When the Indiana University men's basketball team won its fifth ever national championship, I was a young man. Or boy. I was 16 but still two months from acquiring my driver's license. The Cold War was still in effect, the Soviets were entrenched in Afghanistan, Hollywood-made tough man movies starring supernal Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris, beating back our nightmares about Vietnam while saving forgotten Prisoners of War, battling the Russian robotic machines raging across the planet in every third world nation possible; these items were still part of the Reagan era psyche of my youth when Indiana won it all.
My home state's adopted general, Coach Robert Montgomery Knight, was at the top of his profession and reign. Hoosiers took basketball seriously, a bit like the Cold War. Indiana, the Hoosier State, where basketball is its own arms race against the hated blues of UCLA and Kentucky and other hugely competitive programs like Kansas and North Carolina and Duke. And of course never too far away were the likes of black and gold Purdue and other dreaded conference rivals. The IU Hurry'n Hoosiers had won three titles in 11 years by 1987 and the pace seemed right for eventual supremacy. Victory to the homeland! We believed! Indiana was poised for its sixth and seventh and eighth championships, and within 30 years it would be close to surpassing the native Hoosier John Wooden, who became the Wizard of Westwood in sunny California, capturing 10 amazing titles for Tinseltown even before Knight was to win his first in the Midwest. But the baton was passed, and Indiana was set for eventual primacy. But then it wasn't.
California had beaches, mountains, movie stars, and oranges. And cosmopolitan cities and majestic national parks. Not Indiana. We had basketball.
Knight's own Army protege Mike Krzyzewski eventually became the bane of Indiana basketball, robbing Bloomington of recruits and games by the late 80s and early 1990s, both off and on the court, with the Cameron Crazies of Durham, who hailed from all reaches of the country. Dean Smith and the Tar Heels found their legs and stole Indiana big men like Eric Montross and Sean May, each bringing the Tar Heels national championships to the chagrin of Hoosiers everywhere. Not to mention the third ring with a freshman bench player from southern Indiana named Tyler Zeller.
Arguably, without the poaching of home grown Hoosier and other national talent by Duke and Carolina, I would have been 22 when IU achieved its sixth title, 23 for the seventh, and perhaps 30 by the time they wrapped up their eighth, or even younger. But the game and the tough man culture had passed Bobby Knight by. His unwitting successor in the year 2000, Mike Davis, remarkably came 40 minutes away from Number Six when I was 31. But that was as close as that experiment ever came. Enter Kelvin Sampson, a coach I thought would return the glory of Indiana titles, but that ended up in fiasco, and to the date (2016) Tom Crean has produced the two latest Hoosier squads capable of ultimate success, but alas, Hoosier nation awaits. The two best chances were in 2013 and this current year. But we could not even achieve the Elite Eight!
Thirty years. That is the next chance we have, thirty years since All-Hoosier All-American Steve Alford left the court at the Louisiana Superdome as the end of the college career champion.
Think of all the things that occur and re-occur in one third of a century. Seven U.S. presidential elections, at least 14 Olympic games, seven or more World Cup championships in soccer, 30 World Series and 30 more Super Bowls, endless tennis Grand Slams and horse races and motor car titles. Kentucky got three in the last thirty years, even UCLA added an additional title, while Kansas has added two more. (Gratefully, they have squandered many more with so much more talent than most teams have enjoyed). In thirty years countries have risen and fallen, families have assembled and disintegrated, careers have begun and ended. Long film series and book anthologies have exploded on the scene and faded in our collective consciousnesses. Politicians and dictators, political parties and movements, have come and gone. Technological advances like the DVD have had their day and now it has become more obsolete.
Wars have come and gone, generations of heroic Americans and others have died off, computers have gone from weighing as much as cars to being lighter than pens, some cars have been built to be plugged in and driven for weeks on solar electricity, no fossil fuel involved.
Meanwhile, Indiana looks back to the Cold War Reagan years of 1987 as the last time it enjoyed its due, its basketball inheritance of awesomeness.
Knight did not start it either; the legendary Branch McCracken got it going before World War II, and then sealed the early greatness with his second in the year the Korean War ended.
Indiana was built for this. We put banners above our home court.
