The Long Road Back

Cody Zeller made two free throws. Victor Oladipo hit a 3-pointer. Yogi Ferrell buried one from deep, then another. Oladipo added two more, Christian Watford tallied the Hoosiers fourth jumper from beyond the arc and Zeller got another easy two. Just like that Indiana jumped out to a 18-7 lead against No. 1 Michigan last Saturday night. At that moment, what I had suspected and hoped to be true for over a year was finally (in my mind) confirmed. Indiana University basketball was back.

You might be thinking that I’m a little late to the party on making this statement, and based on T-shirt sales, there’s no question you’d be right. I’m not sure whether it was when Zeller announced he’d attend IU several years ago, if it was at the beginning of last season, or when Watford made Hoosier Nation flood McCracken Court last December. Whenever it was, some wise man in Bloomington decided it was a great idea to start printing shirts that said, “We’re Back,” and now a quick Google search will show you there are at least five different variations of this shirt.

 

Seeing those shirts nearly everywhere (it’s still nearly impossible to watch a game without seeing at least one in the crowd) got me to thinking about what “We’re back” means and what exactly have we been coming back from? For me, those questions are trickier than you might think. On the surface, I’m sure most people think “We’re back” means that the dark years, plagued by the lingering shadows of Kelvin Sampson’s tenure, are over. While this is partially true, I’d like to go back even further.

On September 10, 2000 I walked out of the RCA Dome after a tough Colts loss to hear even worse news: Indiana had fired Bobby Knight. Before Sampson came along, this was probably the darkest day in IU basketball history. Still, while Coach Knight is a living legend in the Hoosier state, his last six seasons in his classic crimson sweater are pretty forgettable. While the Hoosiers reached 19+ wins in all of those seasons, they exited the tournament in the first round four times and were one-and-done in the other two seasons. So, are the Hoosiers “back” to where they were before Knight got fired? I’d still go back even further.

Twenty years ago Indiana went 31-4, and though the Hoosiers bowed out to Kansas just before reaching the Final Four, it was still a pretty successful season. That season the Hoosiers won their seventh Big Ten title in 14 seasons, they were the top-ranked team in the nation heading into the tournament and they were only six seasons removed from winning a National Championship. 

That was also the last time the Indiana basketball program really, truly mattered on a national level. And to me, that’s what “we’re back” from: irrelevancy.

It’s a bitter (and humbling) pill to swallow, but I have to admit it. Indiana didn’t matter to the rest of the country for nearly 20 years. Sure there were some hiccups of relevance during that time. Hell, I lived a lot of it.

I’ll never forget in 2001 when the Hoosiers knocked off No. 1 Michigan State at Assembly Hall. I remember because I slept through most of the game (although I can’t remember why), but woke up just in time to see Kirk Haston drain a 3-pointer to give Indiana the win. That win gave me the confidence to proclaim that with Haston in his fourth season and Jared Jeffries in his second, the Hoosiers could win it all in 2002 (Seriously, I did). Despite Haston unexpectedly, and foolishly, leaving for the NBA, the Hoosiers nearly made my premonition come true.  With the unforgettable play of guys like Tom Coverdale, Dane Fife,  Kyle Hornsby, A.J. Moye, Jeff Newton,  and even, to a lesser extent, Jared Odle and George Leach, Jeffries got the Hoosiers to the championship game before faltering against Maryland. No IU fan will ever forget beating No. 1 Duke on Kentucky’s home floor during that run.  Still, I couldn’t help but get the impression that the rest of the country was thinking, “Aww, how cute. Indiana thinks they can play with the big boys.” It’s actually pretty similar to what many thought of Notre Dame’s run to the national title game this past football season, but I digress.

Coach Mike Davis followed that run with a second-round tournament dismissal and two literal tournament no-shows. 

(Quick tangent: Am I the only one that thinks “What if” every time I see the Atlanta Hawks’ Josh Smith play on TV? Few people seem to remember that Smith, who would have been a freshman in the 04-05 season, was Davis’ top recruit before he declared for the draft. While many expected him to opt for the pros instead of making an appearance in Bloomington, I can’t help but wonder how Davis, and thus the subsequent hire of Sampson, would have played out. Would Smith’s talent have given Davis another 20-win season or two? Probably. Does this buy him another two or three plus years in Bloomington? I’d think so, but then what? I feel like this is one of the biggest “What ifs” regarding IU basketball in the past 20 years that no one seems to talk about.)

