New-look Hoosiers debut at Midnight Madness

Assembly Hall sounded like a New York City street on New Year's Eve Friday night.\nWhen the countdown clock hit two minutes before the official start of the IU basketball season, it was like Dick Clark and his ball were at center court.\nWith the more than 10,000 fans filling both sides of the stadium, the basketball-crazy students, faculty and public went wild at the first sight of their NCAA runner-up men's team and the Big Ten tournament champions women's team at the 2002 Midnight Madness.\n"We kept peeking out, looking up and seeing how many people were here," freshman guard Bracey Wright said. "Then they darkened the lights, and everybody started screaming. When they called my name, I ran out, and the place went wild. It was great."\nOne-by-one, each member of both the men's and women's squad got their place under that single spotlight. Following the introductions, the competitions that mark the first "practice" kicked off. \nStarting the night was the spot-shot contest, where a team of one men's player and one women's player shot from marked areas on the floor. After singling down the field of eight teams, junior guard A.J. Moye and freshman guard Roderick Wilmont's teams competed. For the second time, Moye was able to pull out a win, by shooting 11 more points than Wilmont's team.\nBut it was the three-point contest that Moye was aiming to win in order to get the title of champion in all three Midnight Madness events. The first five competitors each managed to tie each other with nine, but freshman guard Marshall Strickland wiped out Moye's hopes by hitting a last second three-point shot to give him 10 made shots.\nWith that, Moye pulled his shirt over his head and laid on the ground, while Strickland and sophomore guard Ryan Tapak competed to advance to the finals. \n"I lost, man," Moye said, uncharacteristically not-talkative. "I got hot, got cold. It was alright."\nTapak beat Strickland 11-6 in the finals, but was beaten at the buzzer by women's team member Cyndi Valentin.\nAs the buzz died down from Valentin's last second win, freshmen Sean Kline, Wright, Wilmont and senior Jeff Newton took the court for the slam dunk contest.\nIU men's coach Mike Davis lounged on the bench with a grin on his face, but that expression quickly changed as Kline prepared for his first attempt.\nKline had recruited sophomore guard Mark Johnson to crouch on his hands and knees in front of the basket and it appeared that Kline planned on using him as a prop to jump over. Davis quickly called him to the bench to nix the stunt.\n"Kline couldn't jump over a chair let alone a player; I didn't know what he was doing," Davis said. "But he said he was going to step on his back and jump, and I figured, well, if Mark is dumb enough to let Sean step on his back then so be it."\nKline pulled off the dunk and the judges, which consisted of five women's players, awarded him two sevens, two eights and a nine out of a possible ten.\nThe remaining three participants missed their first attempts. Wright and Newton fielded zeros from the judges for their dunks, which aroused protest from both the players.\nAs Kline walked back onto the court for his second attempt, Tapak stood in the first row of the stands, spinning a ball in his hands. Kline nodded to him and ran towards the basket. Tapak threw the ball from his place in the crowd, and it bounced directly in front of the rim where Kline caught it for an alley-oop reverse that brought down the house. The dunk earned him four perfect tens and one nine.\n"We had been practicing (the dunk) from the stands," Kline said. "(Tapak) threw it on the money. I wasn't trying to do a reverse like that, I was just trying to go up and get it."\nWilmont followed with an alley-oop of his own -- this time using sophomore guard Donald Perry, who threw a high pass that met Wilmont's skying hands for a successful finish. The effort resulted in three tens and two nines.\nOn his second dunk, Wright made up for his first miss with a reverse pump in which he brought the ball down to his knees before sending it through. The crowd came to his defense with loud boos when he received all nines and only one ten from the judges.\nNewton had more trouble on his second attempt. He tried bouncing an alley-oop to himself twice but the ball slipped out of his hands both times. Finally, he cast the tricks aside and stuck to the dunk that brought him success in the season -- a point-blank monster slam. He earned three tens, a nine and a seven.\nKline and Wilmont had the highest first-round scores and advanced to the finals for one last showdown.\nImitating a dunk made famous by Isiah Rider and Vince Carter in the NBA dunk contest, Kline glided to the rim, brought the ball between his legs and threw it down for a perfect score. The crowd, and the entire men's team, erupted in loud cheers as Kline pumped his fist in the air.\nWilmont, who needed to match Kline's perfect tens, tried a Jordanesque dunk for his final attempt. He ran from the opposite end of the court before launching from the free throw line, but came up just short. \nIt was unexpected, even by Kline himself, but he was the winner.\n"I didn't practice (the last dunk)," Kline said. "I haven't done that one in a long time I didn't think that I was going to make it to the finals. A 6-6 white boy isn't supposed to be able to jump."\nFollowing the dunk contest, the men's team held a ten-minute scrimmage. Despite some individual highlights that got the crowd excited, such as an alley-oop from Newton to Wright and some put back dunks by Leach, senior guard Tom Coverdale said the team had a long way to go.\n"Obviously we've got a lot of work to do," Coverdale said. "We're kind of rusty, but it's a good start. The thing we wanted to do was have fun and put on a show for the fans, and I think we did that. But that scrimmage wasn't very good at all"