Down to the wire: Hoosiers edge out Chaminade, 81-79
LAHAINA, HAWAII -- The Hoosiers needed a last-second air ball from Chaminade to escape the EA Sports Maui Invitational with a win.
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LAHAINA, HAWAII -- The Hoosiers needed a last-second air ball from Chaminade to escape the EA Sports Maui Invitational with a win.
For a full recap of our live blog, follow the jump.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For months, Indiana University waited in suspense and braced for the worst.On Tuesday, the school let out a collective sigh of relief when the NCAA Committee on Infractions announced it had accepted IU’s self-imposed sanctions and would only penalize the school in the form of a three-year probationary period.The case stems from the major recruiting violations committed under former IU coach Kelvin Sampson and his assistant Rob Senderoff. Despite the NCAA finding the University guilty of “failure to monitor,” the committee decided no further penalties were necessary outside of the modest probation.“It is time to move on and put this episode behind us,” IU President Michael McRobbie said in a press release. “We have a new coach and an almost entirely new team, and they should not have to worry about being penalized for things that happened before they were even here.”The Hoosiers’ old coaches, Sampson and Senderoff, were not let off as easy as the University. Sampson received a five-year “show cause” order that will most likely keep him from returning to college basketball over the period. Now an assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks, Sampson is prohibited from recruiting, making phone calls, receiving phone calls or contacting any recruits over the next three years. The sanctions are slightly reduced over the fourth and fifth years.“I’m deeply disappointed in today’s findings by the NCAA,” Sampson said in a statement through his agent. “But the accusations at hand are things that happened on my watch, and therefore I will take responsibility.”He apologized to all of the people “who were hurt in this situation” and added, “it is time to move on.”Senderoff, now an associate head coach at Kent State, was handed a three-year “show cause” that will keep him from recruiting, but allow him to coach the Golden Flashes.“We are committed to keeping Rob as an integral part of our staff,” Kent State Athletics Director Laing Kennedy said in a statement. “His impact and long-term value to our program both on and off the court and heading up our academic efforts far outweigh these penalties.” To the delight of IU Athletics, no further penalties were levied against the program besides the ones the school had already self-assessed. The University reduced its scholarship allotment by one this season and limited recruiting opportunities for their former coaches and Tom Crean. But beginning in 2009-2010, the program will be free of sanctions with the exception of the probationary period.“From the very beginning of these proceedings we cooperated fully with the NCAA and, in fact, imposed severe recruiting penalties on our men’s basketball program,” McRobbie said.On Tuesday, Crean called the ruling “bittersweet.”“(The ruling) goes to show that the system works,” Crean said outside of the Lahaina Civic Center where his Hooisers are participating the EA Sports Maui Invitational. He said the NCAA looked at the self-imposed sanctions and “respected” them.“Because the sanctions imposed obviously were very, very hard,” Crean said. “We just have to deal with aftermath…this is what gutting a program and starting over looks like.”He said he was thankful for all of the work the athletics department and the Ice Miller firm had done, but said he felt sorry for Hoosier fans everywhere.“Indiana basketball fans deserve credit as much as any in this country,” Crean said. “For fans, and the way they treat this program, they’re sticking with us. They’ve gone through a lot of hard times, we’ve gone through hard times, but now we know we can continue to move this program in the right direction and build it. Without more sanctions.”Due to increased pressure from the investigation this summer, IU Athletics Director Rick Greenspan resigned on June 26, the same day the NCAA announced the “failure to monitor” allegation. On Tuesday, Greenspan, whose resignation is effective at the end of the year and will be replaced by Indianapolis lawyer Fred Glass, said he was “grateful” of the NCAAs assessment, but also indicated his resignation might have been inevitable once the investigation began.“Based on this decision, it appears that anything less than monitoring perfection in this particular case would have triggered a ‘failure to monitor’ finding,” he said in a release.McRobbie described the violations of the men’s basketball program as a “one-time deviation from a half-century record of having no major NCAA infractions.”“We are determined never to allow anything like this to happen again,” he said.Since the University announced its self-imposed sanctions in 2007, the men’s basketball program has been on a steady, but steep, decline. Coaches were bought out, players were kicked off the team or transferred and the team has a completely new roster this season with the exceptions of senior forward Kyle Taber and sophomore guard Brett Finkelmeier. NCAA Infractions Committee chair Josephine Potuto, a law professor at the University of Nebraska, called the self-sanctions “substantial” in a teleconference with reporters Tuesday. But despite the destruction of the program, Potuto said the committee never took into factor what was going on inside of Assembly Hall during the investigation and deliberation.