Duke has gotten used to being The Duke Game: it comes with the
territory. But we believe Indiana is the first one to use the term in its
own press release about the game.
Indiana has had nine days off to get ready for this game, and don't think for
a minute that they don't want it in a big way.
But just as Duke is a different team this year, so is Indiana. We don't
follow them closely, but the only two players we recognize anymore (of the
prospective starters) are D.J. White and A.J. Ratliff.
Mike Davis's fingerprints are still on the program, with players from
Atlanta, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida, not traditional Indiana recruiting
strongholds, to say the least.
But it's a program in major transition. Kelvin Sampson took over from
Mike Davis, who took over from Bob Knight, and whose mercurial personality was
ill-suited to the pressures of the job.
Sampson may not be ideal either: he arrived on campus with fresh
baggage from Oklahoma and as a result could not recruit freshmen off campus this
season. Didn't matter much, as he did very well in his first year of
recruiting, bagging Eric Gordon, a sensational athlete, among others.
At Oklahoma, Sampson was often perceived as an underachiever, but his teams
won on a regular basis and made the tournament pretty much every year. He
recruited reasonably well, mining the JUCOs frequently, and his teams played
pretty good defense.
Offensively, they were often less than spectacular. They tended more
towards grind-it-out offense than something more exciting like, say, what Kansas
did under Roy Williams.
But it worked. And it worked pretty well.
At IU, he starts out with D.J. White, a highly athletic big man who will be a
major problem for Duke. Brian Zoubek has not yet seen a big man like
White, and it's been a while since McRoberts has. He's not as talented as
LSU's monster frontcourt last spring, but if you saw him last year, you saw a
guy with a lot of potential. He has been injury prone, however.
He's also getting consistent minutes from Roderick Wilmont, Lance Stemler,
who is a JUCO transfer, Earl Calloway, and A.J. Ratliff.
Indiana has shot reasonably well (49% fga and 35% 3pa), but other than
Butler, they haven't played anyone yet, either. We weren't big fans of
Mike Davis, but his teams did periodically shoot very well and pass splendidly.
Sampson's teams are somewhat more conservative. They're not quite
Sendekian, but they're not real lively, either.
We can't say we know exactly what to expect, but you can be sure they've been
thinking about last year's game, and that they'd like a little payback.
Will they get it?
First they'll have to survive Duke's very impressive defense. And
they'll have to disrupt the offense. As an Indiana native, we're guessing
Josh McRoberts would like to play well, and given how he was treated after
picking Duke, he may have some scores to settle. Hanging on to the ball
remains key, and a problem. If they can do that and move the ball into
scoring position effectively, Duke has a good shot.