Man Enough...

I am man enough to admit when I am wrong. Kelvin Sampson has had his chance, and has now sullied the good name of our beloved Hoosiers program. His job should now be on thin ice...what a shame.

Coach Sampson Started Off Right

This score from tonight's game (Jan. 31, 2007) says it all: Coach Sampson is doing well, and deserves a chance at IU.

Hoosiers nearly make comeback in loss to Duke

As the report below shows, Coach Sampson has some work ahead of him. But with a 3-2 record (with two quality losses), Kelvin deserves at least a shot this year to coach this Hoosier team to an identity. So let's give him a chance to sink or swim and let this season determine his fate. Oh, and again, to those at firekelvinsampson.com - shut the hell up.



Hoosiers nearly make comeback in loss to Duke

Final: #10 Duke 54 -- Indiana 51


DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- Duke's young team is still trying to figure out how to play offense. The Blue Devils are fortunate the defense is coming along a little quicker.

DeMarcus Nelson scored 19 points Tuesday night as (No. 10 ESPN/USA Today; No. 11 AP) Duke held on to beat Indiana 54-51 in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, keeping the Blue Devils as the only unbeaten team in the eight-year history of the event.

Freshman Jon Scheyer had 10 points for the Blue Devils (6-1), who extended their nonconference home winning streak to 45 games despite struggling most of the night with their shooting and offensive execution. Duke shot 32 percent -- including 4-for-18 after halftime -- but made the Hoosiers (3-2) fight for just about every basket in a tough game that came down to the final possession.

It was the fewest points scored by the Blue Devils in a win since taking a 47-46 victory over Georgia Tech on Feb. 3, 1982 -- Mike Krzyzewski's second season in Durham. Still, the Blue Devils did enough to give their Hall of Fame coach his 759th career victory, tying him with Western Kentucky's Ed Diddle for 10th on the all-time list.

"Our offense put so much pressure on our defense that ... we have to play great defense or else we don't win this game," Krzyzewski said.

The Blue Devils' pressure defense harassed Indiana into 9-for-28 shooting in the first half to take a 33-21 lead. And when the Hoosiers made a late surge to get back in the game, Duke came up with two big defensive stops in the final seconds to seal it.

"Defense always wins games," Nelson said. "If the other team can't score, they can't win. We have a lot of guys who can defend multiple positions and defense is how we win."

Freshman Armon Bassett scored 16 points to lead the Hoosiers, who played without junior Lance Stemler, the team's third-leading scorer who was sidelined after suffering a concussion in practice over the weekend.

But Bassett didn't get much help. D.J. White, who came in averaging 14 points, finished with seven on 3-for-11 shooting while Joey Shaw added nine. Errek Suhr, a 5-foot-9 reserve who came in with six points in 25 minutes on the season, finished with five points and two assists in 24 determined minutes.

"It's just good defense by Duke," White said. "They showed me a lot of different looks when I caught the ball. Sometimes they came when I caught it, sometimes on the first dribble. They did a real good job just mixing their coverage up."

Duke led 53-46 on a 3-pointer from Scheyer with 5:01 left, but that was its last field goal. Meanwhile, the Hoosiers fought back, cutting the lead 53-51 on Bassett's drive with 2:04 left.

Then, after a free throw by Gerald Henderson, the Hoosiers had two late chances to tie it. On the first, Bassett airballed a 3-pointer that went out of bounds to Duke. But Suhr stole Josh McRoberts' inbounds pass for Nelson with 9.3 seconds left, giving the Hoosiers possession.

Yet Indiana -- which had no timeouts left -- managed only a leaning 3 from Suhr that fell short of the rim as the horn sounded.

That capped a tough, physical second half in which the Blue Devils went 0-for-4 from the field and 1-for-4 from the line in the final five minutes. Nelson and Scheyer got little help, with McRoberts tallying seven points while fellow sophomore David McClure had six.

The Hoosiers hardly had an impressive offensive day, either. Indiana got back into the game by holding Duke without a field goal for more than 6 minutes to start the second half and eventually knocked down some looks behind Bassett's 11 second-half points. The Hoosiers shot 46 percent after halftime, including 3-for-6 from behind the arc.

But they failed to capitalize at the line (5-for-10 after halftime) when the game hung in the balance, handing coach Kelvin Sampson a frustrating loss in his native state.

"We've got to find something we're good at," he said. "We can't go through the season walking through somebody else's living room with a blindfold on. You're hitting furniture all over the place. You've got to open your eyes and see where you're going. You've got to have an identity."