“The committee can’t consider a prime focus of penalties on what happens to an institution because of a major change independent of what the committee penalties turned out to be,” she said. “We have to be sure that what the committee does reflects the seriousness of the violations and the nature of the violations, how they were committed and the scope that they were committed.”Under the terms of the probation, the University will be imposed with heavy record keeping, heightened scrutiny and will be obligated to report to the Infractions Committee yearly, Potuto said.Following his team’s loss to Saint Joseph’s in the second round of the Maui Invitational Tuesday, Crean said he wasn’t fully aware of the probationary period details, but said he was happy the committee spared the school.“We were going to do whatever they said,” Crean said. “We didn’t want to lose postseason, we didn’t want to lose scholarships and we didn’t want to lose television.”“Thank God we didn’t lose any of those,” he said.IU’s first-year coach, who took over the program in April, said he is looking forward to recruiting without other school’s making innuendos and spreading false rumors about what the NCAA was going to rule.“And now our recruits can feel good about it, our future class recruits can feel good about it (and) our current players can feel good about it,” he said. “We can just move forward.”
For months, Indiana University waited in suspense and braced for the worst.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>LAHAINA, HAWAII — After their second blowout loss in as many days, IU coach Tom Crean said his team is disappointed, but not discouraged.The Hoosiers (2-2) lost 80-54 to Saint Joseph’s (2-2) Tuesday in the second round of the EA Sports Maui Invitational. The two teams played tight game in the first half before the Hawks blew the game open in the second period.PHOTOS: IU-Saint Joseph'sAUDIO: IU post gameAUDIO: Saint Joseph's post gameFreshman forward Tom Pritchard’s two-handed dunk with 18:05 remaining made it a one-point contest and seemed to mark a comeback for the Hoosiers. But instead of rallying, IU crumbled, committing seven turnovers in less than six minutes and allowed Saint Joseph’s to explode for a game-ending 23-2 run.“We are…all…very…young…men,” Crean said, deliberately pausing in between each word. “And we’re playing against groups of players who have been playing for ‘x’ amounts of years and programs that are established.”“Again, it’s not an excuse, it’s a fact,” he added.Saint Joseph’s coach Phil Martelli echoed Crean’s assessment, simply attributing the defeat to “older against younger.”“Obviously, the Indiana situation is like starting over,” he said.Martelli said his team came out in the second half and simplified everything they were doing. The longtime St. Joe’s coach said he went to his bench more and his defense stepped up.“We really used our defense to get some offense,” Martelli said. “We are not an 80-point team, but we got a lot of lay-ups.”Saint Joseph’s scored 34 points off of IU’s 23 turnovers.Despite the 26-point margin, Crean said his team competed much better than they did in Monday’s 88-50 loss to No. 8 Notre Dame. The team’s defensive intensity picked up, and IU’s defensive deflections increased from 13 against the Irish to 36 today.But the negatives outweighed the positives once again for the Hoosiers.Not a single player scored in double-digits, with freshman guard Malik Story coming off the bench to lead the team in scoring with nine points. Guards Daniel Moore and Devan Dumes combined to commit 12 turnovers and the Hoosiers shot just 37.5 percent from the field. From beyond the arc, IU finished 3-of-14.Crean said his team came prepared and had an excellent walk through before the game, but the pre-game success didn’t translate to the game.“We can’t mirror (games) in practice,” Crean said. “We’ve got freshmen guarding freshmen, freshmen being guarded by walk-ons and then we come out in the games and we’re being guarded by grown men.”Saint Joseph’s “grown men” exploded on the offensive end against the Hoosiers, shooting nearly 60 percent from the field for the game. Junior guard Darrin Govens led the Hawks with 23 points, including connecting on seven of his nine 3-point attempts. Senior forward Ahmad Nivins added 18 points and eight rebounds.The Hoosiers matched the Hawks on the boards, with each team finishing with 29 rebounds. Despite the insurmountable deficit late in the second half, the Hoosiers kept competing as if the game were still on the line.“We are making progress,” Crean said. “It’s just not enough right now to compete against older, experienced teams that have physical mindsets.”IU will now try and avoid losing three straight regular season games since February of 2006. The Hoosiers play tournament-host Chaminande (0-2) Wednesday (2 p.m. island time, 7 p.m. EST) in the consolation game for seventh place. The Silverswords lost to No. 1 North Carolina by 45 points in the first round and fell by 22 points to Alabama on Tuesday.“Indiana really wants a win,” Chaminande coach Matt Mahar said Tuesday. “Those kids play so hard, we’re going to have to be ready for more intensity. I don’t think it’s a typical day three at all. I think Indiana will be chomping at the bit to get after us.”
