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.

Sure Kelvin Sampson may be heading to the NBA and Milwaukee as an assistant coach, but you know he wants to be head coach. Maybe in the pros or more likely back in the college ranks where he has excelled. Of course, to do that, he has to withstand the NCAA scrutiny for his second go-round of NCAA phone violations.

Well, it appears that he hired plenty of lawyers to write his response to the NCAA allegations and cover letter (Word documents) ahead of the June hearing. The response by Sampson -- probably not surprisingly -- is that it's not his fault.

Indiana University hired Kelvin Sampson as its men's basketball coach in 2006 knowing that he had a track record of violating NCAA recruiting rules. It then failed to prevent him from breaking recruiting rules again. A fundamental tenet of the NCAA is that its member institutions are responsible for policing themselves, and Indiana failed miserably.

So it's utterly laughable to see that Indiana is now claiming that it has punished itself enough for the rules Sampson broke, and that it doesn't deserve any further NCAA punishment.

Nothing about Eli Holman's departure from the Indiana basketball team has gone smoothly. His conversation with Tom Crean to inform him of his intention to transfer ended with a call to University security and, now, his intentions are being questioned by his former coach.

Crean believes that Holman lied to him when he said his reason for transferring was so he could return closer to his home in California. He's got good reason to be suspicious. Holman is going to play for Detroit Mercy after sitting out next season and as any cartographer will tell you, that's nowhere near the Golden State. Crean doesn't think it's a coincidence, since UDM's new coach is Ray McCallum who was, until last month, an assistant at Indiana.

"We were led to believe that this was a family decision and that he wanted to get closer to home, but now it doesn't look like that's the way it's going to turn out. I don't think there's any doubt that there was a certain amount of orchestrating going on. It's disappointing -- very disappointing -- on a lot of fronts.''

NCAA rules prohibit contact between a school and a player under scholarship at another program until said player's transfer request is granted. UDM may have to face an inquiry into that but I find Crean's incredulousness a bit, well, incredulous.

It looks increasingly like Tom Crean's first season at Indiana will be brutal. Right now, they don't even have enough scholarship players to do much more than drills.

The team lost D.J. White and Lance Stemler to graduation. Eric Gordon, to the shock of no one, was one-and-done. Freshman center Eli Holman decided to transfer and freak-out.

Before Crean even arrived, interim head coach Dan Dakich dismissed junior Jamarcus Ellis and sophomore Armon Bassett from the team. While Crean has met with both, he has decided that neither would be reinstated.

On top of that, junior DeAndre Thomas was dismissed from the team and his scholarship was not renewed (pdf). No specific reason was given for the dismissal of the JUCO transfer, who will have to drop to Division II to play before his eligibility expires.

That leaves just three scholarship players remaining on the team. Freshmen Jordan Crawford, Brandon McGee and junior Kyle Taber will be back for next year. They will be joined by 5 players Crean has signed after Indiana released the former signees from their Letters of Intent following the dismissal of Kelvin Sampson.

Essentially, this is the year for walk-ons at Indiana. If you are dominating the Indiana University intramural basketball games, this could be your big opportunity.

Indiana freshman center Eli Holman went into new coach Tom Crean's office to inform the coach he wanted to transfer. He left after police were called as he apparantly threw a tantrum.

"His behavior took me, along with the other people in the office, by surprise," Crean said in a statement released by the university. "We saw him as a danger to himself and wanted to take precautionary measures to help him. We felt bad for Eli and, hopefully, were able to help him."

University police were called to help him from doing something really stupid. They took eyewitness accounts of what happened ... which included Holman knocking over a potted plant (the first report said he threw it, but the story changed to he just knocked it over). No one said they felt threatened and, after an hour with AD Rick Greenspan, he left calmly.

Holman leaving causes two huge problems.

When he left Marquette for Indiana, Tom Crean took on a heavy burden. His roster has been gutted by graduation, early entry to the NBA and defections/expulsions following Kelvin Sampson's departure. Additionally, recruiting won't be easy with NCAA sanctions looming over the school and once they're handed down it doesn't figure to get much easier.

