Sampson's team still adjusting to intense new practices

The "bubble drill" sounds easy enough. Maybe gentle, even.\nIt goes like this: a coach throws the ball off the hoop -- which is covered by a plastic "bubble" -- and it bounces wildly while four players under the hoop leap and grab for it. That's when the no fouls, no rules, no-holds-barred fight begins. Work hard enough, make it through the grasping and writhing and clawing, and you might get the ball. Congratulations. You get to go again in a couple minutes. \nOh, and if you get out-rebounded? Start running, chump.\nSo maybe it's not so gentle. In any case, the bubble drill is just one segment of practice the men's basketball team has been getting used to in its first year under IU coach Kelvin Sampson. IU fans will have a chance to see the progress the Hoosiers have made in an open scrimmage Saturday afternoon at Assembly Hall. The scrimmage starts about one hour after the end of the homecoming football game.\nSophomore forward Ben Allen said Sampson also calls the exercise the "war drill."\n"There are no rules, so you're basically just wrestling for the ball," Allen said. "It's the hardest thing we've done." \nJunior forward Lance Stemler, still adjusting to the speed of the NCAA Division-I game after transferring from a junior college, said the drill was one of the hardest he had done for any team at any level. \nStemler and the Hoosiers fight through their first practices under their new coach. Sampson is in the process of installing a new system and a new attitude in Assembly Hall.\n"We just have a lot of teaching going on," Sampson said last week during a press conference. "This time last year (at the University of Oklahoma) we were already on the five-on-five stuff. We already had stuff in, we always had a group coming back that knew what to do. You had your core guys, the group of veterans coming back. So really the only people you're teaching are your newcomers. We just don't have the luxury. Everybody's new, and we're just trying to take baby steps.\n"I'm very much an ABC teacher," Sampson said. "You don't go to B until you're really, really good at A. And you don't even think about C until you know how to do A and B. That's kind of how practice is going in a nutshell."\nThe Hoosiers look to showcase more structure and a more refined sense of their offense Saturday, Allen said.\n"We can't really go with the scrimmage we had (at Hoosier Hysteria) because that was pretty horrible," Allen said. "But we've got two point guards who are going to lead us through, who know every step of the way. If something breaks down, we can go to different options instead of putting up a bad shot. That's going to help us put things together."\nOne of those point guards, senior Earl Calloway, said practice was "high-intensity," and that if you get into trouble "you run." \nHis least favorite part of practice?\n"The bubbles," he said.