LAHAINA, HAWAII -- After its second blowout loss in as many days, IU coach Tom Crean said his team is disappointed, but not discouraged.
This was embargoed until 4 p.m., but here is the release in its entirety.
The Hoosiers lost for the second time in two days this morning, falling to St. Joe's 80-54. We'll have full coverage of the game and the NCAA's ruling later today, so be sure to check back with the basketblog.
I also considered making the headline: "No Mai Tais for the NCAA!"
LAHAINA, HAWAII - With less than 24 hours to prepare for their next opponent, the Hoosiers plan to focus on themselves as much as Saint Joseph's.
The waves got bigger and IU's chances of an upset were blown away, losing to No. 8 Notre Dame in the first round of the EA Sports Maui Invitational, 88-50.
To read the live blog from Monday's game, follow the jump.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Last season, the IU football team faced a historic season and accomplished its season long-goal to “Play 13” games.This season, it’s the men’s basketball team facing a historic season. With senior Kyle Taber and sophomore Brett Finkelmeier being the only two returning players, IU coach Tom Crean has a chance to “Play 14” new players in 2008.Since he was named IU’s coach, Crean and his staff have searched furiously for players who could help his team this year.In addition to purging last season’s roster, class of 2008 recruits Devin Ebanks and Terrell Holloway backed out of their commitments when Kelvin Sampson resigned. But freshmen Tom Pritchard and Matt Roth elected to stay with the Hoosiers, immediately becoming cornerstones of the program.Searching for some experience, the Hoosiers signed two junior college players to fill out their freshman-filled squad. Devan Dumes, an Indianapolis native, played at Vincennes University last season before signing this summer, and 7-foot center Tijan Jobe committed to the Hoosiers after playing for Olney Central College last year.Including Pritchard and Roth, the Hoosiers have nine freshmen. Nick Williams, who was named Alabama’s High School Player of the Year last season, followed Crean to IU after previously committing to Marquette. Malik Story, a 6-foot-5 swingman, comes to Bloomington after growing up in California. Verdell Jones III, a Champaign, Ill., native, bucked Illinois tradition to suit up for the Cream and Crimson.In all, the Hoosiers have seven walk-ons. Crean has reiterated he will hold tryouts throughout the season looking to add talent. Three of the walk-ons were recruited by Sampson (Daniel Moore, Kory Barnett and Broderick Lewis) but elected to stay with the Hoosiers to play under Crean. Others, like junior Steven Gambles and freshman Evan White, were discovered in open gym tryouts.Another recent addition, Kipp Schutz, was given a tryout after he beat Dumes in a 3-point competition between the IU baseball team, on which Schutz is an outfielder, and the basketball team.But arguably the most talented of the new 14, junior Jeremiah Rivers, will not play this season. Rivers transferred from Georgetown this summer, which makes him ineligible this season.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The windows had been boarded up for weeks. The paint, once a vibrant crimson, had now faded and was chipping away on the exterior. The roof, deteriorated. The walls inside of the building were in equally bad shape, a combination of neglect and lack of maintenance.The supports were about to give out. Too many corners had been cut in the last remodeling. The slimy contractor wasn’t worried about rules and regulations; all he cared about was the image of the final product.But the image the contractor had settled on was hideous. The tenants were now embarrassed to live in the house. Slowly, the demolition crew cranked the wrecking ball into the air, preparing to demolish the building. The insides of the house shook with fear, bracing for the blow. But before the ugly, miserable building was demolished, someone said a few last words. Words of hope. Words that would hopefully inspire not just the next contractor, but also the tenants. The ones who had lived there and the ones who would one day live there. The man speaking was Dan Dakich.“This needs to be built,” he said. Filling in for the contractor – who had cut so many corners he was shown the door – Dakich spoke from the heart. He’d just seen the program he loved, the program he once played for, lose to Arkansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 86-72. His team had just lost four of their last five, and he could tell the crimson shine had faded. He could see the wrecking ball in the distance, preparing to demolish what had become of the IU men’s basketball program.