In the first four games after Indiana head coach Kelvin Sampson received his $750,000 walking papers, the Hoosiers went 3-1, so at first glance they wouldn't appear to have mailed it in on their season.
But the three wins weren't against good teams, and the one loss was a butt-whipping against Michigan State. And today the Hoosiers lost 68-64 in overtime to a bad Penn State team. It's fair to say the Hoosiers are not the same team under interim head coach Dan Dakich that they were under Sampson.
The best players are the same: Phenomenal freshman Eric Gordon scored a game-high 26 points in the losing effort, although it took him 24 shots to get there, and D.J. White had 20 points and 12 rebounds. The rest of the Indiana team, however, was sluggish, and without Sampson at the helm, this looks like a couple of stars doing their own thing, not like a cohesive unit.
In another possible sign of problems at Indiana, forward Jamarcus Ellis stayed home for disciplinary reasons. Whether that's related to the way the team is playing or not we don't know, but the mess Sampson created is hitting the Hoosiers at the worst time.
