Any IU-UCLA game is going to be surrounded - and perhaps suffocated - by the cloud of tradition. John Wooden's 11 titles, Bob Knight's hundreds of wins, Bill Walton, Isiah Thomas, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Quinn Buckner. It goes on.
It's no surprise, then, that today's pregame press conferences were peppered with questions about the tradition of both of these programs, and how new coaches Ben Howland and Kelvin Sampson incorporate that status into their modern day programs.
"There's a lot of our job involved in that," Howland said. "When you look at the UCLA job or the Indiana job you have two of the most storied traditions in the history of college basketball. And with that comes high expectations. I grew up with the storied tradition of UCLA basketball, that's what I loved."
In many ways, Howland deferred more to UCLA's tradition than did Coach Sampson, who talked about his philosophy on tradition in the familiar, thoughtful way he has throughout the year. One of those thoughts is that tradition, while nice, just doesn't matter as much to a younger generation of players, regardless of what they say. For example, D.J. was a year old when Keith Smart gave the Hoosiers their most recent NCAA title; he doesn't remember when IU was a powerhouse program, even though he said it was part of the reason he attended IU. (By the way, the funniest joke of the day, and there were a few, was when Sampson asked Rod if 1987 was his redshirt year.)
"Tradition is important, but I think the future is more important," Sampson said. "It's kind of like progress, a lot of people want progress but seldom do they want change. There's always going to be a segment of society that wants things to stay the same, but I don't know how you can have progress without change. ... Years ago, a handful of teams always got great exposure, but nowadays, who doesn't get exposure? There's an equality of exposure nowadays. Indiana and UCLA were the traditional powers and people want to hold on to that, but if you're not keeping up you're falling behind."
When asked if he took time to talk to his players about UCLA's history, to "teach them about John Wooden" as the reporter phrased it, Sampson had a smart comeback.
"We don't have much time to talk about that," Sampson said. "I've been talking to them a lot more about Aaron Afflalo and Josh Shipp. If we had a week to prepare I could give them a history lesson, but right now guarding Afflalo and Shipp is a lot more important than the history."
In regard to the actual game tomorrow, Sampson seemed most impressed with UCLA's defense, saying that he thought the Hoosiers were similar to the Bruins in some ways but that they had progress to make before they could play defense at UCLA's level. He also said that the Bruins kept things simple but were hard to stop because they were so talented.
"Have to be careful with overload [in preparation)," Sampson said. They are what they are - they don't press, they don't zone. They're not hard to prepare for, they're just hard to play against. Knowing how to stop a team is a whole different than stopping them. I think UCLA's strength is their identity - they're tough. That's what they do, they beat you up, and they do it in a way that makes it tough on you. They're so strong at every position. They most important position on the floor is probably where they're best, and that's [point guard Darren] Collison. He's special."
Lastly, Sampson said part of his job was providing "hope for the future," and he believed he's done that this year.
"Our team, we've had a good year, no matter how you cut it," he said. "I've coached some outstanding teams, but his team - 21 wins, second round of the tournament, that's a good year for this team. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but our fan base is excited about our future. That's what Ben has done. The most important thing you can do is give your fans, people around the program hope. There's hope for the future"
