All sit and no play makes Marco a hungry boy

For more than a year, senior forward Marco Killingsworth has been trying to break down the door to Assembly Hall.\nHe flirted with the court last season but kept a coach's eye view from the bench as he served his year of ineligibility after transferring -- enough to drive a man mad. \nBut Killingsworth never stopped swinging -- bruising at every practice, pushing his team at every game.\nAnd with Hoosier Hysteria set for 9 p.m. tonight, the Assembly Hall lights are beginning to shine through the crack in the door.\nHoosier faithful: Heeeere's Marco.\nKillingsworth's agonizing wait to play college basketball is finally over as he will don the cream and crimson for the first time as an eligible athlete tonight. It's been a grueling year and a half for Killingsworth, but he admits with an eager look in his eye that it has only increased his appetite for Big Ten \nbasketball.\n"I'll tell you what, man, I ain't played in a whole year, and I'm real hungry. I'm starving," he said. \nThe 6-foot-8, 265-pound senior got his first taste of the Big Ten this summer when he spent 10 days in Spain playing in the Big Ten Foreign Tour. He didn't take long to adjust, leading all scorers with 16 points in the team's fourth game and tallying a double-double in the final game. Killingsworth left Europe as the team's leading scorer, averaging 15.2 points to compound his 7.4 rebounds per contest. \n"Playing in Europe in my first game after my first two points, I was just down there celebrating and (my) coach said, 'Get back down the court man,'" Killingsworth said. "I just couldn't believe I was really back out there playing."\nThe Auburn transfer will step right onto an IU frontcourt that features fellow Alabama native and last season's Big Ten Freshman of the Year D.J. White. Together the two forwards are expected to change the face of an IU program that has long lacked a dominant inside presence.\n"We're going to go inside every time down the court," head coach Mike Davis said. "I don't want to come down and jack up a shot. I want to push it past and try to get a lay up ... we want Marco and D.J. and those guys to touch the ball almost every possession."\nThe duo of Killingsworth and White certainly won't be short on support, as a trio of tall counterparts has been assembled to give IU one of its most threatening frontcourts in years. Six-foot-nine senior forward Sean Kline is entering his last season and is joined by two 6'10" foreign freshmen. \nThe ability of freshmen Ben Allen, from Australia, and Cem Dinc, from Turkey, to step outside and shoot the ball might complete the inside-outside threat the Hoosiers look to establish, Davis said. \n"I'll back up D.J. and Marco inside and step outside and maybe shoot the three," Allen said. "Whenever they need a break, I'll be stepping in and playing whatever minutes I can get."\nKillingsworth said spending an entire season on the bench gave him more of a coach's perspective and helped smarten up his game. That said, the past 18 and a half months have been some of the most frustrating times for Killingsworth.\n"Seeing them lose those first couple games, man it hurt me," he said. "We had a chance to win at least four of the six we lost."\nBut the wait is over and thousands of Hoosier fans will assemble tonight to make Killingsworth feel right at home on Branch McKracken Court. \n"I feel real good about (transferring) now because I know I'm going to play," he said. "I was skeptical last year about it ... But now I really, really feel this is the best thing I could have done"