FanHouse DanDakich

Dan Dakich led the Indiana Hoosiers to a 3-4 record after taking over for Kelvin Sampson late last season. He was promptly replaced by Tom Crean ... and shown the door.

Dakich won't leave empty handed, however, as the school will pay him the settlement of $185,000.

Indiana University has reached a settlement with former interim coach Dan Dakich, paying him the $185,000 he was scheduled to earn next school year.

IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre confirmed the deal, saying Dakich was owed a base salary of $110,000 with a supplemental bonus of $75,000.

This is a nice slap-on-the-rear for Dakich for taking one for the team. It started with his players skipping out on practice and ended with him dismissing two players. While the season ended horribly for the Hoosiers faithful, you can't pin any of it on Dakich. He was thrown into a tough situation and tried to do his best in a lame duck role.

I guess when it rains, it pours. After missing a second meeting in a week, Indiana interim head coach Dan Dakich has dismissed junior Jamarcus Ellis and sophomore Armon Bassett (pictured with Dakich) from the team.

HoosierNation.com sources indicate the first of those meetings was either last Wednesday or Thursday, although it's unclear if Ellis and Bassett missed the meeting or were simply late. That prompted Dakich to require them to report to Assembly Hall at 6 a.m. on Friday morning to run, with dismissal from the team the consequence if they didn't show up.

They didn't show up ... so Dakich kept his word.

This is a mess. Dakich still is working under the interim label so this could be crushing to anyone who is interested in the Hoosiers' job. D.J. White and (most likely) Eric Gordon will be gone to the NBA this summer and Kelvin Sampson's incoming recruits were granted releases from their letters of intent. Indiana figures to have just six players on scholarship for next season.

Jeff Goodman of Fox Sports is reporting that Indiana is wasting no time in its coaching search, calling Washington State coach Tony Bennett the day after his Cougars were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament and telling him the job is his if he wants it.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Bennett is expected to leave Washington State, and that he's also one of the top choices of the administration at Cal.

According to Goodman, Bennett is atop a list at Indiana that includes Xavier's Sean Miller, Pittsburgh's Jamie Dixon and Vanderbilt's Kevin Stallings. Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl's name has also been mentioned in connection with the Indiana job.

Kelvin Sampson took a contract buyout during the season after the NCAA said he violated recruiting rules. Dan Dakich, who took over as interim head coach, has said he wants the job on a permanent basis but is apparently not seen by the Indiana administration as a strong candidate.

The question is whether any strong candidates will want the job. When Sampson was hired Indiana was seen as one of the most attractive jobs in the country, but with likely NCAA sanctions, does it make sense for a coach like Bennett, who has a good thing going at Washington State, to leave?

If he does, the financial compensation will likely be substantial. Although Bennett has the job security of a seven-year contract at Washington State, his $800,000 salary is paltry compared to what Indiana will be willing to pay if it thinks Bennett can deliver national championships on the court and compliance with NCAA rules off it.

UPDATE: Tony Bennett Denies Getting Indiana Offer

On Friday, February 22, Indiana fired basketball coach Kelvin Sampson. That day, half the team skipped practice in protest of the firing.

I've never heard of a coach saying it's OK for players to skip practice, but today on ESPN Radio, Dan Dakich, who became interim head coach after Sampson was fired, did just that.

"Had I been in their position when I was a junior or sophomore in college, I was kind of a wild guy, I don't know what I would have done," Dakich said. "The first practice, I understood."

Dakich said that since his first day as the interim head coach, "Practices have been unbelievably good." And when asked who would be Indiana's head coach next season, Dakich made clear that he expects to have the "interim" tag taken off his title.

"You're asking my expectation? My expectation is me," Dakich said. "I mean, that's going to be my expectation. If you're going to say to me, 'Who's going to be the next head coach at Indiana?' I'm going to say it's me."

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.

Michigan State needed a big win today, and the Spartans got exactly that. A 103-74 win over Indiana showed just how much better the Spartans are with the home crowd behind them, and brought Indiana back down to earth after the Hoosiers had started going on a surprising run despite the mess their basketball program is becoming.

Indiana had won five straight games, including their first two under interim head coach Dan Dakich, who took over after Kelvin Sampson was pressured into resigning. But today's game represented the Hoosiers' worst performance of the season and by far their most lopsided loss.

Was it a one-game blip, a sign that Michigan State is on the ascension, a sign that Indiana has cracked under the pressure, or none of the above? Who knows?

What we do know is this: Wisconsin and Purdue are likely to share the Big Ten regular season title, Indiana and Michigan State will finish third and fourth, and barring a big surprise in the conference tournament, those will be the Big Ten's four March Madness bids.

In today's game, Raymar Morgan led the way for Michigan State, which improves to 23-6, 11-5 in the Big Ten. For Indiana, which falls to 24-5 and 13-3, Eric Gordon scored 22.

Indiana won the first game of the post-Kelvin Sampson era tonight, barely getting by with an 85-82 win at Northwestern.

Even though they're now playing for interim head coach Dan Dakich, Indiana's players wrote "KS" on their shoes in support of Sampson, the coach who was fired yesterday for repeated violations of NCAA rules. Several players reportedly skipped practice yesterday in protest of Sampson's firing, but Dakich didn't bench any of them.

Indiana clearly wasn't ready to play, falling behind by as many as nine points in the first half and trailing 37-35 at halftime. Northwestern took a 78-77 lead with 2:30 remaining but couldn't hold on.

If you're tempted to give Indiana a pass for playing a close game in difficult circumstances, keep in mind that Northwestern is horrible. The Wildcats entered the game 7-17 and 0-13 in the Big Ten. None of those seven wins is against a Top 100 RPI team; only one of the seven is against a Top 200 RPI team. There's nothing gutsy about a close win over Northwestern.

Kevin Coble was amazing for Northwestern with 37 points, although he also made a crucial mistake late in the game, turning the ball over with 1:31 left when he stepped on the baseline.

Dakich said after the game that the last few days are "Something you wish you never had to go through." Sampson is to blame for that.

Local news reports in Indiana are suggesting that Hoosiers basketball coach Kelvin Sampson is about to be relieved of his duties, and as a result nearly half the team skipped practice today in protest.

The Herald Times reports that neither Sampson nor his assistant coach Ray McCallum showed up to practice today, and that Armon Bassett (pictured with Sampson), D.J. White, Jamarcus Ellis, Jordan Crawford, DeAndre Thomas and Brandon McGee also failed to show up to practice. That leaves Indiana with just seven of its 13 players at practice, and possibly only seven for tomorrow's game at Northwestern.

According to the report, Dan Dakich is coaching the team at practice today. Dakich is expected to be named head coach, probably this evening, in place of Sampson, whose firing seems imminent after repeated NCAA violations.