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Biggest Upset in IU Basketball History?


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I'm partial to the upset of Duke in the 2002 tournament, especially in hindsight when you consider how the career of Mike Davis at IU turned out. Duke had, what, 3 NBA All Stars on that team, and we had AJ Moye getting minutes at the 5. 

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Great read.

I'd nominate IU over 37-1 and #1 ranked UNLV in the 1987 National Semi-finals. Can't tell you how many times I heard IU was going to get killed by Gillam and Banks (who were both phenomenal, by the way) that week leading up to the game.

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I'd call that all 100% accurate.  DD didn't morph into Gary Payton for that game.  Knight had a good game plan, and Dakich stuck to it.  It's easy to forget that at the time, Jordan's jump shot was average at best.  Does Dan deserve credit? Absolutely.  That said, Jordan may have been the best player in college at the time, but he hadn't become the greatest ever yet. 

As for IU's biggest upset, we talking tournament, regular season or both? Tournament, I'd say it's split between this UNC game and '02 Duke. 

Regular season included? The WatShot game has to be up there.  Unranked, knocking off #1 which winds up being the only regular season loss for the eventual *gag* national champions. 

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1 hour ago, IUFLA said:

Great read.

I'd nominate IU over 37-1 and #1 ranked UNLV in the 1987 National Semi-finals. Can't tell you how many times I heard IU was going to get killed by Gillam and Banks (who were both phenomenal, by the way) that week leading up to the game.

Nice one. That might've have been one of RMK's best coaching jobs. Decided to run with them instead of slowing it down and had a couple of other tweaks that worked as well. 

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5 minutes ago, AxnJxn said:

Nice one. That might've have been one of RMK's best coaching jobs. Decided to run with them instead of slowing it down and had a couple of other tweaks that worked as well. 

My high school coach for a Saturday game in which we were playing against a face paced team that did not press but got the ball and ran like crazy. Much more athletic but would struggle with our press if we could get it in place. In a move of coaching genius after our shoot around that day and I can't remember the reason but there was only a varsity game that day. Coach decided to put up new nets . I don't know if it slowed them down much if any but our press killed them and we blew them out that day.

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Good article however I do question this quote from it.....

"The Hoosiers struggled out of the gate with an embarrassing home loss to Miami of Ohio and would later lose to UTEP in the pre-conference schedule. "

Miami(OH) went 24-6 that year and made the NCAAT.  They featured a young Ron Harper and beat the Hoosiers 63-57 at AH.  Embarrassing at the time, perhaps, but looking back it was a quality loss.

As far as UTEP...They finished the year 27-4, were #9 in the final rankings, and got a #4 seed in the NCAAT.  The Miners beat us 65-61 on their floor.

 

 

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36 minutes ago, rico said:

Miami(OH) went 24-6 that year and made the NCAAT.  They featured a young Ron Harper and beat the Hoosiers 63-57 at AH.  Embarrassing at the time, perhaps, but looking back it was a quality loss.

 

Note to IU's coach in 2040: See if Ron Harper Jr has any kids that play basketball.  Guys named Ron Harper seem to play decent against us, may as well recruit one of them.

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1 hour ago, rico said:

Good article however I do question this quote from it.....

"The Hoosiers struggled out of the gate with an embarrassing home loss to Miami of Ohio and would later lose to UTEP in the pre-conference schedule. "

Miami(OH) went 24-6 that year and made the NCAAT.  They featured a young Ron Harper and beat the Hoosiers 63-57 at AH.  Embarrassing at the time, perhaps, but looking back it was a quality loss.

As far as UTEP...They finished the year 27-4, were #9 in the final rankings, and got a #4 seed in the NCAAT.  The Miners beat us 65-61 on their floor.

 

 

Rico’s knowledge is encyclopedic. 

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Good article, TDH.  Some extremely good memories there.  

Knight gave us a consistent tactical advantage.  Nobody can get every strategy right, but on a consistent basis, he was playing chess while the other guy was playing checkers.  

In many ways, Indiana is built to win if the administration is not as clumsy as it’s been for the better part of two decades. I think Archie emphasizes many of the correct principles and should be successful.  But I haven’t seen anything that says he’s a special tactician like we used to have.  The good news is that if Archie’s system is deployed correctly and he recruits tougher minded kids, we can still excel.  

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2 hours ago, BobSaccamanno said:

But I haven’t seen anything that says he’s a special tactician like we used to have.

I'm not saying we couldn't get someone that is superior to their current peers, but RMK is probably one of the top 5 basketball tacticians of all time.  We could find an objectively great tactician and he might fall short of Knight. 

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4 hours ago, rico said:

Good article however I do question this quote from it.....

"The Hoosiers struggled out of the gate with an embarrassing home loss to Miami of Ohio and would later lose to UTEP in the pre-conference schedule. "

Miami(OH) went 24-6 that year and made the NCAAT.  They featured a young Ron Harper and beat the Hoosiers 63-57 at AH.  Embarrassing at the time, perhaps, but looking back it was a quality loss.

As far as UTEP...They finished the year 27-4, were #9 in the final rankings, and got a #4 seed in the NCAAT.  The Miners beat us 65-61 on their floor.

 

 

That's really good context, but I doubt any set of facts would ever be enough to get me or most others comfortable with a home loss to Miami of Ohio, especially not in that era.  But the context IS really key.  

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1 hour ago, Zlinedavid said:

I'm not saying we couldn't get someone that is superior to their current peers, but RMK is probably one of the top 5 basketball tacticians of all time.  We could find an objectively great tactician and he might fall short of Knight. 

I think one of the problems we as IU fans have is that we try to compare every coach to RMK.  It is the same ting that happens at UCLA and to me that is a recipe for disaster.

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1 minute ago, dbmhoosier said:

When Bobby was in his prime I gave us a realistic shot every game.  He was a master then.  Now Mike Davis v Coach K I was certain we'd lose by 20.

Fair enough....but IMO that '84 Tar Heel team was the most talented I have ever seen in my life.

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