Cream and Crimson Scrimmage

Basketball Season is nearly upon us. And Coach Sampson is demonstrating why he was hired despite the questions about his recruitment techniques at Oklahoma. Note his comments that the team has a lot to do - only time will tell if he will be able to bring the Hoosiers back to glory, but let's give him that chance and watch our team with high hopes and an open mind!




Men's Basketball Participates in Cream and Crimson Scrimmage
Senior captain Earl Calloway and the Hoosiers took part in the Cream and Crimson scrimmage on Oct. 29.
 
Oct. 29, 2006

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -­ Indiana held its Cream and Crimson intrasquad scrimmage on Oct. 29 at Branch McCracken Court, and while it provided IU fans with their first opportunity to see the team since Hoosier Hysteria, it offered head coach Kelvin Sampson an opportunity to evaluate his club¹s progress.
"These are great. You always learn more after a scrimmage," Sampson said. "There's not one area of the game that I think we¹re good at right now. But we'll take this film, break it down, show it to them and get better. You try to be good at one or two things at this time of year. There's going to be a lot of things that we're not good at early, but over the course of November and December, we're going to get better and better."
Sampson has often said that the point guard does not have to be the best player on the team, but they should be the most valuable. Senior captain Earl Calloway has taken his coach¹s words to heart.
"Coach is just trying to help me lead the team because I have to be a leader," Calloway said. "The point guards have to be the leaders of the team, Armon (Bassett), Errek (Suhr) and I. We all have to be leaders of the team. So, he's going to get on us to make sure that we are tough mentally to go out and help the other four on the court to become better players."
Sophomore center Ben Allen knows that the Hoosiers' rigorous offseason conditioning program and disciplined, competitive practices will pay dividends this winter.
"The bubble drill is a war of getting rebounds off the rim," Allen said. "It is great for us to develop that aggressiveness that we will need for games and it teaches us how to rebound properly. It's a plastic bubble on the rim that shots bounce off of and we rebound. It really has taught us to be aggressive on the boards."
 
The bubble drill is just one element of the trademark that Sampson is bringing to the Hoosier program.
"I feel pretty good about this season," Allen said. "Coach Sampson is coming in with a plan to win on the road. An important part of competing and succeeding during the season is winning on the road. To develop an identity like that has been really important to us."
While the first two weeks have served as a transition for the coaching staff and players, junior forward Lance Stemler eagerly anticipates the 2006-07 season.
"From the experience I¹ve had so far, everything has been great," Stemler said. "I wanted to find a place to play college basketball where I could be successful and win. Indiana is a great place for that. Everyone here loves basketball. That makes you want to work harder for the fans."

Kelvin Sampson: Champion Basketball Coach

Kelvin Sampson
As of June 2004

Back for his fifth stint with USA Basketball, University of Oklahoma mentor Kelvin Sampson returned this summer to guide the 2004 USA World Championship For Young Men Qualifying Team to a perfect 5-0 record and the gold medal in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In doing so, the U.S. also qualified for the 2005 FIBA World Championship For Young Men.

Quickly becoming a staple in the USA Basketball coaching circle, Sampson most recently served as an assistant coach under George Karl for the 2002 USA Men's World Championship Team that finished 6-3 and in sixth place in the 14th FIBA World Championship in Indianapolis. Prior to coaching at the World Championship, Sampson guided the 1995 USA Junior World Championship Team to a 4-4 record at the FIBA Junior World Championship in Athens, Greece.

In the summer of 1994, Sampson was selected to serve as an assistant to then-USC head coach George Raveling at the Goodwill Games in St. Petersburg, Russia. The USA team earned a bronze medal and following the Goodwill Games, competed in an exhibition game against a USA Basketball Senior National Team made up of NBA standouts who were preparing for the 1994 FIBA World Championship.

In 1993, Sampson was selected head coach of the West team at the U.S. Olympic Festival in San Antonio, Texas, and his squad won the silver medal.

Sampson was a member of USA Basketball Men's Collegiate Committee from 1997-2000. The committee was responsible for the selection of coaches and players who represented USA Basketball at various collegiate level international competitions such as the Goodwill Games, FIBA 22 And Under World Championships (now known as the World Championship For Young Men), World University Games, FIBA Junior World Championships and others.

In 10 seasons (1993-94 through 2003-04) at Oklahoma, Sampson has led his teams to nine NCAA Tournament berths, including a Final Four in 2002. His overall head coaching record stands at 410-240 (.631 winning percentage) and his 234-92 tally at OU gives him the highest winning percentage of any coach in the school's history at .718.

