IU Basketball: The Rebirth?

Wow - that escalated rather quickly, didn't it?

It's still a rather sad state of affairs surrounding Indiana's basketball program when I, as a fan who formerly bled crimson and cream and now don't bleed at all for them, took a break from watching tonight's IU-Lafayette season opener to check on my Internet profiteering interests. Even worse, I took that break when IU was up by a basket in the second half and looking to lose another game they shouldn't have lost.

I returned a few minutes later to see that the Hoosiers had blown the game open and were up by 24 in the last 6 minutes.

***

The last few years have brought about a 180-degree change in my enjoyment and fandom of IU basketball. True, maybe the previous coach's original sin was that he wasn't Bob Knight, which only exacerbated all of the other crap that he pulled in his short tenure at the helm. It had gotten to the point where I would even hold my nose and root for Purdue and Kentucky when they played IU, which was unthinkable a mere 10 years ago.

A new era began tonight for IU, as He-Of-The-Questionable-Recruiting-Tactics put an Indiana team on the floor for the first time. There was plenty to like and plenty to dislike, but for now, I'm going to give Coach Sampson the benefit of the doubt. No, he's also not Bob Knight, but he's not the previous coach either. As long as his kids play hard, they run an offense and he recruits well (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), and as long as he can get IU back to the Sweet Sixteen regularly while running a clean program, then he'll do OK in my book. That's a lot to live up to, but it's obviously been done before.

I did still catch myself rooting for Lafayette a time or two tonight, though. Time to relearn some old habits I once had, I reckon.