Teams who end up with the #3 college basketball ranking will probably want to avoid Bloomington this season. The Hoosiers seem to be working on a straight. They defeated #1 Kentucky and, last night, #2 Ohio State.
Indiana beat OSU 74 – 70, suggesting that win over Kentucky wasn’t a fluke. After years in the wilderness, IU basketball seems to be back, at least a year earlier than predicted.
New sign in the visitor’s locker room in Assembly Hall:
“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
Welcome back to the land of basketball elite, Hoosiers.
This is a sweet reward for doing things the right way. It was so unfortunate that Kelvin Sampson was hired over Tom Crean the first time around, just because he was a “friend” of the top guy, and despite all his shady practices. That decision bothered me from Day 1. IU was lucky TC was still available when they finally realized they had to do things the right way. I think IU trustees and admins learned a valuable but very painful lesson.
1. Win away for assembly hall before people get too excited.
2. Crean hasn’t been a saint. Just 2 months ago he visited a recruit during a dead period and IU had to file papers with the NCAA about the violation. He is very willing to bend the small rules to his advantage when needed. There are also the interesting connections between Crean and an AAU outfit.
Heh, all I can think of is the Purdue chant, “IU sucks!”. ;)
I’m not a big Purdue (or IU, or even Big 10) guy, but I did go to Purdue’s bowl game on Tuesday. That chant was awesome.
FWIW, the Purdue fans were the nicest, most well adjusted people I’ve ever witnesses at a football game. I don’t think I saw anybody drunk. Whoodathunk? It was nice, because I had my two boys with me.