What Happened to IPFW After Upsetting Indiana?

It's safe to say that the players were pretty ecstatic after having pulled off the massive upset over Indiana.

Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne was on the minds of every college hoops fan on the night of Tuesday, November 22, 2016. After, all the Mastodons had just beaten the visiting Indiana Hoosiers who were the 3rd ranked team in the nation. The students stormed the court with pure joy and elation, meanwhile, the university was being mentioned on various major sports news sites. This was a great time to be a student or alumni from there. However, after the initial media craze, things returned to normal and the Mastodons seemed to fade into obscurity. While they are no longer being covered by the national media, the Mastodons are still doing very well for themselves.

Riding the immense amount of momentum from their historical victory over their in-state opponents, the Mastodons finished out the rest of non-conference play with a 7-1 record. The lone loss came against a very good Notre Dame team who greatly benefitted from the Mastodons' sloppy 15 turnovers. While the rest of the wins over this period were against subpar teams, they did avoid picking up any undesirable losses. Futhermore, they showcased their strong scoring ability having topped 100 points twice and 90 points on three other occasions. The Mastodons' scoring responsibility has been shared fairly evenly amongst the team with no player having a tremendously high points average.

Despite this solid run of games following the Indiana win, things turned South for the Mastodons in their first Summit Leauge matchup. They must've come into the matchup against a Western Illinois team that was 3-8 and only had one Division 1 win to their name. The Mastodons' 7 steals in this encounter were no match for the Leathernecks' remarkable 56% shooting from the field and they succumed to a 91-93 defeat. They did bounce back nicely though, blitzing Oral Roberts with 102 points en route to a 11 point victory. Three pointing shooting was key in this one with the Mastodons making 20 out of their 35 threes attempted for a terrific 57%. Ignoring the opening conference loss, the Mastodons will have to like their chances in this league with South Dakota State having a bit of a down year and North Dakota State being pretty average.