DISQUS

Vitale somehow pulled himself away from Durham long enough to make an ass of himself (again) on national television. Granted he was being completely facetious (at first) I can think of little that would be worse for the Indiana program than to bring back Bobby Knight. The game has changed and he has shown that he can no longer recruit the elite talent needed to compete in the modern game.

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That picture is totally Olan Mills.

You have to wonder how teams that were slighted by the committee with their seeding (IU and certainly Butler who should be heading across town to NCAA Headquarters with torches and pitchforks as we speak) will play. Will they rally around each other and play like teams with something to prove? I certainly think Butler will do that, I don't give the Hoosiers credit for having that much heart. I think the homecourt advantage given South Alabama is a little overrated. As someone who lives on the Gulf Coast, it's a four-hour drive from Mobile to Birmingham and South Alabama hardly has what anyone would consider to be a big following in Mobile.

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I agree. Everyone seems to be looking to a round 2 match between UNC and Indiana and I'm not sure the Hoosiers are getting there. This team has shown ZERO heart in the face of the adversity that's plagued them toward the latter half of the season and I don't give them credit enough to think that they'll come out and play inspired basketball. WHat a terrible, disappointing end to what was a season of great promise.

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As an amendement, I just realized that Purdue finished just above IU in the conference standings after IU tanked that game in Happy Valley.

I could puke. I think my biggest problem right now is that I'm so pissed off and I didn't expect to be pissed off today. I expected to be intrigued by the matchup instead of being infuriated. What I want to know is what could the committee's justification be for putting Purdue two full seeds higher than IU? They didn't play a tougher non-conference, finished behind IU in the conference standings and lost at the exact same point in the conference tourney. Unreal.

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Shocked. IU was a perpetual top 25 team and now the selection committee is saying they're not one of the best 28 teams in America? I'm shocked. That's a horrifically bad seeding. Purdue should be a 9 or below. They finished behind us in the conference standings and went out at exactly the same point in the conference tourney. I am shocked

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I don't know that the players are necessarily to blame though I am most certain that Dan Dakich cannot be blamed for what's happened to this team. I think a number of factors has led to this slide, not the first of which is that it seems the entire team has gone on a shooting slump and just can't hit anything, they continue to commit needless turnovers game after game and the entire team seems to lack focus (a trend that was starting to take shape before Sampson stepped team). As far as the seeding goes, I have the Hoosiers as a 5 seed but the 6 is something this team has earned with their play over the latter part of the season after phoning in games against Penn State and Michigan State and the Big Ten tourney game in Minnesota. I think a pairing against a team like St. Joe's or Arizona could be the recipe for an early exit for our Hoosiers.

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At about mid-year, I found myself concerned that this team was peaking too early and playing its best basketball in December/January and by February/March, they'd have nothing left. I wouldn't have thought that it would be for the reasons it has been but that's exactly what happened. This team isn't shooting well, isn't hitting their free throws and isn't taking care of the basketball (a recurring theme all season) and teams that do those three things well are the teams that make deep runs in the tournament. This is a team that could very well lose a 12-5 matchup if they're paired with a team against a team like Kent State or another mid-major upstart. ESPN's Joe Lunardi has the Hoosiers playing the 18-13 Oregon Ducks in the first round in Denver. This is easily one of the most talented yet the most frustrating Hoosier teams I've seen in recent years and they need to figure out a way to turn this thing around.

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He's not ready. You can't convince — or particularly fault — this kid for wanting to get the money while he can. The lifespan of a professional athlete is relatively short and you can't blame him for cashing in on how good everyone thinks he is. That being said, he's not ready for the NBA and won't make a particularly good player. As mentioned in the post, he's horrifically turnover prone, is a streaky shooter, is strong off the dribble but not a particularly great passer. The post mentioned how many of his points come at the free throw line. While Gordon does get to the line a lot, he has a tendency to complain an awful lot about calls (you know the face IU fans — furrowed brow, mouthpiece out) and that won't play in the NBA as a rookie. You don't get those calls, you have to earn them. I wonder what will happen to his offensive production when he's not at the free throw line. Moreover, I've yet to see Gordon really take over a game the way Carmelo Anthony did or even the way Michael Beasley has this season. I'm not throwing millions of dollars at a kid as a lottery pick who hasn't shown the ability to be a gamechanger.

You'd have to figure that he's a little small to play two guard in the NBA and doesn't have what you'd consider to be stereotypical point guard attributes. Can you imagine E.J. being matched up against Chris Paul or Deron Williams or Steve Nash? Yeah, me either.

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In lieu of the Jamarcus Ellis mess, I was wondering if IU isn't better off without Kelvin Sampson because of the kind of kid he was recruiting to the university. Yes, Sampson brought in E.J. who seems like a nice enough kid though there are serious holes in his game but he also brought in Jamarcus Ellis, who has been a complete headache and Jordan Crawford, who is a turnover-ridden mess at the point. I think IU fans would rather lose with kids like D.J. White than win with no character guys like Ellis.

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If Jamarcus Ellis doesn't want to behave him at IU, he has to go.