Other programs that were dynamos in the 1940s and 1950s have come and gone, some of the eventual title winners are no longer major programs, as in CCNY. When was the last time you saw them featured on ESPN, or ESPNU, or even the obscure CBSSports station? Does CCNY have a team anymore? Of course, before the aforementioned UCLA and its hay day, the NIT was also a claim of great fame in the college game championships, but now they are considered second tier for several decades, and since Knight won with Isaih Thomas in 1979 IU has not sniffed much success in that tourney either, less important though it may be.
I write this not to despair or bellyache, but simply voice my realistic disbelief and displeasure that the Hoosiers could not live up to more of their reputation in the last three decades. I forgot to mention Connecticut, which is another major power of the NCAA Big Dance that IU seems to chase now rather than being the hunted like in decades past.
2016-17, next season, may be the year to break the streak of no title.
I will be 46 (assuming I am alive, and the world does not end). No longer a boy, nor even a young man. But still holding fast and fervently to a childhood dream that the team of my inheritance as a Hoosier will once again reclaim their place among the rooftops and rafters as one of the elite programs of the country, to once again surpass the newer powers of UConn and Duke, the traditional powers of Kansas and North Carolina, and the all time victorious Kentucky Wildcats and UCLA Bruins.
Keys to this goal?
1. Thomas Bryant as a presence at center. As a second year player, his defense will perhaps be his biggest contribution. Although yes, he can shoot and score very well, this young lion must be a post-to-post presence.
2. James Blackmon, native Hoosier son, must stay healthy, shoot as he is naturally prone to do as a shooting guard, and increase his defensive abilities.
3. Robert Johnson, tweener guard, must continue to be a defensive dog and an opportune shooter. He is a huge part of what Indiana lacked defensively against the Tar Heels when the Hoosiers bowed out this year in the Sweet Sixteen.
4. Depth: emerging stars O.G. Anunoby and Juwan Morgan fill in well as small forwards, while journeyman and Indiana blue collar savvy Collin Hartman will always provide an extra boost. Perhaps he will gain a little speed after playing a successful healthy season and become more toned in the off season? Newcomers Josh Newkirk as a transfer ball handler may be huge, but there are a few new freshmen guards who could also provide the skills of passing and on court pressure, the type that four-year star graduate Yogi Ferrell did with Crean's two best teams in his now 8 year tenure in Bloomington.
5. The x factor of heralded freshmen big men DeRon Davis and junior college transfer Freddie McSwain. These two gentlemen may add the energy and enthusiasm to make the Hoosiers dominant.
6. Coach Tom Crean has been paying his dues and cashing his checks towards winning as an IU program should. His teams are improving in discipline and consistent success, along with better talent at every position on the court. Crean may be the guy to be the new McCracken or Knight. I see an upward curve, especially after this last season.
7. Some lady luck. Good opponent match ups, good student athlete behavior, no major injuries. IU can bring it home.
The above notes may not mean much to those who do not pay close attention to the game like I or others do, but suffice it to say, if Indiana does not win another NCAA championship until I am in my 50s or 60s, it will not crush me. Life will go on, other teams, usually with blue in their uniform, but never my beloved other alma mater Brigham Young Cougars, will continue to add to the arms race of victories and glory in college hoops.
But one team in red, one that began its supreme tradition of this tournament that began in 1939 and won the second ever shortly before World War II, will continue to tantalize the imaginations of Hoosiers and others who root for a place and program that values the hard work, dedication, team work, and passion for this sport that few other places on earth can match or identify with when it comes to a round leather ball and two hoops facing each other across 90 or so feet of dreams and possibilties. Maybe Lithuania, maybe Spain can now understand. Maybe they care about it that much in parts of Kentucky or North Carolina.
But have you ever watched Indiana high school basketball in a small town? I have.
It is the thing that matters when little else makes sense or other things appear banal. Friday nights in the Hoosier state, all winter long. All those bounces and looks, chucks and passes, feints and jukes, double pumps and fakes, launches and dives, finally add up to one thing: the finish line. We did it.
See you in '17, Indiana. My dreams continue unabated. 30 may be the best number. It may be.
