While Indiana continues its heavy recruitment of Eric Gordon, the latest confirmed rumor emanating from Bloomington has it that Kelvin Sampson just hired one of Gordon’s AAU coaches as an assistant coach. These updates on the ill-advised recruitment by IU of Gordon, a great high school player already committed to Bruce Weber and Illinois, may be intriguing but are, ultimately, neither here nor there. Players enter programs and players leave programs. Assistant coaches are hired for a variety of reasons, some wise and some expedient. Like Erick Barkley, Omar Cook, Luol Deng, Marcus Taylor and many others before them, Gordon will most likely be on a college campus for no more than six months. Certianly, such short term residency is not worth undermining a program’s legacy.
The most troublesome issue related to Gordon rests in the office of Indiana’s new head basketball coach. Disregard Kelvin Sampson’s established mediocrity as a coach and consider instead his blatant breach of coaching ethics and etiquette. Within the Big Ten Conference, at least eight head coaches are on the record as expressing their, umm, displeasure, regarding a conference coach recruiting a player who has given a verbal commitment to another conference school. What should make IU and the Big Ten uneasy is the knowledge that Sampson is a coach who ignores rules, those written and unwritten. He knowingly broke NCAA rules at Oklahoma during a time when he was actually the President of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. Now, in addition to the formal NCAA sanctions already bestowed upon Indiana, last week, for the first time ever, the NABC has said it will formally sanction one of its own coaches. Disregarding these transgressions, Indiana hired him.
And Indiana hired him. That’s the stinky pith of it. Reeling on the brink of irrelevance nationally, and facing relegation to the 2nd or 3rd best program in the state, IU desperately needed a great hire. A coach who could:
1) Tourniquet the bleed of Indiana schoolboy stars to instate rivals and worse, across the state line. There are no greater sins among Hoosier faithful and Mike Davis was a bad sinner.
2) Get the candystripes back in contention for Big Ten and national titles.
3) Restore class and respectability to a program that Davis, thanks to his loose cannon, paranoid press conferences, mysterious illnesses, and thinly veiled race baiting of the Hoosier nation, had turned into a PR circus. Davis’ refrain of Indiana needing to hire “one of their own†was, in part, an ugly, and absurd allusion to racism. His blaming the fans for high expectations and putting too much pressure on his kids was a pathetic dodge of personal responsibility. His talent-to-wins ratio was, along with Amaker, the worst in the conference.
4) Make everyone forget Bobby Knight. AD Rick Greenspan and IU president Herbert made it clear they wanted a fresh start for the program. They resisted pressure from Knight loyalists in the fan base and obvious interest in the job from his acolytes–Steve Alford and Randy Wittman being the most mentioned examples. To their credit, they wisely steered clear of both. Alford is a middling coach and Wittman has been wasting away far too long as that deformed, useless species of professional coach–the NBA assistant. Any luster he once had is gone. See Also Chris Jent, Kevin O’Neill, Stu Jackson, Randy Ayers. I don’t know if Dan Dakich put his hat in, and as much as I loved Dan Dakich as a Hoosier, he hasn’t exactly torn it up at Bowling Green. It’s hard to make an argument for any of the Knight gang. I’ll give Greenspan and Herbert a pass in this regard.
So fair enough–Davis had to go and there were no viable Knight-tinged candidates. Well, let’s look at who they pursued. Mark Few, Herb Sendek, and John Calipari were reportedly all given strong feelers and/or offers. Few has done a marvelous job at Gonzaga, recruits well, and from all outward appearances, is classy and scandal free. Whether he could hang in the no-night off brutality of the Big Ten is another question, but I can’t blame IU for going after him. He passed, probably smartly. Who wants to coach against Bruce Weber on Thursday, Bo Ryan on Saturday? It takes a special person.
Sendek, though apparently clean, is a tired, underwhelming choice. He complained about the difficulty of defining his program in the shadow of Duke and UNC. Boo hoo Herb. Are you saying they are unbeatable? Would Bo Ryan, Tom Izzo, or Matt Painter use that excuse? What’s more, even as the beneficiary of good seedings thanks to routine overratings of the ACC, his program’s NCAA performances were lackluster, uninspired, underachieving. Sendek had no business on IU’s short list. He probably knew it and opted instead for an easier go in the bird bath deep Pac 10.
From there IU’s search went to the dark side. John Calipari is an overpaid, overrated, unethical show pony. Despite recruiting paddy wagons full of strapping, NBA-ready athletes and running up big win totals in a third rate conference, his teams get outplayed, outhustled, and outcoached in the tourney every year. His NBA stint was a disaster of Pitino proportions. True to his weaselly rep, Calipari told IU their facilities weren’t good enough and bowed out.
And then there was Kelvin. Sure, Kelvin pursued the IU job aggressively. It’s probably hard to say no to a guy who just keeps calling, especially after you’ve been turned down by your previous choices. And Kelvin is good on the phone. Good text messager too. But to seriously entertain Calipari and then hire this bottom-feeding, sanction machine is a failure of judgment and imagination that defies logic.
Using the aforementioned criteria for the new coach, let’s do a quick summation:
Will Sampson get the Indiana kids? Well, he will try everything inside and outside the rules to do so. He may get a few, but how badly will he cheat, how soon will he get caught? How many more sanctions will he bring? And, as it looks now, Matt Painter is the king of Indiana recruiting, does it without cheating, and won’t give up his throne anytime soon. Conclusion: Bad Hire.
Contend for Big Ten and national titles? Decent numbers at Oklahoma, but in a shallow conference where basketball ranks below both football and baseball in importance. Racked up a lot of twenty win seasons against cut-rate programs. Despite a final four, an elite eight, and two sweet sixteens his teams were never a real threat for national titles. Only one Big 12 title in 11 seasons and it was shared. Most recently, his teams have been unequivocally mediocre and underachieving. All of this accomplished by cheating and that telltale marker for renegade programs, wholesale recruitment of JUCOs. The Big Ten is a much deeper conference and has tougher academic standards. Bad hire.
Restore class and respectability? Uh, no. Bad, bad hire.
Exorcise Bob Knight? Yes, he will make Bob Knight seem like a choir boy. Bob Knight had ninety percent graduation rates and three national titles at IU. Bad, bad hire.
Spurned by Few, IU should’ve reset their expectations and found a lower profile, but overachieving coach in the mid-major ranks. Instead they hired an incorrigible cheater who will take a program that was already on the brink and sully it for the foreseeable future. As his seamy continued recruitment of Eric Gordon demonstrates, it is only a matter of time before Sampson adds to his bag of penalties. Sadly, a program with the proud and storied tradition of IU is, thanks to Greenspan’s and Herbert’s incompetent stewardship, going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
And the Sampson hire doesn’t just reflect poorly on IU. Dirty coaches bring taint and bad PR to the conferences they represent. For Jim Delany’s sake, I hope he did everything in his power to discourage IU’s hiring of Sampson. Failing that, Delany should be privately and publicly condemning Sampson’s behaviors this summer. Failing even that, Delany better keep his gavel at the ready for the inevitable near future when Sampson slides back into full lawlessness. It’s called recidivism Jim and it’s real. In a conference that has a lot to be proud of in terms of the class and competence of its coaches and the programs they lead, Kelvin Sampson is an incongruent, and dangerous once and future criminal.
In the short-term let’s enjoy watching Sampson’s frosty reception at the Big Ten media day and on the sidelines January through March. Something tells me his Big 10 coaching brethren aren’t going to give him the warm and gooey treatment.