The Best of Both Worlds

IU basketball is in a state of transition.  Emotionally, it still hasn’t moved on from the Bob Knight era.  The whole mess with his firing took place in my final semester at IU back in the fall of 2000.  And now here we are in the year 2006, and IU still hasn’t recovered.  Half of the decade has been pretty much lost.  So I was happy to see that in the decision to hire Sampson, from Oklahoma, IU has shown its resolution to move forward, and to force a new era of IU basketball. 

There are legitimate concerns about his record of recruiting violations while at OU, and I feel that he dealt with this effectively at the press conference today.  They were relatively minor violations involving excessive phone calls to recruits, which he clearly stated would never be repeated at a program of his again.  The complaints from some IU fans seem a bit excessive to me.  Many of these people were no doubt upset about the program refusing to hire someone with a connection to the school.  Well, too bad. 

This looks like a truly good hire to me.  IU needs to move on, and hopefully we wont have to say that again in the near future.