Me, Lyndsey, J, and Steve-o at the IU/Duke game.

Davis’ last season in Bloomington started with some promise, highlighted by a near-upset of top-ranked Duke in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, before the team fizzled in conference play and Davis graciously resigned before IU had the option to fire him. I remember this season specifically because I was a student at IU, and I was lucky enough to sit 10 rows from the court for the Duke game. I’ll never forget Marco Killingsworth throwing down a game-tying dunk just before the eight-minute timeout. Unfortunately for Killingsworth, and Hoosier Nation, his career was all downhill from that moment on. I'll also remember that season for this music video.

On March 29, 2006, I was sitting in Doc Sailes’  “Sports and the African-American Experience” class in Woodburn Hall with my buddy Steve-o when I got a text saying Kelvin Sampson would be the next Indiana coach. It sounds so stupid now, but I was excited. I knew IU wasn’t the high-profile job that most fans thought it should be, but I was naïve enough to believe that Sampson was a highly credible guy. At that point, it seemed like we were on our way back.

Look, it’s easy to say now how much of a scum bag Sampson is/was, but no Hoosier fan can tell me they weren’t excited when they heard the news that Eric Gordon was coming to Bloomington. Unfortunately I let that one bright spot convince me that Sampson could do know wrong. I turned a blind eye to the accusations that came out before the season started, and I sat back and enjoyed the ride as it seemed like this was finally the time when we were getting back to national relevancy. I mean, we did have the best freshman (Gordon) and the best big man (D.J. White) in the conference. It really seemed that a deep tournament run was on the way.

Then, naturally the week that College Gameday was coming to Bloomington, the shit hit the fan. I got to Assembly Hall at 7:30 a.m. to wait in line for Gameday, and was appalled when they spent the first 10 minutes of the show talking about Sampson’s violations. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t appalled because I thought the allegations were false. By this time, I had pretty much expected the season to end badly. I was appalled because, before the season started, this game, on the national stage, was supposed to be our moment to announce that “We’re back.”

You know what happened next, so I’ll skip ahead to the day Tom Crean was hired. I really don’t have any specific memories of this, because even though Crean said and did all the right things, my heart was broken by the Sampson-era. I felt like such an idiot for getting sucked in by Sampson, it was difficult to trust anyone who followed him. I was still an IU fan, but I had to keep my guard up.

Coach Crean's autograph

Those three down years are all kind of a blur. Crean’s first season was my last as a student. I remember going to Hoosier Hysteria and getting my “Crean & Crimson” shirt signed by Coach Crean. I remember Daniel Moore playing WAY too much, and being optimistic seeing the team improve while he played less. I remember Verdell Jones III being “The Man” and taking all the big shots when everyone else was scared to take them. I remember my first game as a non-student when we upset Michigan at Assembly Hall, and I remember a two weeks later when Crean got his first win over a ranked opponent, No. 20 Illinois.

The rest of the story has been written a thousand times by this point. Cody Zeller commits. Other top recruits follow. Watford hits the shot. Indiana beats No. 1 Kentucky. “We’re back.”

I’ve been meaning to write some or most of this for about four months, and have never really been motivated until now. Everything clicked Saturday night. The spotlight was shining bright on Bloomington, and the Hoosiers answered the call. It was the first time I truly believed we could win a National Championship this season. Having that belief, not only by a team's fans, but by college basketball fans across the country, year in and year out is what dictates national relevance to me. Duke gets that every year. Kentucky and Kansas have it. Though down this year, you'd be foolish not to expect North Carolina back near the top next season. Michigan State, and now probably Michigan, is on that level too. So are the Hoosiers.

I should actually rephrase my previous statement. I had previously thought we could win it all, but was under the impression that we’d have to catch some lucky breaks on the way there. Now, I’m confident that if we play our best game, we can and should beat anybody. Why can’t we? I mean, we’re back, right?