“This needs to be built back with a foundation of discipline and accountability,” he declared. “This needs to be built back to where there is a real pride among the people that know everything that’s going on in the basketball program, where there are former players that come here and have pride in what is happening here in the program.”Dakich hoped to be the man to rebuild the house. He wanted to fix the cracks in the foundation, scrub the floors until they shined. But more than anything, it seemed Dakich wanted the program’s pride restored.He said the “Indiana people, Indiana fans, the Indiana nation wants it done right, where there’s no embarrassment, there’s nothing but pride in all areas.“And that’s something that has to happen at IU. It doesn’t have to happen everywhere, but it has to happen at Indiana University. That’s how Indiana University conducts its business,” said the interim coach who had once seen the team at its proudest.“Especially in the basketball program.”Since arriving on campus in April, IU coach Tom Crean has done all he can to restore pride and tradition in the program he had long admired.He hated to see the program in the shape it was. How had it come to this? Crean has said he received countless letters from concerned Hoosiers when he first took the IU job. This isn’t Indiana basketball, the letters read. This isn’t how the program is supposed to be run. This isn’t Indiana.So Crean set about making the program what it once was. He reached out to former students, coaches and managers, holding an enormous team reunion in West Baden, Ind., which attracted more than 180 former players. He set guidelines the program would follow, promising the players would go to class, do things the right way and make Hoosier fans proud of the program once again.The old building would be demolished. Crean and IU Athletics would build the new one on the same lot.In an address to the IU student body earlier this fall, Crean said the program is “in a process right now.” IU men’s basketball would not be rebuilt in a day. He purged last year’s roster, filled with what he deemed undesirables, and recruited an entirely new team with the exceptions of senior forward Kyle Taber and sophomore guard Brett Finkelmeier. Thirty points. That’s all that would return from last year’s team. Nothing else.Crean has warned fans he doesn’t know what to expect this season. How can you when you’re trying out kids from the baseball team a week before the season-opener? But Crean and his 14 new players have promised Hoosier fans one thing: They will try their darnedest to restore pride.“As a coach, you’re judged by wins and losses, but the bottom line is this process that forms ... as you’re watching Indiana basketball go through this process, it’s going to shape memories. That’s what I’m excited about,” Crean said.The excitement became contagious. Students, faculty and staff began to have hope. Hope that the new program would resemble the old one. Not the one built by the slimy contractor, but the one built by the guy who wore that red sweater. The one who brought them three national championships. The one who made them proud.Fred Glass remembered those days.He was an undergraduate on Bloomington’s campus during the glory period. He remembered seasons when you could only get tickets to half the men’s basketball home games because of the demand. He remembered partying with former IU basketball star Randy Wittman. He remembered the pride.He had just been named the school’s next athletics director. A big part of his job was to oversee the rebuilding of the men’s basketball program. The team had its leader in Crean, but it still needed someone to direct the construction. Someone who understood.He said the damage done to the basketball program was “immeasurable.” He knew people’s hearts were broken. “You know, its hard to say, but I think people and alumni in other parts of the country don’t like to wear their IU stuff and have people make a comment about the challenges that went on,” he said. “I think it’s been bad and I don’t think we should underestimate how bad it’s been. We’re almost over the long national nightmares, almost over – I hope.”A lawyer by trade, Glass will officially become IU’s athletics director in January. Just hours after being introduced in a press conference, Glass outlined the three characteristics the program would need to restore pride.“I want us to not only follow the rules but be known for following the rules. I want us to be about academic achievement. I want this to be a place where moms and dads want to send their kids knowing they are going to go to class and graduate. And finally, after those two pillars are in place, then I want to excel athletically,” he said.In that order?“Yes, absolutely.