The unbeaten run had to end eventually, but not many expected it to happen this way. Inside a packed Williams Arena, the unranked Minnesota Golden Gophers recently played against the No. 22-ranked Indiana Hoosiers, who entered this matchup with a perfect record. At the same time, the Golden Gophers had more losses than wins in the 2025-26 NCAA season.

Yet when the final buzzer went off, Minnesota stunned the Hoosiers by handing Darian DeVries his first loss of the year, which led the crowd to storm the court in celebration. After the disappointing loss, in a post-game interview, DeVries didn’t flinch from the reality of the moment.

“I think for us, the image is we lost the game. It was going to happen at some point,” he said. “The main thing is, now that you’ve lost one, how do you respond? What’s in that locker room? And on the practice floor, as you get ready for the next game.”

“There’s a lot of really good games we’re going to have this year. Every night is going to be a fight like this. We have a group that’s pretty connected, got some guys that have played a lot of basketball. I expect them to come ready, respond, and be ready for Saturday,” he added.

The Hoosiers entered this game with a win probability of 81.7% as per ESPN analytics. And that’s how the team looked during the first half of the game, a team headed for a one-sided victory. Indiana was performing well and had an 8-point lead with only a few minutes remaining before halftime. But despite the odds stacked against them, Minnesota rallied toward the end of the first half, catching up with the Hoosiers point-by-point and tying the score at halftime (33-33).

As the second half of the game kicked off, the Golden Gophers, who hadn’t beaten Indiana in Minneapolis since February 2019, took control of the game with their newfound confidence and ultimately ended the game by outscoring their opponents by 9 points.

In the game, Indiana struggled to find its rhythm offensively as they went on to shoot just 40% from the field and 30% from three-point range. Let’s not talk about the attempted shots or layups when they had the Gophers defending them, but when it came to free throws, the team made only 12 of 20 attempts. While Senior guards Tayton Conerway and Lamar Wilkerson paced the team with 18 and 15 points, and senior forward Sam Alexis added 10 points on efficient 5-for-7 shooting, rebounding was their another Achilles’ heel.

Minnesota dominated the boards 40-25, turning 10 offensive rebounds into 14 second-chance points, compared to Indiana’s 7. The second-half disparity was particularly stark, with the Gophers grabbing 23 rebounds when Indiana only secured 10. The game ended with the final score of 73-64. And while this may be just a win for many, for the Golden Gophers head coach Niko Medved, this was no less than a championship victory.

“I’m where I fell in love with the game,” Medved reflected in an interview with analyst Andy Katz on the court, looking toward the stands where he once sat as a kid himself.

As the Minnesota Golden Gophers celebrate their jaw-dropping win, the Indiana Hoosiers will look forward to their upcoming games to come back better and stronger.

What’s next for Darian DeVries-led Hoosiers?

With the first loss under their belt, the Hoosiers sit at a 7-1 record. However, while this is an upsetting loss, it’s still very early in the season, and DeVries has the time to make his team better and work on their shortcomings. The good news? Is that DeVries already knows where his team lacks.

“Offensively, I thought we just didn’t get the movement. We needed to get better quality shots throughout the game, and we got to find better ways on my part to be able to put us in better positions there,” the coach said.

But this wasn’t the first time they struggled against an opponent, where they had been expected to win by a landslide. In their fourth game of the season, they locked horns with the Incarnate Word Cardinals, and while they won the game, the Cardinals came very close to giving them a taste of loss, as the game ended with the final score of 69-61. In this game, the Hoosiers missed almost 30 shots from the field, while missing 19 from behind the arc.

The team will play their next game on December 6th, but this time their game will be much more tougher. If Darian DeVries can’t help his team get better, the No. 6-ranked Louisville Cardinals will leave no possession that will help them exploit their weakness, and ESPN has already predicted this game to be 67.9% in favor of the Cardinals.