Former interim coach Dan Dakich spoke to the NWI times about some of the rumors surrounding the IU program. The title of the interview suggests that Dakich shut down the rumor mill, but in my opinion he just opened it back up.
When asked if the team shut down on him at the end of the season, Dakich responded with this:
We were 3-1 and then a lot of things started happening, internally, that I'm not about to go into. Truth of the matter is, it got easy for people to say the players quit on Dakich, they quit on Indiana. But Eric Gordon went 7-for-50. That ain't quittin'. That's just missin'. Guys didn't make shots they had made earlier in the year. This team lived on the edge -- with Gordon making shots. This whole notion of the players revolting or being against me ... the players were against losing Coach Sampson. I'm not going to say they weren't (ticked) off at the administration, at the school. The players didn't understand why phone calls were such a big deal when some of them had been called numerous times by other schools.
That last sentence really caught me eye. We've all heard that recruiting is a dirty, dirty game, but this statement from Dakich has opened a whole new can of worms in my opinion. Who were these coaches? Which programs made extra calls?
Does this is any way change your opinion of Sampson? Of Greenspan? Does this give the players any out on how they allegedly shut down in the final month of the season?