“I think that it is especially important to IU, I suppose,” Glass said of compliance. “Because following the rules is something everybody always took a lot of pride in. It was a hallmark of the school, and we took a real hit on that with the situation that occurred.”The situation that occurred was an ugly one. One week, players were suspended. The next, rumors circled the campus that another had been arrested. The coach had been caught cheating in recruiting, and had been caught once again. The program was a running joke in Big Ten circles. But here we are a little more than seven months after Crean was hired, and the students that once obsessed over the team are beginning to regain some of that pride. Student season ticket sales are at an unprecedented low this season, and the team is picked to finish in the bottom of the conference by most projections, but that doesn’t mean IU students don’t have something to be proud about.“I think it’s still Indiana basketball,” said IU Student Athletic Board President Michael Melwid. “Students still have a lot of pride in their program and their school.”Melwid, a Bloomington native, has seen the program take a lot of turns over the past two decades. Now a senior, Melwid said he thinks Crean has done “a tremendous job” in helping the faded program restore its glimmer.After attending two games early this season, Melwid said he sees the team and the coaching staff working hard to earn fans’ trust and support again. And while ticket sales might be down for the time being, Melwid thinks that’s just a blip on the radar.“The students that go to the games will fully support this team and be just as crazy ... Something that was really cool was when Tom Crean came over after the exhibition game the other night and thanked all of the students for coming,” he said. “That will go a long way with the students.”Sophomores David Sutter and Ryan Lueken agree. The two roommates are both Indiana natives and fondly remember the better days. Lueken said he loved the 2002 team coached by Mike Davis that went to the Final Four, describing them as “good guys who played as a team.”Despite the struggles the program has faced, the two bought season tickets this year, and are optimistic, because of Crean and a heralded incoming recruiting class, that things will turn around quickly.“I think by the end of the year, students will get behind this team,” Sutter said. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm.”The two said their pride was hurt, but never lost, for IU basketball. But past success has left them hungry for future glory, much like Dakich. Lueken said he takes pride in “those banners hanging up in Assembly Hall and the tradition” and thinks Crean is the right man to guide the Hoosiers.Crean has his work cut out for him. Earlier this year, the program was in shambles. The paint faded, the supports weakening, the structure crumbling. But now he’s trying to “build this thing back up” and give Hoosier fans that feeling they had in IU basketball. Pride.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Like so many stories, this one begins in the summer of ’69. It had been 16 years since the Hoosiers won their last national championship, and the team was coming off its second straight losing season and facing a third.This isn’t a story about the Hoosiers overcoming long odds and adversity to win a national title. Far from it. In fact, this is a story about the worst men’s basketball season since IU joined the Big Ten. Things were different during that forgettable season from how they are now. For starters, there wasn’t an overriding feeling of optimism flowing through the program’s veins similar to what Tom Crean has recently injected. No one was reminding fans, “It’s Indiana.” The Hoosiers had finished in the Big Ten cellar three of the last four years and had struggled since winning their last Big Ten championship in 1966-67.It wasn’t exactly “help is on the way,” but Lou Watson urged fans to be patient and to wait for next year. Next year will be better; next year we’ll be more competitive. Next year we could win a Big Ten title.But fans didn’t believe in Watson the way they do in Crean, or even Mike Davis. Sure, IU had won before, but it didn’t have the proud tradition to look back upon that Crean has now. Forget the five championship banners swaying from the rafters; Assembly Hall hadn’t even been built yet.Fast-forward to 2008. It has been 21 years since the Hoosiers won their last national championship, and with inexperience and a grueling schedule, the team could be facing its worst season record-wise since, you guessed it, 1969.Last year’s roster has been purged, the coaching staff done away with. No longer is winning the bottom line. The program once again wants to win with pride and integrity. When a new athletics director was hired in October, he stressed the athletics department was going to “follow the rules,” a not-so-subtle hint that Barack Obama isn’t the only one trying to change the culture around him. The two seasons were played under different pretenses. The ’69 team didn’t undergo a massive overhaul over the summer. It returned its top two scorers in Ken Johnson and Joe Cooke. There were no NCAA sanctions looming over the ’69 team, and there wasn’t the same sense of reestablishing tradition.To make matters worse, current coach Watson was beginning to have severe back problems. It