Tom Crean came to Bloomington in 2009, inheriting an Indiana team that had contended for the Big Ten title and made the NCAA Tournament in 2008, but ran afoul of NCAA recruiting rules. Crean was brought in to clean house and a housecleaning is exactly what followed. IU started over from scratch and over Crean’s […]
The University of Iowa has been playing basketball in the Big Ten since 1909 and for the most part, have been successful. The Hawkeyes are consistently in the running for the NCAA Tournament. One thing they haven’t done much of is win the conference championship. 1970 was the last time the program won the Big […]
Bob Knight was coming off the roughest season of his career. The 1985 season had been marked by Indiana opening in the national top five and ending in the NIT. In between, Knight delivered his infamous chair throw. 1986 Indiana basketball convened with low expectations and the feeling that the program was being overtaken by […]
Bob Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers were facing a rebuild in 1984. The previous four seasons had seen IU collect three Big Ten championships—outright crowns in 1980, 1981 and 1983—and that ’81 season ended with a national title. With the loss of stalwarts Ted Kitchel, Randy Wittman and Jim Thomas, Knight needed some fresh blood. He got […]
Indiana basketball was on a high after the 1981 season ended. The program had won its second national championship in six years. The Hoosiers had taken each of the two previous Big Ten titles outright. But the aftermath of that season created a lot of challenges for 1982 Indiana basketball to overcome. READ GREAT 1980s […]
Gene Keady was on a roll at Purdue. The head coach had made the NCAA Tournament for four straight years coming into the 1986-87 college basketball season. That run included a share of the Big Ten title in 1984. It was time to take the next step—win an outright conference championship and get past the […]
Gene Keady was in his fourth year coaching at Purdue. He inherited a program that went to a Final Four in 1980, but had been gutted by departures. After two years of retooling, Keady returned the Boilermakers to the NCAA Tournament in 1983. The 1984 Purdue basketball team took the next step and won a […]
Illinois basketball was on hard times when Lou Henson took over in 1976. The Illini hadn’t made the Final Four since 1952 and had only been sporadically good in the ensuing quarter century, bottoming out at 13-36 over the final two years before Henson arrived in Champaign. By 1979, Henson had won 19 games. By […]
Gene Keady inherited a Purdue basketball program that reached the 1980 Final Four and kept the tradition of success going in West Lafayette. Over the ensuing seven years, in a competitive era of Big Ten basketball, Keady’s teams made the NCAA Tournament every year and won a piece of two Big Ten championships. But success […]
Bob Knight’s Indiana basketball program was on a good roll coming in the early 1980s. They had won Big Ten titles in 1980 and 1981, the latter being punctuated with a dominating run to the national championship. Even a step-back in 1982 was modest, as the Hoosiers still tied for second in their league and […]
It had been a tumultuous four years for Bob Knight and the Indiana basketball program since their unbeaten national title run of 1976. They missed the NCAA Tournament twice. In 1980, they won a Big Ten title, but lost to archrival Purdue in the NCAAs, then watched the Boilermakers and Iowa go to the Final […]
The 1979 Michigan State basketball team has become one for the history books. They won perhaps the most storied national championship game ever played, dominated the NCAA Tournament and sent Magic Johnson on to NBA greatness. But this Spartan team had its share of ups and downs along the way and it’s fair to wonder […]