Indiana all-stars and IU signees Jordan Hulls and Derek Elston appeared on the Dan Dakich show on 1070 The Fan Tuesday afternoon. You can listen to the audio at the links below:
Dan Dakich, who led the Hoosiers during one of the most chaotic stretches in school history last spring, sounded off this afternoon on the Louisville based radio show “The Front Row Ticket.” Here’s a transcript:
On the title if he were to write a book about his last six weeks at IU:
“Oh man, I don’t know. Angelo Pizzo, the guy who wrote Hoosiers, told me we need a third act and we’ve got a movie. He said it’s going to be ‘Hoosiers, Rudy and then Dakich.’ I don’t know, ‘Managing Chaos,’ I have no idea.”
On whether or not he was prepared to kick more players off the team at IU had he stayed on the job another day:
“One more day. One more day and I had two others that were outta there. There’s no doubt about that. I didn’t have time on that particular day, but you know, what Tom has done coming in there is what I told him he was going to do.”
“He had to make his own decisions. A new coach comes in, you’ve gotta figure out what you want to do and how you want to do things and give people chances. But the time Tom and I sat down and talked about it, I told him what the end result was going to be because it was not something that wasn’t obvious. It was something that absolutely needed to happen.”
“Unfortunately, in my opinion, for the players involved I think it’s unfortunate for them, because they, in my opinion again, got rid of a great opportunity, threw away a great opportunity at a great basketball program and a great school. I don’t care where you go, unless you transfer to
– Tom Crean, Nick Williams and Tom Pritchard addressed the media this afternoon to talk about the first week of practice. Audio of both Crean and Williams/Pritchard is available free via CBS Sports All-Access.
– Our old friend Dan Dakich, former interim IU coach turned 1070 the Fan radio host, will be a guest on Friday’s edition of “The Front Row Ticket” with Rick Bozich and Zach McCrite. Dakich will appear at approximately 2:26 PM ET on the Louisville based show that airs on 93.9 the Ticket.
A year ago today, Big A tossed down the very first post on this here blog. (About Bud freakin’ Mackey of all people.) Since then, it’s been about the most gosh darn eventful time in IU’s recent — or perhaps entire — history. To wit: we had Mackey and crack, Sampson phone problems, Senderoff’s resignation, players getting suspended, and suspended, and suspended, Sampson phone troubles again, his dismissal, the Dakich take over, the team collapsing under the weight of it all, Dakich booting Bassett and Ellis, Tom Crean taking over, the whole damn team leaving and Crean recruiting everyone you haven’t heard of under the sun. (We can all breath now. Phew.)
If you were to say we expected even a tenth of this stuff to go down, we would not have believed you. (This is how these things always go, it seems.) But hey, it was fun to cover and blog about. Sure: we would have loved for IU to storm their way to the Final Four, for Eric Gordon, D.J. White and Kelvin Sampson to cut down the nets in San Antonio, but things do not always go as we would have hoped.
Without confirming with E — though I know I don’t need to — the reason this site has garnered any amount of success is because of Big A. The guy lives and breathes this blog and he churns out the posts day in and day out. Myself and E are tied up with other writing endeavors outside of the real jobs (I’m also incredibly lazy); without Big A this site ceases to exist.
Lastly, we want to thank each and everyone of you. Without the comments, the visits, the feedback and the tips, we wouldn’t be nearly as enthused about the site, and what the future holds for it. To the commenters who have been here since the start, (hi Kelin and Jamie!) we thank you. To those that joined along the way and have made a community out of this place, we thank you. We hope we’ve done a good job with year one; we look forward to year two.
Go Hoosiers.
Former Indiana Director of Basketball Operations/Assistant coach/Interim coach Dan Dakich talked to Al Hamnik of The Northwest Indiana Times and Hamnik fired off some questions we’ve all been clamoring to have answered. Dakich gave a couple of good responses and predictably, dodged the toughest question:
NW Times: It’s been rumored there was a drug problem on the team.
Dakich: I’m not going into that.
NW Times: The Hoosiers finished 3-4 with you at the helm, leading many to believe the team quit on you.
Dakich: We were 3-1 and then a lot of things started happening, internally, that I’m not about to go into. Truth of the matter is, it got easy for people to say the players quit on Dakich, they quit on Indiana. But Eric Gordon went 7-for-50. That ain’t quittin’. That’s just missin’. Guys didn’t make shots they had made earlier in the year. This team lived on the edge — with Gordon making shots. This whole notion of the players revolting or being against me … the players were against losing Coach Sampson. I’m not going to say they weren’t (ticked) off at the administration, at the school. The players didn’t understand why phone calls were such a big deal when some of them had been called numerous times by other schools.