was the Hoosiers’ terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad season.It was decided that assistant coach Jerry Oliver, previously a high school coach, would fill in for Watson for a few games until he recovered. A few games turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into the entire season. The University was still two years away from hiring an up-and-coming young coach from Army named Robert Montgomery Knight to take over the program. The 1969-70 men’s basketball season was unusual. Peculiar. Odd. Much like 2008, but at the same time quite different. Both teams were facing difficult circumstances and both coaches, while trying their hardest, knew the challenges ahead would be massive.There was a running joke around Bloomington in 1969 that the Hoosiers were the third-best basketball team on campus. The freshman team had defeated the varsity squad 86-84 in an exhibition that fall, and there was a McNutt intramural team that starred two 6-foot-8 freshman prodigies fresh off a state championship: George McGinnis and Steve Downing (the two were academically ineligible that season).The team actually won three of its first four games before things got bad. Really bad. The Hoosiers lost nine of their next 10 and went 3-11 in conference play that season. A 17-point loss to then-No. 1 Kentucky began a four-game losing streak. A win against Georgia Tech preceded the Big Ten season, which would begin with a five-game losing streak for IU. After a win against Northwestern, a 15-point loss to Iowa preceded an 18-point drubbing to Purdue. The Hoosiers rallied to win two of three in late February, but ended the season with three consecutive losses by a combined 29 points. The ’69 team finished 7-17 overall, with a winning percentage that resembled a Ted Williams batting average.The following season, the Hoosiers’ record reversed. McGinnis and Downing were eligible, and a few talented newcomers added to IU’s fortunes. The team finished 17-7. The year after that, the University hired “The General.” In his second year at the helm, the Hoosiers were Big Ten champions and made it to the Final Four. An era was born. The forgettable season, forgotten. With 30 games scheduled, the 2008-09 Hoosiers will battle the label of being the worst team record-wise all season. Their schedule won’t do them any favors. They’ll play in the Maui Invitational in November, a pre-season tournament usually reserved for elite teams and the host school, Chaminade. They travel to Winston-Salem, N.C., to play Wake Forest. They’ll play the first basketball game ever in Lucas Oil Stadium against Gonzaga. And they’ll face Kentucky in Rupp Arena. And then, just when the Hoosiers will want to come up for air, the Big Ten season begins.In his address to the IU student body earlier this fall, Crean said he told his team about the eighth wonder of the world.He was reading USA Today and saw, to his disbelief, “someone who actually didn’t pick us to finish in last place this season.”He added that if fans focus on wins and losses this season, they’ll be missing the point of what the 2008-09 season is all about. The first-year coach didn’t beg fans to wait. In fact, he didn’t even utter the phrase “next year.” Instead, Crean said he sees an opportunity. An opportunity where maybe one day, people will look back at the summer of ’08 as the beginning of a new era. “When you’re faced with adversity and different things, there has to be something that keeps you going,” Crean said. “There is a feeling here. If you have it once, you’re going to get it back. Everyone has a chance to watch this thing grow again.”
KA'ANAPALI, Hawaii - After facing Notre Dame three times last season at Marquette, Tom Crean is well aware of the task at hand for the IU men's basketball team Monday.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>KA’ANAPALI, Hawaii – After facing Notre Dame three times last season at Marquette, Tom Crean is well aware of the task at hand for the IU men’s basketball team Monday.The No. 8 Fighting Irish (2-0) are experienced, talented and the proud owners of All-American big man Luke Harangody. The Hoosiers (2-0), on the other hand, are young, unproven and without a go-to scorer. The in-state foes will meet Monday in the Lahaina Civic Center to play in the first round of the EA Sports Maui Invitational (12:30 p.m. island time, 5:30 p.m. EST). “They are better (than last year), no question,” IU coach Tom Crean said Sunday in a beachfront press conference at the Maui Westin Ka’anapali. “They were very good last year obviously, but you can see differences in their bodies, their athleticism, and you can see they are a veteran group that has made strides to get better.“What was already an incredible challenge is that much greater,” Crean added.The biggest challenge of all for the Hoosiers might be containing Fighting Irish forward Harangody. In two games this season, the Schererville, Ind., native is averaging 28.5 points and 15.5 rebounds per game.