Indiana Hoosiers Tickets

Staff Writer Russell Puntenney
Very few areas are more associated with a sport than Indiana is with basketball, and the clearest evidence lies in a made up word you won’t find in just any old dictionary: hoosier. Nobody knows where this mysterious label of Indiana natives originated, but the passion and success of the state’s basketball programs has transformed the term into a household name in most places, admittedly helped by a 1986 movie of the same title which many consider the best sports movie ever made.

The programs featured in the movie were high school teams, but it is the real life success of the Hoosiers of Indiana University that justifies the state’s iconic status. Historically, the school ranks among the best in virtually every major basketball category, and only two other Division I schools have accumulated more than the Hoosier’s five NCAA titles.

As is often the case in college athletics, IU is a clear example of how a good coach can be infinitely more valuable than any particular player. The school’s five titles have each come under the guidance of just two different coaches, with Branch McCracken leading the team to its first two championships, in 1940 and 1953. The Hoosiers’ home court was later named Branch McCracken Court to honor their first victorious leader, but his legacy would forever be set aside when a new general took the helm in 1971.

Within five seasons, new head coach Bobby Knight and his Hoosiers made two Final Four appearances and posted back to back undefeated regular seasons in 1975 and ’76, extending their streak to a perfect 32-0 championship-winning effort in the latter year. Thirty years later, still no team in college basketball has gone an entire season undefeated since the 1976 Hoosiers.

Knight would go on to win two more NCAA titles in 1981 and ’87, becoming one of the most well known sports figures in the nation along the way. Most of this attention, however, was not necessarily garnered from the success he derived from his players, but rather from the methods he used to obtain it. Knight’s name is now virtually synonymous with “discipline” for the strict, arguably offensive and often intimidating coaching style he employs, which would probably seem outright barbaric if his teams weren’t so consistently good. His tantrums and outbursts during games helped make him an especially controversial figure as well, as he was often seen unloading on a defenseless referee or throwing a nearby chair toward center court in mid-game to express his disgust of a lousy call, but these incidents were probably just a glimpse into the intensity he must’ve saved for his players’ eyes only. It was this such behavior at practice that finally lead to a nasty exit from Indiana that was just as controversial as Knight himself, when former IU President Myles Brand fired Knight in 2000 despite The General’s widespread and passionate following in Indiana.

Knight was replaced by assistant coach Mike Davis, who soon shocked the country by marching all the way through the madness of the Final Four in 2002, earning an underdog spot in the Championship game thanks to the magic touch of guard Tom Coverdale. Unfortunately for the Hoosiers, they ran out of tricks in the final game, but their performance was enough to earn Davis the top position for four more seasons at Indiana, before resigning in February 2006. A month later, former University of Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson was named Davis’s successor, but, to Hoosier fans at least, Sampson is just as much Davis’s replacement as he is Bobby Knight’s. Knight, meanwhile, took the head coaching job at Texas Tech University after leaving Indiana, where he is steadily on pace toward becoming the winningest coach of all-time.

Sampson clearly has some big and perfectly disciplined shoes to fill, but he’ll have all the help he needs in Bloomington, Indiana, where IU fans have helped their beloved Assembly Hall rank among the national top ten in attendance 30 seasons since 1972. For more information about men’s basketball or other athletic programs at IU, visit http://iuhoosiers.cstv.com/.