Opinions differ about how well Crean will do in his new home but he should be heartened to hear how deeply people hold to their opinions. Two friends in Wisconsin were watching the Final Four and disagreeing about how well he'd fare with the Hoosiers. Disagreeing loudly and, ultimately, violently according to a criminal complaint filed on Monday.

While the complaint is silent about who was taking which position, Dumas and Capista were discussing the possibilities "when the discussion turned from friendly into a heated debate," according to the criminal complaint charging Dumas with battery.

Capista told police that Dumas became so upset he lunged toward him and "punched him in the face with a closed fist striking him on the bridge of the nose," and followed that up with four or five more punches.

Dumas faces up to nine months in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000. I'm all for sticking to your guns in a debate, nothing worse than being wishy-washy, but that's a lot of time and a lot of money to lose over an opinion of a college basketball coach. And if you disagree, I'll totally punch you in the throat.

(H/T The Dagger)

When the Indiana chapter of "Kelvin Sampson, compulsive cell phone abuser" was first serialized in October, Rob Senderoff was the first sacrifice. The Indiana assistant coach took the fall for the 3-way calls with recruits that broke the NCAA restrictions on Sampson. Senderoff was also the assistant to win the award for most phone calls over the NCAA mandated maximum. Rob Senderoff took the fall. He may face further NCAA sanctions when Sampson and Indiana appear before the NCAA's show cause hearing in June.

What Rob Senderoff didn't do, however, was go against Sampson or Indiana. He took the termination quietly and remained silent even when it looks as though Indiana and Sampson will likely try to pin much of the blame on Senderoff.

That kind of loyalty by an assistant gets rewarded. Even if potential penalties loom. Senderoff was hired as an assistant at Kent State. The school where Senderoff was an assistant for 4 years prior to being hired by Sampson at Indiana.

What kind of an assistant Senderoff will be, depends on that hearing in June.

The Feb. 8 NCAA report accused Senderoff of providing "false or misleading information" to the NCAA and failing to abide by its expected ethical standards for honesty.

"I've learned a lot from my mistakes," Senderoff said, "and I'm looking forward to moving on to the next chapter."

Indiana will have a hearing in front of the NCAA's infractions committee in June, and Senderoff said he will take part. Sampson and IU officials will also be present.

Senderoff will likely have recruiting -- and especially phone -- restrictions placed on him after the hearings. In a worst case scenario he will have a "show cause" penalty which will require Kent State to petition the NCAA to allow him to be an assistant.

New Indiana coach Tom Crean has an even more difficult job this upcoming season. Two Hoosier recruits ... Devin Ebanks and Terrell Holloway ... are deciding not to come to Indiana and are looking elsewhere.

Devin Ebanks, a high-scoring recruit whose signed letter of intent to IU included an escape clause, will pick from one of four schools, Ebanks' summer coach Lawrence McGugins told rivals .com Wednesday. Ebanks will visit Texas, Rutgers, Memphis and West Virginia.

IU's other star recruit, Terrell Holloway, told the Cincinnati Enquirer he will attend Xavier.

This comes on the heels of freshman star Eric Gordon announcing he's going pro, Big Ten Player of the Year D.J. White is graduating and the dimissals of Jamarcus Ellis and Armon Bassett from the team.

Crean has five scholarship players returning and two other recruits in the fold (Ellis and Bassett could be back, too). He also has some recruiting restrictions thrust upon him from the Kelvin Sampson Era, which will make it tough to go get guys.

Former coach and current ESPN analyst Bob Knight is nothing if not a shill for any company that will pay him to endorse its product, and his latest is this Volkswagen commercial:

I have to say, it sucks, and it's a little embarrassing to watch Knight making a fool of himself like that. Awful Announcing says, "I'm all for people making as much money anyway they can, but this is a little ridiculous." And Sporting Blog says, "this new VW commercial featuring Knight is just not good. Like, at all." I agree. C'mon, Knight. You're better than that.