First glimpse

Every year, mid-October offers a Saturday morning sporting event that is a little different from those of other autumn days.\nAn average fall Saturday morning on the IU campus finds most students sleeping in, tailgating or attending the IU football game. College basketball, while on the minds of many sports fans, seems a ways off. \nTonight, however, fans will pour into Assembly Hall and the air in the arena, which has been quiet for so long, will fill with that old electricity. \nAt 12:01 a.m., Midnight Madness will begin. \nThe 2002-2003 IU men's and women's basketball teams provide a sneak preview of what is in store this season, which officially begins Saturday. \nThe event throws a bone to those die hard fans that didn't stop talking basketball just because the season ended April 1, when the Hoosiers lost to Maryland in the national championship game.\n"Midnight Madness is just a night of fun and fan appreciation," junior guard A.J. Moye said. "(It's) just appreciating and uplifting the tradition as far as Indiana basketball, showing the fans that they're just as much a part of everything we do out there on the court. With the fan support the way it is, when you're out there on that court, very few teams can rival what we've got in our fans."\nDoors will open tonight at 11 p.m., and the cost of entry is one canned food item. The first hour will provide contests for fans to participate in as they await the arrival of the teams. Raffle tickets will be sold at the door, and the ten fans who win the drawing will be escorted to court level to experience the festivities up close. \nEight students, four male and four female, will also be selected to participate in a three point contest.\nAt midnight, both the men's and women's teams will take the court and be introduced to the crowd. At 12:11 a.m. members of the men's team will pair up with players from the women's squad for the spot shot contest, in which the pairs will shoot from spots on the floor worth one, two and three points.\nThe three-point competition will begin after the spot shot. Seven players from both the men's and women's teams will participate. The men's and women's champions will then go head to head in a battle of the sexes to determine the overall winner of the event.\nMoye, who won both the dunk contest and the spot shot last year, needs only the three point title to complete the first triple crown in Midnight Basketball history.\n"That's my aim," he said. "I've been working on my jumper all summer. I'm the dark horse. You'd be smart to put your money on me. I put in too much work this summer not to win. The three point (competition's) been eluding me for about three years now, so I've got to get that."\nSenior guard Kyle Hornsby also said he hasn't lived up to his potential in the three point contest, and hopes to compensate for coming up short in the past.\n"I've choked in the three point contest the last two years so I'm trying to redeem myself in that event," he said. "Otherwise, I just want to enjoy it, just watch everybody do their thing and have fun. Everyone in the gym's having fun, and that's what I look forward to."\nThe dunk contest will showcase some of the new talent on the men's team. Freshmen guards Bracey Wright and Roderick Wilmont will make their Hoosier debuts in the event, which will be judged by five women's players.\nAlthough Midnight Madness is an entertaining way to usher in the new season, senior guard Tom Coverdale said it would be the only time the game would be for pure enjoyment.\n"Like Coach Davis said -- this is our one night of fun," he explained. "The rest of (the season) is going to be work, so we're looking to go out and have as much fun as possible."\nMoye had similar thoughts on Midnight Madness.\n"It's like going to Disney Land," he said. "People may think we come in the gym and have dunk contests and have three point contests (in practice). But that's the last time we're dunking and shooting threes for fun. We're strapping on the hard hats and throwing on the boots, and we're working all the way to November."\nThe event will conclude with a 10-minute scrimmage by the men's team at 1:05 a.m. The scrimmage will give fans a first glimpse of this year's possibilities, but Hornsby explained that potential can only take a team so far.\n"My dad always said potential gets your butt beat if you don't do anything with it, and that's where the five or six weeks of practice before our first game comes into play," he said. "They're gonna see a lot of potential, a lot of room for players to improve and for players to excel. And I'm sure they're gonna see weaknesses too, but chemistry is going to make up for a lot of weaknesses. And we proved that last year."\nWith a core of veteran players backed up by one of the more highly touted freshmen classes in the country, the Hoosiers are entering this season as a favorite in the Big Ten. But Moye said he wasn't worried about pre-season rankings.\n"Hype is just hype. It's no big deal," he said. "Let's just play ball"