Rich Nye of WTHR is reporting that Hoosiers basketball coach Kelvin Sampson will not finish the season as coach. He is not expected to coach in Saturday’s game against Northwestern.
A source close to the situation tells Eyewitness Sports that officials from the IU administration have met with assistant basketball coach Dan Dakich about taking over the basketball team as interim head coach for the rest of the season.
Dakich began this season in an administrative position with the team. He became an assistant coach when assistant coach Rob Senderoff resigned in October for his involvement in improper phone calls to recruits. Dakich is a former IU player and assistant coach under Bob Knight.
Dan Dakich is one of my all-time favorite Hoosiers (and a couple of you may recall I ‘nominated’ him for head b-ball coach here a few days back). As a player he was a real over-achiever on the court whose tenacity and court savvy made up for somewhat limited athletic skills. I don’t know a heckuvalot about his coaching record, but he’s got quite a bit of experience, and I haven’t heard about any rules violations. Sounds like a good move to me.
Yes, Dakich will forever be remembered as being one of the only players ever to basically shut down Michael Jordan, like he did in the 1984 NCAAs when IU upset North Carolina. I’m just not sure about his long-term coaching prospects–not sure he was stupendous at Bowling Green. I hope they don’t just hand the full-time job to him after this year, like they did with Mike Davis. That could be hard NOT to do if IU makes a deep tournament run, which definitely could happen.