ISU punched its most recent March Madness ticket in 2011
Mar. 5—The last time Indiana State occupied a line in the NCAA tournament bracket was in 2011.
The 2010-11 version sprung a pair of upsets in Arch Madness and clipped Evansville on a last-second jumper to claim the program's first Missouri Valley Conference tournament title since 2001.
Wednesday is the 13-year commemoration of the last time ISU booked its spot at college basketball's Big Dance with an MVC tourney crown.
Their fourth venture into the NCAA field came on the heels of being the No. 3 seed in the MVC tourney. The team won all three of its games by an average of 4.3 points.
Famed Sycamore alumnus and Terre Haute South High School graduate Jake Odum dribbled the ball from the left side to the right elbow, stopped and popped for a nothing-but-nylon game-winner with .5 seconds left.
He then turned and swung his fist in the direction of the opposite basket at Enterprise Center before going into the ISU huddle.
A signature and improbable moment for the redshirt freshman, who finished as the program's seventh-leading scorer with 1,568 points.
ISU topped second-seeded Wichita State 61-54 on Saturday before knocking off the top seed Missouri State 60-56 on Sunday.
"It's great. I feel great. I'm glad I chose Indiana State," Odum said after the 2011 final.
"I was around 10 years ago when they won it and it's a dream come true to be here today and going dancing.
"Yeah, you play the game to be here. That was our goal from Day 1. We didn't want to fall short. We grew a lot this season and we toughened up, and we were able to play for 40 minutes tonight. It's a great thing for the community. It gets us going. We had great fan support today. I know they're really excited for us and I hope they can come out to our next game wherever that is."
The 14th-seeded Sycamores fell to No. 3 seed Syracuse 77-60 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers, in front of a crowd of 20,164 on March 18, 2011. The Orange were loaded with the likes of Dion Waiters, C.J. Fair, Kris Joseph and Scoop Jardine.
It coincided with now Evansville coach David Ragland cementing his initial trip to the NCAA tournament as an assistant on the ISU staff against his current program.
"The hardest part was the first game," Ragland said. "Ironically enough, we played Evansville. They had a pretty good team."
It was his inaugural season on a Division I staff.
"It was great, it kind of spoiled me, Year 1 going to the NCAA tournament, 'Like man — that's pretty easy,'" 'Coach Rags', who was one of two assistants to former ISU coach Greg Lansing, said. "We had really good people. We had a bunch of local guys, a couple of guys from Marshall, Ill., [Lucas and Logan] Eitel twins, R.J. Mahurin was from Rockville, Ind., Jake Odum from there in Terre Haute and Jake Kelly [from the Wabash Valley] was playing for us at the time — just a bunch of guys that believed in each other."
Kelly, who suffered a season-ending knee injury a year earlier, also was a senior.
"I've said it before, there hasn't been any kid that's gone through more than what Jake Kelly has been," Lansing said. "I remember when he first came to Indiana State, he said he wanted to play in the NCAA Tournament. For him to get this opportunity, and he had it right in his hands too at the free-throw line to seal the game and take us into it."
Jordan Printy from Iowa and Aaron Carter from Cannelton could shoot lights out, Ragland said. Carter, a Perry Central alumnus, was a key piece of that unit and grabbed the tourney bid in the nick of time in his final season.
"You can't help but be excited about that," said Carter, who was an all-tourney selection along with Odum. "Get a chance to play against a good team. Whoever it is, it doesn't matter. We're just going to prepare for them like any other game and do the best we can and play tough."
Ragland noted the parallels to this current Sycamores mix.
"Similar to this Indiana State team this year, [it] can shoot it and skill level was extremely high, Jake Odum was a Hall of Fame point guard and somebody that had a really good feel, got people involved like [junior Julian] Larry does now," Ragland said. "[Odum] didn't care if he got popped in the mouth, was semi-injured, just very determined. [I] felt like it [was] a group that grew up on Indiana State basketball and grew up on the culture — grew up watching the team, the [1999-00] and [2000-01] teams."
Both of these teams knew how to share the rock and fill it in from a plethora of players on any given night.
The five starters for the current ISU squad have scored at least 20 points in a game and sophomore Robbie Avila and junior Isiah Swope have dropped at least 30 points.
Senior Xavier Bledson has scored 17 points and junior Masen Miller and Jaden Daughtry are right behind with season-highs of 15 apiece.
"Yeah, this is how it's going during the whole conference time," 2010-11 starting guard Dwayne Lathan said at the time. "We have a good team, great team and we have good players on the team. So we're not the type of team that one player has to score 20 every night. Just everybody does their part and gives their team anything. Just give their team everything every night. Sometimes I might be [a] high scorer or sometimes Jake might be, all the way down the line to our bench players."
Ragland referenced the festivities around going dancing in 2011.
"The community was great, very similar to now — just really adopted that group," Ragland said.
He said the team and the rest of the ISU crew got to Ohio on a wide-body jet airliner, likely the size of a Boeing 747.
"Went out to Cleveland to play that was the first time that was the first time that I was in that big of a plane that was private," he added. "I just remember getting off the plane and people just kept piling out of it. We had our administrators on there, we had cheerleaders, we had the band. ... I was like, 'Where is everyone coming from.' Because I didn't see them get on the flight."
