CHICAGO – That wasn’t the game we expected, but then, this wasn’t the season we expected either. Not for IU basketball. Not with an all-conference player coming back. Not with a great recruiting class coming in. Not with Romeo Langford.

And if their 2019 NCAA tournament hopes died Thursday at the hands of Ohio State in the Big Ten tournament, with the Hoosiers suffering the strangest 79-75 loss you ever saw, well …

What a shame. What a disaster. What a waste.

This is where someone might say better days are ahead for IU, but only if someone felt like telling a lie. Juwan Morgan, their returning all-conference selection and the program’s best all-around player since Victor Oladipo, is a senior. He’s gone. Romeo Langford is said to be a lottery pick in the 2019 NBA draft. He’s said to be gone, and while he wasn’t saying as much after this loss Tuesday — “I haven’t thought about it,” is exactly what he said — he wasn’t saying he’d be back, either.

Insider:As March heats up, once elite IU fades into background — again

So this is how it looks: Morgan’s gone. Langford’s gone. NCAA tournament’s gone.

In their place? Our lasting memory of this 2018-19 IU basketball season, if the NCAA selection committee declines to extend an at-large bid to a bubble team with a 17-15 record? Easy choice: The unmitigated disaster that was this loss to the Buckeyes. And that comeback — sorry, that near comeback — isn’t mitigating it. Didn’t work, did it?

► Subscription offer: Keep up with IU sports with IndyStar at a great price

► Get ready for March Madness with the Best of the Big Ten newsletter. Subscribe here.

That’s the memory of this season: Thursday’s game. And here’s the soundbite, courtesy of Romeo himself, when asked if the Hoosiers started this make-or-break game in the conference tournament without the requisite energy:

“Everyone could see that,” Romeo said. “That wasn’t where it was the past four games.”

Right, yes. The past four games. That special time of the year when IU tried to make amends for its putrid midseason stretch of 12 losses in 13 games — the lone win was at No. 6 Michigan State — by winning its final four regular-season games, beating two ranked teams (No. 19 Wisconsin and No. 6 Michigan State, again) and then posting its only two conference blowouts (Illinois and Rutgers).

A tease, clearly.

Because: Thursday.

Because: 63-43.

That was the score with 7½ minutes remaining when the Hoosiers yawned, rolled over, punched the alarm clock and climbed out of bed. Well, that’s when Devonte Green did those things. Then again, Green was the lone IU player who seemed to be wide awake all game, scoring 11 points in the first half and then 15 more in the second half, with 12 in the final 7:10, all on 3-pointers.

“He was all we had there, for a while,” Archie Miller was musing afterward, after some surprisingly positive opening remarks where he said the Hoosiers "showed a lot of heart" and that the comeback — sorry, the near comeback — was "encouraging."

Not so sure about either of those.

Struggling to understand this, too: Green — Devonte Green! — was dragging the Hoosiers up the mountain, though the climb was too steep. His final two 3-pointers, a long one with 13.1 seconds left and then an outright joke of a 32-footer with 5.1 seconds left, brought the Hoosiers within 77-75. But Ohio State’s C.J. Jackson hit two free throws with 3.3 seconds left, and that was that.

Also, this soundbite:

“The energy level just wasn’t there to start the game,” said IU freshman Rob Phinisee.

How does that happen, anyway? How does a team win four in row, enter the conference tournament feeling as good about itself as it had felt all season, go into that game knowing what the NCAA tournament experts were saying — that Indiana and Ohio State were playing a winner-take-all game for an NCAA tournament bid — and still come out without the requisite effort to compete?

One of life’s mysteries, that one, something we may never know, same as we might never know how a team that could sweep Michigan State, and beat Marquette and Louisville and Wisconsin, also could lose 12 of 13 games.

We just know this: The Hoosiers underachieved this season, and did it in a way that seems almost unforgivable at the moment. Because: Romeo. He’s the reason this season was supposed to be so special, the state’s top recruit in years — depends how far you want to go back: to Eric Gordon (2007) or Greg Oden (2006) or Glenn Robinson (1991) or … — joining forces with second-year coach Archie Miller and leading the Hoosiers back to national prominence.

Or, not.

Or: 17-15.

And this wasn’t Romeo’s fault. I mean, not entirely. He led the team in scoring this season at 16.7 ppg. Made Big Ten All-Freshman. Second-team all-conference. No, Romeo’s not the reason this season looked as strange as it did, as frustrating and ultimately as infuriating as this loss to Ohio State.

But if this was Romeo’s last important game at IU — the NIT isn’t important — then it ended with a whimper: nine points on 4-for-12 shooting, with two baskets in the final 70 seconds padding that total. He added six rebounds and five assists, but Romeo was a scoring savant at New Albany, where he finished fourth in Indiana boys high school history with 3,002 career points, and from that standpoint this game Thursday looked like so many of his games this season:

Offensively indifferent.

Behind me on press row, IU fans at the United Center were yelling for Romeo in his No. 0 jersey early in the game (“Let’s get going, zero!”), and yelling at him as the Buckeyes were pushing their lead to 20. (“Do something, Romeo!”) Romeo did what he does, which is let the game come to him, but Ohio State did what teams have been doing all season: Not letting the game come to him.

Ohio State coach Chris Holtmann stuck his biggest, most physical wings on Romeo (6-5, 200-pound Musa Jallow and 6-3, 185-pound Luther Muhammad) and then rolled a double-team his way whenever he approached the rim. Romeo saw that, and didn’t approach the rim. He failed to get to the foul line for just the second time this season, both against the Buckeyes, and never gave the impression that an NBA lottery pick was on the floor of this NBA arena, home of the Chicago Bulls.

Look, this isn’t to blame Romeo for Thursday. Rather, it’s an explanation of what happened to him.

What happened to the Hoosiers this year? What’s the autopsy going to show, if their NCAA tournament dreams did in fact die on Thursday?

Death by apathy.

Same thing that killed their whole damn season.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.