After piecing together seven straight 20-win seasons during which the Sooners averaged over 25 wins a year, last season Sampson guided a young and injury-plagued team to a 20-11 record and an NIT appearance. In the three seasons prior to 2003-04, Sampson's Oklahoma teams won three consecutive Big 12 Tournament Championships and seven NCAA Tournament games.

In 2002-03, his Sooners finished 27-7 and ranked No.3 in the final Associated Press (A.P.) regular season poll. In 2001-02, Sampson coached Oklahoma to a 31-5 record and to the school's fourth Final Four appearance. The 31 victories tied for the second most in single-season school history. That same season, Sampson took home National Coach of the Year honors from the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) and Chevrolet.

In 1995, the A.P., Basketball Weekly and United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) recognized Sampson as National Coach of the Year after he led the Sooners to a 23-9 overall record. The solid season earned Sampson's squad a No. 4 seeding in the NCAA Tournament's Southeast Regional.

Coaching at Washington State University before moving on to Oklahoma, Sampson brought the Cougars back onto the college basketball landscape in his seven years (1986-87 through 1993-94) as head coach there.

Sampson led Washington State to a 20-11 record and its first NCAA Tournament berth in 11 years in 1994, and when he led the Cougars to the NIT two years earlier in 1992, it marked the first time Washington State had participated in postseason play since 1983. Before taking over as head coach at Washington State, Sampson spent two seasons (1984-85 and 1986-87) in Pullman as an assistant.

Prior to coaching at Washington State, Sampson worked as head coach at Montana Tech for six seasons (1979-80 through 1984-85). After working under the "interim" coaching title for one year at Tech, the Pembroke, N.C., native went 73-45 (.618) in his final four seasons. Sampson led his teams to two NAIA District 12 tittle games and earned NAIA Coach of the Year honors in 1983 and 1985.

Sampson is also a nine-year member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches board and served as the organization's President in 2003-2004.

The Kelvin Sampson Record
USA Basketball Coaching Experience:

Event	Position	W-L	Pct.	Finish
2004 USA World Championship For Young Men Qualifying Team	Head Coach	5 - 0	1.000	Gold Medal
2002 USA World Championship Team	Asst. Coach	6 - 3	.667	Sixth place
1995 USA Junior World Championship Team	Head Coach	4 - 4	.500	Seventh place
1994 USA Goodwill Games Team	Asst. Coach	3 - 2	.600	Bronze Medal
1993 U.S. Olympic Festival West Team	Head Coach	2 - 2	.500	Silver Medal
Totals:	20 – 11	.645

Collegiate Head Coaching Experience:

Year	School	Overall Record	Pct.	Notes
1981-82	Montana Tech	7 - 20	.259
1982-83	Montana Tech	22 - 9	.710
1983-84	Montana Tech	22 - 7	.765	Conference championship
1984-85	Montana Tech	22 - 9	.710	Conference championship
1987-88	Washington State	13 - 16	.448
1988-89	Washington State	10 - 19	.345
1989-90	Washington State	7 - 22	.241
1990-91	Washington State	16 - 12	.571
1991-92	Washington State	22 - 11	.667	National Invitational Tournament
1992-93	Washington State	15 - 12	.571
1993-94	Washington State	20 - 11	.645	NCAA Tournament
1994-95	Oklahoma	23 - 9	.719	NCAA Tournament
1995-96	Oklahoma	17 - 13	.567	NCAA Tournament
1996-97	Oklahoma	19 - 11	.633	NCAA Tournament
1997-98	Oklahoma	22 - 11	.667	NCAA Tournament
1998-99	Oklahoma	22 - 11	.667	NCAA Tournament
1999-00	Oklahoma	27 - 7	.794	NCAA second round
2000-01	Oklahoma	26 - 7	.788	Big 12 Tournament title, NCAA Tournament
2001-02	Oklahoma	31 - 5	.861	Big 12 Tournament title, NCAA Final Four
2002-03	Oklahoma	27 - 7	.794	Big 12 Tournament title, NCAA second round
2003-04	Oklahoma	20 - 11	.645	NIT second round
Totals:		21 Years	410 - 240	.631

Former Players Support Coach Sampson

Associated Press

Blog Note: Hats off to Quinn Buckner for being a class act and supporting IU's new head coach.

INDIANAPOLIS - Quinn Buckner distanced himself from Indiana basketball after Bob Knight was fired six years ago. Now he thinks its time to get reacquainted with the program and hopes Hoosiers fans follow him.

Buckner joined other former Indiana players Friday in offering their support to new coach Kelvin Sampson.