NW Times: Following the season, you kicked sophomore Armon Bassett and junior Jamarcus Ellis off the team. The exodus of players continued when Tom Crean was hired as the new coach. Were these simply bad recruits?
Dakich: When I took over the team, there was going to be accountability for class attendance, getting to practice on time, things of that nature. There were kids there that absolutely did not respect Indiana University and had no respect for the basketball program. My decision to dismiss two guys was really easy. Crean’s decision to dismiss the rest of ‘em was really easy. The only way that wasn’t going to happen was if somebody came into Indiana University and didn’t care about anything. I said that in my postgame after the (NCAA) Arkansas game: The culture needed to change and get back to being Indiana University basketball, which is on the level with North Carolina, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and UCLA.
For all of the second guessing that a lot of us (myself included) did when Dakich kicked Ellis and Bassett to the curb, it’s good to see the man has been vindicated for his actions. He started the cleanup of the program and now Tom Crean is moving forward with the rebuilding process.
As far as Dakich saying the team didn’t quit on him, I think the effort was there from guys like White, Gordon, Stemler and Taber, but there were definitely others who looked like they could not have cared less. Sorry Dan, but the downfall of the season can’t simply be blamed on missed shots by Gordon. The swagger the team had in those two home games against Purdue and Michigan State completely evaporated after Sampson’s dismissal. Combine that with an injured Gordon and a group of players that weren’t on board with Dakich and well, you know how the story ends.
– Dan Dakich talked to Terry Hutchens of The Indianapolis Star and the former interim coach addresses Kelvin Sampson, Armon Bassett, Jamarcus Ellis and the overall state of Indiana basketball. Dakich will get $180,000 promised to him by the university and hopes to coach somewhere next season. Dakich was criticized for kicking Bassett and Ellis to the curb, but ultimately, we’re all finding out that he was just looking out for a program in desperate need of discipline.
– Former assistant Jeff Meyer denies intentionally violating rules in his response to the NCAA obtained by The Indianapolis Star.
– Bob Kravitz raises some excellent points about Rick Greenspan and wonders how the AD is still employed by IU. Here’s my favorite part:
Let’s not engage in selective amnesia: former coach Kelvin Sampson was hired by Greenspan. Now, were former school president Adam Herbert and trustee Jeff Cohen the people who most strongly supported Sampson’s hiring? Sure. Greenspan had his own favorite — sources tell me it was former West Virginia and current Michigan coach John Beilein — but Sampson was among the three candidates Greenspan sent to the trustees.
Ultimately, Greenspan signed off on this terrible hire, and on the day Sampson was introduced, Greenspan happily stood out front and sang Sampson’s praises.
You can’t have it both ways.
Or can you?
– Eric Crawford of The Louisville Courier-Journal writes that the self-imposed sanctions are not sufficient and that IU should pay for hiring Kelvin Sampson.
– And finally, Terry Hutchens has an update on IU’s self-imposed sanctions. Tom Crean has seven days of off-campus recruiting to use in July, IU has added two paid official visits and the staff will lower its frequency of correspondence with Derek Elston (who was named in the NCAA’s report) from seven times to six times for the upcoming school year.
With the news on Sunday that both Armon Bassett and Jamarcus Ellis have contacted Tom Crean to discuss reinstatement, the new Indiana coach is faced with a pivotal decision less than a week into his tenure.
From a basketball standpoint, allowing both Bassett and Ellis to return to the program is a no-brainer. The duo represents IU’s only returning starters for next season’s team and their presence would go a long way in solidifying a shot at middle of the road stature in next year’s Big Ten race.
Unfortunately, due to the actions of both players over the course of this past season, this decision is not simply about basketball. In his press conference following IU’s loss to Arkansas, then interim coach Dan Dakich talked about changes that were needed to send the program in the right direction. And a couple of weeks later, Dakich, with the approval of the athletic department, booted Bassett and Ellis from the team.
While it is unclear exactly what type of infractions were committed to lead to their dismissal, rest assured it was much more than missed meetings and refusals to “own up” to those missed appointments. Neither guy seemed willing to let Dakich do his job in the tough situation he inherited. Ellis was shown in a few instances talking back to Dakich on the sidelines and Bassett had already been suspended once before. No matter how tough the situation was for everyone involved, their disrespectful behavior towards Dakich cannot be justified.
Now the responsibility to sort out this mess falls on the shoulders of Crean. I’m confident he’ll make the right decision for the program, the university and the players. If that means allowing both guys to return if they meet certain criteria set out by Crean, we should welcome them back to the program once they’ve paid the price. Or if Crean decides they don’t deserve another shot, I’m positive the rationale behind that decision will be plentiful.
Either way, it’s important to remember that no one individual is, or ever will be, bigger than the program.
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