re: So where does Indiana rank on the most unlikeliest champions in history???

#1 will always be Leicester City. Especially since they don't have a playoff so you have to be hot for like 6 months.
#2 for me is Matt Serra beating GSP

And then there's the 1999 Rams who were coming off 9 straight losing seasons and starting some dude named Kurt Warner at QB after they lost Trent Green for the season.

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Fresno St

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Has a solid baseball program prior to their unlikely run, and had been to the CWS multiple times.

While super unlikely, they weren’t a perennial doormat.

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Nova has 7 final fours and 3 national titles

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Or don’t look it up

'03 Marlins

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Villanova is considered by many publications the most unlikely champion is college basketball history.

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Loyola-Chicago in 1963 is more improbable. George Ireland had been coach for 10 years and they didn’t make the NIT or NCAA. In year 12 they won the tourney.

Texas Western in 1966 would be my next vote.

Obviously, those two teams used black players before it was commonplace, and Don Haskins did end up being a HoF coach, but even now I think we realize that Indiana has benefitted from a loophole in the system of sorts in terms of older players. Cignetti may very well end up a HoFer as well.

I think the premise is the same. If I tell you in year X that some guy comes to El Paso and recruits blacks from NYC and Gary, IN to come to the border, resulting in a title, you would think I was crazy.

All that considered, I think IU is still more impressive.

Here are some of the teams the intelligentsia at the associated press thought were better than Indiana to start the season

Kansas State
South Carolina
Arizona State
Southern Methodist
Illinois

Given how insanely hard it is to make this run in CFB, Indiana is right up there

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With the transfer portal, is it really unlikely?

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This team doesn’t have a bunch of big program transfers. Most of these guys weren’t wanted by anyone that mattered.

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Doesn't that expose the recruiting rankings?

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Not necessarily. Doesn’t mean highly rated guys aren’t good, and you could put a lot of these guys on a ton of teams and they’d never see the field. Indiana running a system under Cignetti, finding guys that will grind and prepare beyond what anyone else will, and they exceed their paper potential as a unit.