Loading ...Sampson radio show, live blog
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by Chris Korman | Monday, December 18, 2006 - 9:27 pm UTC
Sampson was just asked by a student about players partying. The student said been to parties with the players. Sampson declined to talk about it, saying, “That’s not for public disclosure.”
And now Sampson is ticked because one of the callers just told him that he should say, “I think we played well” instead of “I think we played good,” which he does constantly. He always uses good when he should use well, but he did not take kindly to being corrected.
Many of Indiana’s players will be able to make it home for the holidays but the ones who can’t will join Sampson and his family at home.
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Sampson’s now talking about teaching the kids to play defense. He said coaches need to decide what they’re going to be good at, and he decided it would be defense. It’s worked because he has some athletic players and they’ve been willing to learn.
They’ve all gotten better, Sampson said.
Sampson was asked who he thought would have the most success in the Big Ten this year, and said he couldn’t be sure since he’d never been in the Big Ten.
OK, a few quick hits:
– Just said D.J. White was a good, but not great, inside scorer
– Xavier Keeling had to overcome some adversity — Sampson didn’t get specific — to get on the floor. Sampson mentioned that some kids get home sick and struggle academically. He also said he needed to find a way to use Keeling since he’s not a great shooter or low block scorer.
– Sampson has never been in a wigwam. I hope I spelled that correctly.
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Sampson thanks God for having a kid like Errek Suhr on his team. He said Suhr, who played only a few seconds against the Salukis, will have many opportunities to get on the floor.
Suhr was the happiest kid in the locker room after the win and that tells you a lot about him, Sampson said.
Overall, Sampson said he’s simply not worried about who plays how much. He throws some kids out there and if they play well, he keeps ‘em out there. If they don’t, he pulls ‘em.
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“The thing I like about it is it gets us better at places where we need to improve.”
That’s what Sampson just said about the 2007 recruiting class, which has been ranked highly by many recruiting services.
Sampson is saying that college basketball is a guard’s game because there just aren’t many big men. So he said you gotta get great guards and hope that you’re going to “win the lottery” and get a big forward.
Sampson is saying he thinks Brandon McGee and Eli Holman will really help out but he doesn’t get too excited about freshmen because they’re freshmen.
Except Eric Gordon. He just gave you permission to get excited about Gordon. Something tells me you probably weren’t waiting. Just a hunch. Based on the way you posted hundreds of thousands of times on message boards all about him. So, yeah, really. Just a hunch.
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Sampson doesn’t believe his players should get tired during games. He’s playing 10 to 11 of them, with only D.J. White having to stay in 30 minutes a night. And he also said that have four TV timeouts, which last either two minutes or two and three-fourths minutes, give them plenty of time to rest.
“Pain is an opinion,” he said. Some kids can handle more, others can’t.
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So I just walked out of the beer store and heard Kelvin Sampson on the radio, giving me so much joy (it had nothing to do with the case of beer in my hands). I had feared that he would not have a radio show tonight. But here he is. I’ll give you some updates.
He’s talking now about how too many people look at the classic big-time college teams and expect them to be good. He says the mid-majors have caught up because they’re recruiting better and getting more TV coverage. The field has been leveled.
He said that Jamaal Tatum, that shifty little guard that played for Southern Illinois, is an all-Big Ten player. This blog agrees. That dude had some levitation on his jumper, lots of quick and terrific dreadlocks. What more could you want?
What on earth was someone asking about a wigwam for?