The last undefeated team in men’s Division I college basketball history does not go all 1972 Miami Dolphins every March. They don’t pop champagne corks, dance in delirium or exchange long-distance high fives every time the last unbeaten team in their sport finally loses in any given season. They understand the sentiment, of course, the history involved, how the magnitude grows larger every year and how everyone else fails to duplicate their historic, long-ago success. Perhaps they also care more than they let on.

Regardless, for 45 years now, the 1975–76 Indiana Hoosiers have expected another program to match their mark, to win every game in the regular season and every game in a conference tournament and every NCAA tournament affair. Surely, a Duke, a Kentucky, a North Carolina—one would, at some point, in some year, complete a “perfect” season.

In 2015 Kentucky almost did. The Wildcats won 31 games, the SEC tournament and advanced to the Final Four, becoming the first lossless team to do so in 24 seasons. Then they ran into Wisconsin, losing in the semifinals. After that defeat Pat Knight called his father, Bob, the coach of the last undefeated men’s team in college hoops. Bob Knight shot back an “Are you serious?” in the way that only Bob Knight can. Point being: He did not celebrate and did not care. “If I were on that [Indiana] team, I’d be like the Dolphins,” Pat Knight says now, before another NCAA tournament. “But honest to God, I’ve never heard anyone make a big deal out of it.”

“If somebody can do it,” says Tom Abernethy, a starting forward for those unbeaten Hoosiers, “more power to them.”

It’s fruitless to compare teams, anyway, across eras and decades and rules changes and busy transfer portals and straight-to-the-NBAers and one-and-dones. Not to mention several basketball evolutions, each with its own distinct challenges and limitations.

And yet, in a comparison society, this particular one persists, marking an annual exercise those Hoosiers insist that they disdain. In most seasons, the final undefeated team in men’s college basketball loses its first game in January, February or early March, with only rare exceptions (Indiana State, 1979, March 26; UNLV, 1991, March 30; Wichita State, 2014, March 23; those ’15 Wildcats, April 4). On average, the last team to lose in any given year wins 20.7 games beforehand; also on average, they stumble by Feb. 8. Even those programs that have approached IU’s mark all hold one thing in common: Eventually, they failed. In fact, college basketball hasn’t crowned even a one-defeat champion in that time period and only seven teams with two losses have been showered with confetti (the last: Kentucky in 2012).

It has been 42 years since any men’s squad advanced to the title game undefeated. Or long enough for Larry Bird to lose that game, become an NBA Hall of Famer, then an NBA executive and turn 64 in December.

The Hoosiers, like most people their age, realize how quickly life can change—how even the best, more cherished memories can and do fade with time. They’ve grown up and started to grow old, become coaches and scouts and business executives. They’ve lost team members, like reserve forward Wayne Radford, who died earlier this year from a ruptured aneurysm.

They’ve also watched, along with a nation of college basketball obsessives, the 2020–21 Gonzaga Bulldogs, a team that features a breakneck offense, a loaded roster and an unbeaten record as the latest tournament enters its second week. Some, like Jim Crews, a reserve guard for the unbeaten Hoosiers, have family members who openly root for the Zags, a program that now stands four victories from a perfect season of its own. Crews and his teammates all say that they’re not hoping the Zags fall; as Crews says, “There’s enough happiness for everyone.”

Then there is Bob Weltlich, an assistant coach and longtime Bob Knight confidant who will admit what other Hoosiers have not said. It’s plausible, even likely, that in private many of his fellow ’75–76 alums agree with him. His confession: “I would be less than honest if I didn’t cheer every year for everyone to lose a game. Let’s put it this way, I’ve got [a bottle of champagne] hanging around somewhere. I know where it’s at. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t important to me.”