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Sampson's connection to the Spurs was initially reported by the Indianapolis Star's Mike Wells in a story in today's paper, which featured an abbreviated interview with a terse Sampson.

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Through everything D.J. White has carried himself with an incredible amount of poise, grace and class and should be considered among the great Hoosier big men of all-time. Maybe when his playing days are through he'll have the sense not to buy courtside season tickets, wear awful Cosby-esque sweaters and give his opinion about the program to anyone and everyone with a microphone and a notepad and act like a self-aggrandizing has-been. *Cough* Kent Benson *Cough*

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Without question, college basketball is, and to some extend always has been, a coaches game. Whereas the NBA is a players league dominated by superstars, college basketball is a game of superstar coaches and it should come as a surprise to no one that kids are picking colleges because of the coach there. How else would you explain the recruiting class that Tommy Amaker has going to Harvard next year, aside from the fact that the university has apparently lowered admission standards?

Making sure Ebanks came to IU next year and a win at Michigan State were two things I thought Dan Dakich could do to really bolster his resume and strengthen his case for why he should be kept on as head coach. It now appears he will do neither.

I will re-iterate my comments of yesterday. This is a team that I would love to see again because they played out of their brains yesterday and are nowhere near as good as they played yesterday. MSU has been wildly inconsistent all-year long but this could very well be the turning point of the season for this team. They could band together and rebound from this in a big way or become a team of malcontents and throw in the towel for the rest of the season. And while we're on the topic of malcontents, is there anyway that we can send the terrible trio of Ellis, Crawford and Thomas on their way? These are guys that have proved NOTHING at this level yet have their air of entitlement and arrogance about them that I don't understand.

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The wounds between Knight and the university simply run too deep. There are still a great number of faculty members on that campus that resent Bob Knight and would be vocal in their opposition to him being brought back on. Lawrence Frank is an interesting name to throw out there but as this thing goes on, I think IU fans are really becoming attached to Dan Dakich. He's the underdog, the kind of sentimental favorite and there's a very good chance that he could coach his way into a head coaching job. Only time will tell but I thought the PTI interview yesterday showed a sign of Dan Dakich that is very affable and personable and funny and it will be very interested to see if the affinity that IU fans feel for him lasts throughout the season. If IU is somehow manage to get a win this weekend at Michigan State, it could go a long way towards Dakich's future at IU and how hard people will begin to campaign for him to be kept on.

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As much as it pains me to say this, just based on the schedule, it has to be Purdue. I don't see IU going into Breslin this weekend and getting a win. Michigan State is a very different time on that floor than the team IU beat up on two weeks ago.

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My thought when talking with a colleague of mine about what Dan Dakich had to do to be hired on permanently as IU head coach. And I thought that if he could do three things the job was automatically his. They were: 1) Win the Big Ten Tournament, 2)Advance to at least the Elite 8 in the NCAA Tournament, 3)Keep all of IU's recruits for next season because it shows he has some skills in regards to recruiting elite talent. Now mind you, I didn't say he could do 1 of 3, 2 of 3 may cut it but 3 of 3 makes the job his, in my opinion. If Ebanks leaves to go to Memphis or anywhere else, it's a major blow to Dakich's permanent future as Indiana's head basketball coach.

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Something tells me the Indiana administration isn't listening to Steve Lavin, who got passed over for the Purdue head coaching job when Gene Keady announced his retirement. Administrators usually don't take their ques from talking heads. I think IU finds itself in the same spot with Dan Dakich that they did with Bill Lynch. Having gone through something traumatic, he becomes the sentimental favorite, the underdog, the guy you root for. You feel bad saying, "Ok, Bill, that was a nice job but you're not a head coach at this level." Greenspan didn't have the nerve to do it with the football program but given that he still has the job post-tournament, he isn't likely to define his career by hiring a pair of interim coaches. I do think that if there was ever a year to get Mark Few away from Gonzaga this is it. They're a tournament but just barely. They aren't likely to win the WCC as St. Mary's is a heck of a fun basketball team to watch. If there were ever a year that any major program had to lure Few away from Spokane, it's this year.

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I've really wondered from day one how Gordon's game would translate to the NBA, as many would agree that he's out after this year. He's too small to play the two in the league and he's horribly turnover-ridden. Not to mention the dude's shot selection at times is well beyond suspect. There are times when he's pulling up from McNutt Quad and it's frustrating to watch.

I think the win is important for team morale, I would have liked to see them put Ohio State away early in the second half and give guys like D.J., Gordon and Armon a breather but that's not the way it works out.

This team will have to do a better job of taking care of the ball and that includes Gordon and turnover machines Jamarcus Ellis and Jordan Crawford. The three of them are usually good for 12-15 turnovers a night recently and if they're going to beat Michigan State at Breslin, they're going to need to get a hold of that in a hurry.

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I could have lived without the applications. There I said it. While they are perfect little time wasters, I don't think anyone was clamoring to have zombie, werewolves or vampire wars on their profile and now it appears that all of the applications supported by facebook are making the site slow and less usable. Some will say, "So what? It's just Facebook, who cares?" Well, I'm bored, at work, and right now, I care. I don't know about anyone else but I liked the minimal, faster facebook. Guess there's no turning back.

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