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 After a very long and somber Friday, hell make that a long two weeks, the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team had to travel to Evanston to take on the Northwestern Wildcats on Saturday. Questions swirled in every direction as Friday night welcomed Saturday morning. Would all the players make the trip to Evanston? How would the team react without Sampson at the helm? Does Dan Dakich have one of the weirdest looking bald spots on his newly crowned head?
To answer those questions.....Yes the whole TEAM made the trip for the game. They responded to the Sampson saga as well as can be expected while outlasting the Wildcats 85-82 in a close game and yes, Dakich's bald spot is weird looking.
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Dakich's first test as the head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers was to make sure that the whole team showed up for tonight's game. I would think that in most cases worrying about players showing up usually doesn't enter into a head coaches thoughts. However, with DJ White leading the way a group of players voiced their displeasure with the school's decision and said they may not show up for the game. The other culprits consisted of JaMarcus Ellis, DeAndre Thomas, Armon Bassett, Jordan Crawford and Brandon McGee. As mentioned earlier the whole team did make the trip for the game.
Dakich had a little bit of help from an unexpected source to get the players in line. None other than former IU great Damon Bailey talked to players. Apparently it helped. Hopefully Bruce Paine didn't see Bailey walking through Assembly Hall or else there could have been an altercation. Paine shows some level of disdain for Bailey. I'm not quite sure why, but it's there. I on the other hand am a Bailey fan, have been since I was all of 7 or 8 years old. I probably saw Bailey play in all of his high school home games and a lot of the road games as I am from the decent little town of Bedford, Indiana home of the Bedford North Lawrence Stars. Sure Bailey may not have reached his potential in the pros, but he was one hell of a high school player.
The Hoosiers once again came out sluggish to start off the game. Who could blame them with all the emotions that have had to been flowing through them this week? Bassett started off with a hot hand, nailing a few 3 pointers to help the Hoosiers hang around. Northwestern was doing a nice job of running their Princeton offense. They were backdoor cutting the hell out of the Hoosiers and were knocking down their shots. Indiana switched to a zone for a little while which seemed to hurt Northwestern's ability to effectively run the backdoor cuts. The Hoosiers went into the half down two points as 37-35.
Indiana started the second half in man to man defense and once again the backdoor was taking its toll on them (that's what she said). I kept expecting Dakich to switch back to a zone, but that never happened. Dakich is a man to man type of coach coming from his past IU days under Bob Knight. The Hoosiers were on the verge of putting together a couple of runs to put the Wildcats down, but could never build up enough steam to push through.
Bassett led the Hoosiers with a career high 24 points. DJ of course registered another double double (16, 11), taking his frustration out on the Wildcats instead of his new coach and teammates. Gordon finished with 18 points, 13 of those coming from the line. It appeared that Gordon forgot about his newly minted mid-range jumper as he was charging the lane like a bat out of hell all night. Jordan Crawford had a very nice game scoring 21 points on 6/7 shooting. His shot looked silky smooth all night long. The Wildcats were led by Kevin Coble with a career high 37 points.
The Hoosiers shot a stifling 56% from the field. Usually that would lead to a more lopsided win, but the Hoosiers were unable to take care of the ball, committing 17 turnovers which kept the Wildcats in the game. You could definitely tell there was a different feeling in this game. A different coaching style was present with Dakich at the helm. A few times I was expecting a time out to be called to calm down the Hoosiers, but Dakich let them play. Tempers did flare a couple of times during the game. Crawford was fouled hard on a drive to the basket which resulted in an Ellis technical foul.
Considering the circumstances this was a good win. IU will take what they can get at this point. Just getting the players back on the court and getting their minds off of Sampson and onto basketball was a good thing. The win isn't going to heal all the wounds that have popped up this week, but it will help cure what ails ya. Luckily, the Hoosiers have a home game before traveling to Michigan St. to further the healing process. I have a feeling that the rest of this season is going to have a weird aura surrounding it.I think with DJ and the other players back on board it will make this transistion a helluva lot easier though.
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I think Paine dislikes Bailey because Bailey went into Paine's HS gym and was shut down......
One thing I forgot to mention in the post was that Kelvin's son, Kellen was still on the sidelines. Now, I would assume that has to be an awkward situation for the kid.
Bailey came into the Glover Gymnasium on a cool Friday night on 1990. He was supposed to be hot shit. There were nearly 4,000 people in a gym that held 2,400. For some un-Godly reason, the State Police asked if his parents could sit in a blocked off area on the band stage so that people wouldn't bother them during the game. It was like John Wooden himself had stepped into the place. Everybody was there to see Bailey, of course. Well, the night belonged to a kid by the name of Stacey Hill, who drew the defensive assignment against Bailey. He didn't shut him down, no one ever did in those days, but he kept him under 25 and that was good enough for the Cardinals to hit a bucket in the waning seconds and take the win away from the future State Champions. It goes to show, if you think you are God on the hardwood, stay out of Bloomfield.
I wonder how much of Gordon's drives was just him being angry at how the week had gone? I know, this is Monday Morning QB'ing of the cheapest kind, but I have to wonder. And I think Dakich did the right thing not to call too many time-outs--the team's not very happy with him right now. The last thing he should do is call lots of time-outs and lecture his team a lot. It's actually a smart move on his part.
The team proved how immature it is the past few days with the "holding out" of practice and then getting into the scuffles on the floor.
I'm not sure I agree with you completely. I think scuffles happen during the course of a game. Especially when playing a team that can be as frustrating as NW and the 'holding out of practice' while immature, I mean they just lost their coach. I think they've shown a lot of heart and maturity in dealing with things the past couple of weeks. i have to give them credit, they have more intestinal fortitude than I thought they had.