"I was in the shower, and I said to myself 'You've got to get over this. This your university and at some point, you've got to be supportive of what they do whether you like it or not," Buckner said. "It's still Indiana University."

The players were in Indianapolis for a reunion to celebrate Knight's three national championship teams. Knight did not attend the reunion.

But Knight's firing created a fracture among Hoosiers fans and former-players. Buckner, for instance, said he has attended only one Indiana home game since Knight's firing in September 2000. The son of Buckner's teammate, Sean May, helped North Carolina win a national championship last year.

Others like Kent Benson, who played on the 1976 undefeated team with Buckner and May, attended Indiana games frequently despite being upset with the university's handling of Knight.

Benson also appeared upset no Indiana graduates were interviewed for the job after coach Mike Davis announced his resignation Feb. 16.

Most at Friday's event, though, felt it was finally time to turn the page - including Buckner, who said his frustration was directed at the university administration and not Davis or his coaching staff.

"I think I've got to review that now, and whether I continue to take that position (not attending games)," he said. "I'm so close to coach Knight, even though I think he's culpable in this, my university mishandled it.

"I think in order for it to move back, we need to be a part of the process."

Sampson is already making progress in the healing process.

He called some former players before Friday's reunion to see whether he would be welcome at the celebration. Then he showed up.

"I think it's time to bury the Knight era," said Steve Risley, who played on the 1981 championship team. "I think one of the biggest mistakes any university can make is trying to perpetuate that era. Look at UCLA, look at North Carolina, trying to bring a disciple out of that era. I was not a big proponent of a former player coming in."

Risley also called the hiring of Sampson the right move for Indiana despite the NCAA investigation into more than 550 impermissible phone calls that Sampson and his Oklahoma staff allegedly made to recruits during 2000-04.

"He called high school recruits, what twice a week? OK, so it was 500 calls," Risley said. "I told him he could start recruiting my son right now as long as he only called him once a week. Look, we all make mistakes and do things, but I think he brings a lot of character to this program."

Not everyone agrees. After this week's announcement, 1981 team member Ted Kitchel told The Indianapolis Star that he wouldn't let Sampson coach a fifth-grade girls teams.

Buckner said that although he backed Sampson's hire, he also thought the school should have interviewed Randy Wittman and Mike Woodson, both NBA assistants who played at Indiana.

Buckner also said he was one of the former players consulted by athletic director Rick Greenspan during the five-week search but declined to comment on the discussions.

Either way, it appears Buckner - and others - are ready to embrace Sampson as the coach and again support the program.

"He understands what's at stake, and he understands how important is to pull it all together," Buckner said. "I think he's done a good job at Oklahoma, and I think, at this point, we need to respect and support the coach of Indiana University."

This is rich

Check out the disclaimer at firekelvinsampson.com:

FireKelvinSampson.com Disclaimer

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The FireKelvinSampson.com website is a free and public service to promote an online community devoted to the sharing of ideas and information about Coach Kelvin Sampson. Opinions expressed on the website are not those of the owner, and the owner accepts no legal responsibility for their veracity or nature.

The FireKelvinSampson.com owner reserves the right to remove without notice any posting with or without cause.

Users understand that the owner of this website would be unwilling to offer this service without this disclaimer, and that their use of this service constitutes acceptance of this disclaimer.

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A public service? This website is a joke, designed with the worst intentions in mind. The creator(s) and administrator(s) of this site clearly have their eyes on Indiana's basketball program, but I submit that they are students or alumni of Purdue. Why else would they have created this site so soon after the announcement of Coach Sampson's hiring? Especially when Indiana has yet to have even a single practice under its new management.

So keep providing this "service" Boilermaker. We know your true colors.

Give Coach Sampson a chance

Coach Bobby Knight, "The General," rose to national prominence as the head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers. In the summer of 2000 Coach Knight was fired from his position, and Indiana turned to one of Knight's assistants, Mike Davis, to take over as head coach.

This move met with mixed reactions. And despite leading Indiana to a Final Four victory (lost the national title game) Mike Davis was never well liked, as made clear by the website www.firemikedavis.com. Mike Davis was never going to last as the Indiana head coach simply because he is not a legendary coach.

But now, with the announcement that Kelvin Sampson, formerly of Oklahoma, will be replacing Mike Davis there is already a push to have him removed.

This Blog is dedicated to explaining why the creator of www.firekelvinsampson.com and those who agree with him (or her) should shut the hell up and give Coach Sampson a chance.

Update: Check out this post for more supporters of Coach Sampson.