Basketball diaries, part 11: College years

The final three years of college I attended Indiana University.


There was the first midnight madness practice at IU and I went accompanied by a girlfriend.


There was the time when my friends, Troy, Joe, Michael and myself, went to pick up our season tickets for IU basketball games.


There was the time I went to a Valentine's Day game against Michigan and the Fab Five. That was also the year that we attended parties where IU players attended and they were treated like rock stars on campus.


There was also the time that my friend Troy and I tried to be extras in the movie Blue Chips.


There was the time my junior year when I had my best intramural basketball game, scoring 22 points (I hit six three-pointers), but it also was a year of a lot of self-doubt. I spent a lot of time throwing myself into basketball.


There was my senior year when I missed the beginning of the NCAA Tournament for the first time that I could remember as I went on a spring break trip with my friend Troy, and a bunch of people we didn't know, in Arizona. On our way back I also found out that Michael Jordan was returning to the NBA! It was a great day.


How do I convert to an IU fan? It's like converting from Roman Catholic to Jewish, or from a Yankees fan to a Red Sox fan. From a Michigan fan to an Ohio State fan. Two complete opposites. I hated Bob Knight. Hated him. How could I do it?
Well it definitely helped that the Hoosiers were great in the 1992-93 season. The Hoosiers had gone 27-7 in the 1991-92 season, losing to Knight's former pupil, Coach K at Duke in the national semifinal.
That season started off with an 87-72 loss to UCLA in the Tipoff Classic in Springfield, Mass. But the Hoosiers rolled through the Big Ten season with a 14-4 record and then into the NCAA Tournament where they were a #2 seed in the West Region.
IU beat Shaquille O'Neal and LSU in the second round of the NCAAs that year, then surprising Florida State in the Round of 16 to get a rematch with UCLA. This time around the Hoosiers humiliated the Bruins 106-79 in Albuquerque, N.M. to earn their first Final Four bid since winning it all in 1987.
The Hoosiers lost to Duke (which had barely escaped Kentucky on Christian Laettner's last-second shot) 81-78 in Minneapolis, Minn. as the Blue Devils went on to win their second straight national championship.
The Hoosiers returned most of the key players from that squad the next year and were ranked high in the preseason publications and rankings.
They opened up the season by winning the Preseason NIT, beating Murray State (103-80) and 17th-ranked Tulane (102-92) in Bloomington, then No. 7 Florida State (81-78) in the semifinals and No. 6 Seton Hall in the finals (78-74).
IU never shied away from scheduling big-time teams in the pre-conference schedule and after a short layoff they played third-ranked Kansas in the RCA Dome (the last remants of the old Big Four Classic). The Hoosiers fell 74-69 to Roy Williams' team.
IU then won seven in a row - including a win over 19th-ranked Cincinnati, before facing Kentucky on Jan. 3 in a nationally-televised game at Freedom Hall in Louisville.
This was the first time I was truly tested as to who I would root for. My dad and I sat in the IU section, behind one of the baskets, but the place was backed and it was a sea of half-red and half-blue. The arena was split evenly. The Wildcats were ranked No. 3 in the country and boasted one of the nation's best players in Jamal Mashburn, the burly do-it-all forward for UK.
UK won a classic 81-78 as four players scored 28 points - Mashburn, Cheaney, Travis Ford and Matt Nover.
The Hoosiers began Big Ten play three days later with a win over eighth-ranked Iowa 75-67 in Assembly Hall. It was the first of 13 consecutive victories by the Hoosiers. During that span they beat six more ranked teams - at No. 2 Michigan 76-75, at 13th-ranked Purdue 74-65, vs. No. 24 Ohio State 96-69, at No. 9 Iowa 73-66, vs. No. 4 Michigan 93-92 and vs. 14th-ranked Purdue 93-78.
Several of those games stand out, including the Valentine's Day one-point win over Michigan. But the one just previous to that was a huge victory. It was 88-84 in double overtime at Penn State. The Nittany Lions had the Hoosiers beat late in regulation, but a foul call on a long in-bounds pass gave IU new life and they would eventually win the game.
The Hoosiers lost at unranked Ohio State, and former Hoosier Lawrence Funderburke, 81-77 on Feb. 23 to end their streak - amazingly it was their only Big Ten loss of the season. They won their final four regular-season games to cap off an incredible 17-1 conference campaign.
With only three losses, and one in the Big Ten, IU went into the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 team in the country. They were the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region and played their first two games in Indianapolis. They clobbered Wright State 97-54 in the first round, then had a close shave against 22nd-ranked Xavier in the second round, winning 73-70.
That took the Hoosiers to St. Louis, where they faced 15th-ranked Louisville in the Round of 16. It was a matchup between probably the two greatest colleges coaches of the 1980s and 90s - Knight and Denny Crum. Knight's more talented team prevailed 82-69 with Cheaney's dunk over Morton, which led to some jawing and an infamous picture in the Courier-Journal the next day.
The Hoosiers missed Henderson dearly, though, in their next game and lose 83-77 to Kansas for the second time in the season. They finished an incredible 31-4.
Later that night my roommate and his girlfriend and myself and I girlfriend were coming back from somewhere and arriving at our dorm, which was just across the parking lot from Assembly hall when we saw some buses across the way. We all ran, even the girls, to see what was going on. It was the team returning home from St. Louis. We were four of probably 75 or 100 people who had happened upon the team and we were all in clapping and cheering as they made their way off the bus and back into Assembly Hall.
At that moment, I was an Indiana fan.
Some might say they should/would have won the national championship that year if not for Alan Henderson's late-season knee injury.
Calbert Cheaney was everybody's All-American that year. And even national Player of the Year in some cases. And who could blame the voters? The silky smooth forward averaged 22.4 points per game.
Explosive two-guard Greg Graham averaged 16.5 pppg, while Henderson scored 11.1, Matt Nover 11 and Damon Bailey 10.1.
Another shooting guard Pat Graham got injured and only played 13 games that season. Brian Evans was a couple of years before he was the Big Ten Player of the Year, but he averaged 5.3 points as a reserve that season and had a much Valentine's Day game against Michigan. The Hoosiers also got help from Chris Reynolds (3.2 ppg, 102 assists in 35 games) and Todd Leary (4.8 ppg), who almost single-handedly brought IU back in its national semifinal loss to Duke the previous season with a barrage of late three-pointers.

On March 4, 1993 Cheaney hit a baseline jumper to become IU's and the Big Ten's all-time career scoring leader. He finished the game with 35 points in IU's 98-69 win over Northwestern. He would finish his career with 2,613 points.
On March 10 Greg Graham scored 32 points in IU's 99-68 win over Michigan State to clinch (at that time) an unprecedented 19th Big Ten championship for the Hoosiers, and their 11th under Knight.
On March 25 in the NCAA's Round of 16 Cheaney scored 32 points, and barked in the face of UofL player Dwayne Morton after a dunk, to lead the Hoosiers to an 82-69 win over Louisville in St. Louis. His output in that game allowed him to eclipse Scott May's single-season scoring record (752 points in '76).
The walls came tumbling down against Kansas in the Elite Eight, though.


Henderson tried to play in the NCAAs, but he was nowhere near the same player he had been.