bigsmooth wrote:thanks for clearing that up HMO. if sampson is indeed guilty the whole staff should be fired. from what i have heard and read a lot of IU alums wanted dakich anyway. bball84 you sound like an IU fan....if davis did not get it done and sampson is a fraud do you think dakich can?? i doubt it. like i said IU, like kentucky thinks about the glory years and with parity now i just do not see it IU winning a championship. kentucky for example ran tubby out of town, and tubby won..but not to their taste, now they have gillespie and look where they are.
Not an IU or a UK fan, I'm a Marquette fan (that's my alma mater). I don't even know who Dakich is.
However, I do think IU could restore their glory. They've had a hard time trying to replace Bobby Knight. They hired Davis, who I don't think is good enough of a coach right now to handle a school like IU or UK or any historically great basketball program. Sampson is a decent coach who can obviously win games and recruit, but it is blatantly obvious he can not run a clean program if his life depended on it. If these allegations turn out to be true, IU will be looking for it's third head coach in what 6-8 years now? They need to find a head coach who is a good coach, can recruit, and will run a clean program. If they find one like that, then they shouldn't have a coaching carousel anymore. If they can't find one this time around, it's going to take a while for IU to restore their glory because recruits are going to be turned off by the fact that they cant count on the coach that recruited them to stay there for anymore than a few years because he'll be run off. It's going to take a while though, this Sampson situation could set them back for years, especially if these top IU recruits back out of their commitment like some are talking about.
I've watched a few UK games this year since, unfortunately, virtually every single one of their games is on ESPN/CBS/Raycom, and I have to say BG doesn't exactly have a lot to be working with down there in Lexington. Tubby left the cupboard bare and it doesn't suprise me at all that he bolted UK voluntarily. UK has no true point guard, two shelfish two guards (with one of them being forced to play the point) and one good post player who probably wouldn't have signed with UK had Tubby stayed. Tubby was there 10 years I think and I can't even remember him signing more than five 5-star players. BG hasn't even been at UK for a year and has already signed two 5-star players - Patrick Patterson and DeAndre Liggins. Their recruiting class ranks #1 on ESPN.com for classes of two players or less, which ranks higher than Duke and Tennessee, and it says they are likely to sign more players in the spring. BG is not as good of a coach as Tubby, but BG is a good coach (just look at what he did at A&M!) and no one will deny the fact that BG is a heck of a lot better of a recruiter than Tubby ever will be. Based on that and UK's outstanding facilities along with their great support, I feel that UK will be able to become a top-10 team once BG gets his players in there and gets rid of some of the scrubs left over from the Tubby regime.
All historically great schools have had down years, even Duke, UNC, and UCLA, but they have all managed to come back strong and restore their glory. IU and UK have great commitments to their basketball teams with great facilities, great support from the athletic department, boosters, faculty, alumni, and the fanbase. I just think their is too big of a commitment to the programs in virtually all aspects and too much tradition of sustained excellence for either one of these schools to be down for too long. If UNC, Duke, and UCLA can bounce back from their down periods, I don't see why IU and UK can't either.