Today the greatest University in the world hired Calvin Sampson formerly of Oklahoma to coach their mens basketball team. Personally, I am happy with the hire. I was hoping for John Calapari or Mark Few, but I can understand why they didn't want to come to Bloomington. I'm very glad they didn't decide to go with Alford, that would have been a total mess.

Sampson did some good things at OU, including a final four appearance in 2002 when IU pummeled them. While I don't know all that much about him, I'm looking forward to his tenure at IU.

What do you guys think of the hire? Any OU students or Alum want to chime in?

Calvin Sampson??? Pretty bad when you get 1/3 of your head coaches name wrong..........don't see how you can be "happy" with the hire when you clearly know nothing about him....he's been a pretty prominent/great coach the past few years (had a bad year this year), so that's kind of surprising. Seems to show a bit of arrogance amongst Big Ten/Indiana fans....but maybe I'm reading too much into that.....or maybe the other two Indiana fans I've talked to about this called him "Kevin Sampson" and "Kalem Sampson." .....whatever though.

That being said...KELVIN Sampson is a decent hire...he brings a pretty defensive oriented..rough style of basketball with him....so that may be a good thing with the right players. Lots of good experience..so it could be worse...but he is known to have a bit of a dirty record as a coach (pending infraction investigations), known to be a little self-centered (jealous of the fact that his school focused more on football that basketball) and is known to always have a wandering eye for other jobs (explicitly said during his tenure at Oklahoma that if Indiana called him, he'd leave pretty quickly), so........we'll see. If he gets things going pretty good...he might set his eye on the NBA or elsewhere....so we'll see. They certainly could have done worse.

They never should have got rid of Knight. Hopefully Few stays at Gonzaga, and does not jump to another school. Seems to me he has a pretty good thing going.

My fault im not good at spelling names. I know almost nothing about him, (except for what Ive read on ESPN.com) and I had just heard about the hire on the radio so I wasn't exactly sure how to spell his name. It would have taken just once sentence to correct my spelling error, but of course you had to be a di.ck about it as usual.

plays rough, dirty, boring, ugly basketball, so he'll fit right in with the other 'basketball' teams in the big 10

I found it hilarious that a fan of the "greatest university in the world" (your arrogant words) is going on and on about how great of a hire this is..yet while on the internet...you couldn't bother to look up how to even spell the guy's name. Like I said earlier..when you have three IU fans bragging about how great their university/team is and what a "great" hire this is..and then they don't even know the coach's name......seems a bit hypocritical.

And trust me, if I had started a thread about how the "best university of all-time" the University of Missouri had just made an incredible hire of Michael Andersuun as their head coach.....I'd be getting flamed a hell of a lot more than this, so quit crying.

Read my op. All I said was that "I was happy with the hire". I didnt go "on and on about how great of a hire this is." I just made this thread because I wanted to get opinions on Sampson as I wasn't very familiar with him.

BTW, the "greatest university in the world" comment was obviously a jopke, not me being arrogant.

Lol...if you say that comment was a joke..then I guess I have to take you at your word.....though really I don't believe you and think you were being arrogant. But it doesn't really matter.

and then got pummeled by maryland

I think this piece is appropriate for this thread.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/feature/feat...ht&lid=tab2pos3


Indiana fans need to realize that they aren't "basketball" anymore.

i haven't been following why wasn't alford seriously considered

he seemed ideal to me

Sampson is a good coach, but will any coach at IU ever be able to live down the rep of Bobby Knight? I think that is a shadow that will follow who ever is at IU for their career.

"i haven't been following why wasn't alford seriously considered

he seemed ideal to me"

Not sure. Seems the search was all Greenspan.

Both Alford and Wittman say they were never contacted about the opening.


KS is a pretty surprising hire. Interesting that his dismal graduation rate, university & NCAA investigations, and mediocore tournament record were overlooked or not considered detrimental to his hire.

Recruiting will be interesting. Forgetting the fact that he placed 500+ calls illegally to kids who were outside the recruiting range, his best recruits have been from the JUCO and prep ranks.

i don't get it since the fans there don't just want to win they seem to want some history too sort of like north carolina

Their history is fine. It's the present & future that aren't as rosy.

The once proud program that won 5 National Titles hasn't been considered a true national power since the early 90's. A great run in '02 can't offset the tournament failures from '95- current.

Too many Knight fans forget that they were a one-and-done tourney presence from '95-'00.