How A Resurrection Really Feels

It really hasn't been that long since a team from Indiana has been in the NCAA championship game. In 2002, the IU Hoosiers lost to Maryland in an improbable post-Knight run to the Final Four. But since then, IU has spiraled into sanction-laden obscurity. Purdue, despite always performing well in the Big Ten, has classically under-achieved in the NCAA's. Looking past college basketball, the Pacers have gone from lovable, scrappy contenders to a bunch of uninspired millionaires who continue to play with the shadow of the 2004 brawl in Detroit hanging over them.

So while it hasn't been long at all since an Indiana team has been successful at basketball, it feels like the lid has been lifted on an old hope chest and all the musty, old blankets have been cleaned with fresh air and sunlight. Kelvin Sampson, Gene Keady's sad final seasons of an otherwise hall-of-fame career, the refs in the Butler v. Florida game, Ron Artest and Jermaine O'Neal, I can go flick jumpshots in the driveway without thinking about any of that.

I'll get back to my regular programming of navel-gazing and trying to convince other people that my tastes in music are superior to the public at large pretty soon. But right now, I'm savoring the way basketball tastes for the first time in nearly a decade.

I have no illusions about some return to a more "pure" form of college basketball. Butler is not a babe-in-the-woods program who made it all the way to the big game by wishing on butterfly wings and sprinkling pixie dust on the court. During this recent window of time when other programs in the state were struggling, they went and ferociously recruited in-state talent. They pursued and signed players from out of state who fit their program and who were passed up by bigger D-1 programs, so they play with a chip on their shoulder. They are all gifted athletes who play great defense and battle anyone who steps on their court.(And if Hayward and Mack don't declare after their junior year, it will only be because they are thinking with their hearts instead of their retirement funds. Honestly, if I had my druthers, I'd probably eliminate athletic scholarships altogether and tell David Stern to stick his NBA age limit where the pampers is.) But college basketball is a BIG money endeavor and no one, not even Butler and Brad Stevens, no matter how much they may be exemplars of how to do the whole "student-athlete" thing right, comes out of the NCAA wringer totally clean.

That said, I will have no second thoughts tomorrow about shredding my vocal chords yelling for Butler as the Bulldogs attempt to knock off Duke and Kaiser K Coach K. I will be shooting as many hoops as I can before then. And hopefully, at around 11:45 PM, I'll be singing along with a really cheesy song that was first broadcast after an Indiana team won the championship, listening to my neighbors cheer and scream into the night sky.