Indiana Snaps Wisconsin's Winning Streak

Kelvin Sampson deserves some coach of the year consideration for the job he's doing at Indiana. I'm already on the record as saying Indiana is a Top 16 team, and tonight the Hoosiers had their best game yet, beating Wisconsin 71-66 to end the Badgers' winning streak at 17.

Although Alando Tucker scored 23 points, Sampson had Indiana running a zone that gave Wisconsin fits in the second half. If Wisconsin has a weakness, it's that Tucker and Kammron Taylor are a two-man team. Taylor chipped in 15, but no one else contributed much offensively.

Thanks to the luck of the Big Ten schedule draw, Indiana only has to play the conference's two best teams, Wisconsin and Ohio State, once each. Those two games are behind the Hoosiers now, and even with a hiccup against Illinois, Indiana has just two losses and still has an outside chance at competing for the Big Ten regular season crown.

More likely, they'll finish third behind Wisconsin and Ohio State. But that's still plenty good enough to ensure that Indiana is a Tournament team.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-01-2007 @ 9:18AM

dave said...

Sampson is a jerk with a capital J The only reason
he's at Indiana is he was scaird to stick around OU
to collect the sanctions they were ready to file. Lets see how many years it takes before he's bailing
again one step ahead of trouble again

2-01-2007 @ 2:45PM

James said...

If we measured each coach by particular or random errors in Judgement, most of the COTY people woiuld be eliminated from consideration. The fact is that Sampson is doing a helluva job at Indiana and he has this team exhibiting fundamental soundness that davis, or even Knight in his later years could not evoke. Specifically, they play hard, play punishing defense and generally make good decisions on the court. The other thing that's happend that has not happened in a long time is that he has a team conept and effort. It isn't focused on just one guy...Brian Evans, AJ Guyton, Bracey Wright, or Marco Killingsworth come to mind. When you recruit a number of top flight players, you can't emasculate some for the sake personal validation. Neither does he alwasy find someone else to blame. IU never lost a game that was Davis's fault. it was officials, players, or even the crowd. Help was always "on the way". Well, it's arrived in the person of Sampson