Fit for Hollywood

How’s this for a plot line: Team Hollywood, in the midst of a conference championship race, loses its coach for reasons beyond its control. The team members are rather peeved after hearing the news that their leader has been dismissed and several players skip practice the day before an important game to protest the decision. They blow off some steam. They rage against the injustice of it all. Then, they have a change of heart. Everyone boards the team plane the next day, and Team Hollywood pulls out a three-point victory with a new head coach to continue its pursuit of a championship.\nOK, so it’s not exactly “The Mighty Ducks,” but the Hoosiers’ season lately has all the elements of a Disney sports flick – right down to the inept owner figure.\nDuring his seven-day reinvestigation into the basketball program, Director of Athletics Rick Greenspan said he spent hours poring over testimony and reports, consulting with various lawyers and administrators. And while Greenspan may have had all of his legal ducks in a row in negotiating Kelvin Sampson’s $750,000 buyout, he was still scrambling to meet the deadline set by President Michael McRobbie a week prior, like a college freshman who put off a term paper until the last minute.\nReporters and TV crews gathered in the Hoosier Room beneath Memorial Stadium midday on Friday, fixating their lenses on an empty table with empty chairs, while rumors about player boycotts and press conference times continued to swirl. No official communication came from IU Athletics until 8:30 p.m. Greenspan did not address the throng of questioners, many of whom had been waiting since the first rumored press conference time of 2 p.m., until three hours before midnight. The whole ordeal was messier than taxidermy.\nThe good news for Hoosier fans is that it is finally over. The school has cut ties with the biggest mistake in program history – yeah, an even bigger mistake than the successor of Bob Knight – and can start the coaching search all over again.\nGreenspan’s job appears safe for the time being, despite the Sampson fiasco and the fact that the future of IU’s most beloved tradition currently lies in shambles. The present team, however, with newly installed interim head coach Dan Dakich at the helm, continues to persevere.\nThe off-court drama obviously spilled into Welsh-Ryan Arena Saturday night, culminating in an uncharacteristic technical foul on Jamarcus Ellis in the second half, but IU pulled it out in the end. The glaring consequence of Friday’s chaos was the Hoosiers’ shortened preparation time for Northwestern. In order to quickly acclimate his team to the Wildcat offense, Dakich had the team managers simulate Northwestern’s style of play.\n“I am so proud of our players,” Dakich said after the game, a feeling he extended to include just about everyone associated with IU basketball and their mother. “They have been so resilient throughout the course of the year – a testament to all things I think are good about Indiana University and Indiana University basketball.”\nDakich said he understood the players’ knee-jerk reaction to the coaching change, and said he’s having issues coming to terms with it himself.\n“We’ll move on, and hopefully as things continue, we will get better,” he said.\nThings might not be so bleak in Hoosierville, after all. Now that the dust has settled, there’s still hope for a Hollywood ending.