“We’re not guarding Luke with one person,” Crean said Sunday. “You’ll see a lot of people down there at some point.”While at Marquette, Crean became quite familiar with Notre Dame coach Mike Brey’s squad. Despite their friendly exchanges Sunday, Brey said the rivalry between the two Big East schools “was a heated one.”“As I said, I’m glad he’s out of the league,” Brey said with a smile. “He did a fabulous job at Marquette and is in the midst of doing (the same) at Indiana, doing it the right way. I think there’s great energy in the state with him there, and they’re really going to come out and play hard and guard the heck out of you. That’s always what his teams have done, no matter where he’s been.”With so many new players on IU’s roster, Brey said he’s watched a lot of tape of the Hoosiers.“It was a little tricky, but I think I’ve got a feel for ’em now after a couple days of watching them,” he said. “I watched them on the whole flight out to L.A.”In two games this season, freshman forward Tom Pritchard is leading the team in scoring (16 points) and rebounding (10 rebounds) per game. Junior guard Devan Dumes (15.5) and freshman guards Matt Roth (10.5) and Verdell Jones (10.0) are also averaging double-digit scoring.Although he leads the Fighting Irish, Brey said he gets plenty of questions about IU’s new team because he coaches in the same state.Brey said a lot of IU fans will come up to him and ask if their team got the right man to be the team’s next coach.“I say, ‘Yeah, you got a heck of a guy,’” Brey said.After traveling to Maui all day Thursday, Crean said his team struggled in its first practice on the island.“You would think it was the first day of preseason conditioning,” he said. “It was the first time they’d really had a long period of time off.”The team came back Saturday and practiced with more energy, Crean said.“We’ll go a little (Sunday), and we’re trying to gear them not only for game one, but for the fact that they are going to play three highly competitive games, no matter what, for three straight days,” IU’s first-year coach said.In addition to the tournament, Crean said the players and coaching staff have had a chance to enjoy the island. Rain kept some inside their hotels, but not everyone.“We needed binoculars to see how far Tom Pritchard and Kyle Taber were out in the ocean the other day on their boogie boards,” Crean said.The team has had relatively short film sessions and meetings since arriving in Hawaii, but Crean said when the team does work, “We try and work very hard.”The winner of the IU-Notre Dame showdown will face the winner of the Texas-Saint Joseph’s matchup in the second round. The two teams that lose will also face each other.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>KA’ANAPALI, Hawaii – On paper, it might look like a mismatch, but junior guard Devan Dumes was dominating Notre Dame standout Luke Harangody.Each basket Dumes scored seemed to humble the 6-foot-8, 255-pound All-American more and more. By the time the final horn sounded, the Hoosiers had already begun celebrating. IU pulled off the huge upset with ease, coasting to a 33-20 victory.The win didn’t come in the first round of the EA Sports Maui Invitational, but instead the Xbox 360 Players’ Party hosted by the Maui Sheraton on Saturday night.Click here for a photo slideshow from the event in MauiAll eight teams playing in the preseason tournament gathered in the ballroom to play EA Sports’ March Madness ’09 against one another. Two players participated in the tournament from each team, with North Carolina’s Mike Copeland beating out teammate Ty Lawson in the final to win the tourney championship. Like the tournament that begins Monday, the Hoosiers and the Fighting Irish met in the first round of the video game tourney. IU freshman guard Daniel Moore lost to Notre Dame guard Tory Jackson in the first game before Dumes beat star big man in the second.The IU players hooted and hollered after each virtual Hoosier basket and congratulated each other when their virtual likeness made a play. When freshman forward Tom Pritchard missed two free throws in the game, senior forward Kyle Taber patted him on the back. When junior center Tijan Jobe scored a basket in the first game, several teammates congratulated him with high-fives.“Last night, (the players) enjoyed the Xbox event,” IU coach Tom Crean said Sunday. “Devan Dumes beat Luke Harangody in his first-round game. Hopefully that was a sign.”Crean said last year, EA Sports projected Marquette to lose to Duke in the Maui Invitational finals, which they ended up doing, losing to the Blue Devils 77-73.
Just got back from the morning press conferences. Pretty incredible sight. The Maui Westin held the event outside just a few hundred feet away feet away from the Pacific. The eight coaches, all wearing leis, took a few questions from the media before participating in a charity free throw contest.
No, you didn't miss the game.