes in, it's the greatest shot in NCAA tournament history.
'Literally, it was a movie. It was a movie,' Butler assistant Teryy Johnson said. 'I could see it now. You're sitting there, and it goes.'
'Once Gordon shot that half-court shot, a part of me thought, 'This is how it's going to end,'' Singler said.
It missed. Barely.
"We just came up one possession short," Butler coach Brad Stevens said. "In a game of about 145 possessions, it's hard to stomach when you're on the wrong end of that."
Maybe this is recency bias, but this one felt destined for a different result.
The Pacers had beaten the odds the entire playoffs and their hobbled star was off to such a hot start — and then the rug got pulled out from under Pacers fans.
It was only the Pacers' second time in the NBA Finals since leaving the ABA and it was the closest the franchise has ever gotten to an NBA championship. Now with Tyrese Haliburton's lengthy recovery on the horizon — and Myles Turner's free agency departure — another chance at a title seems so far away.