College GameDay signals resurrection

All season, IU men’s basketball players and coaches have preached taking the season one game at a time, no matter the opponent, no matter the location, no matter the rankings or the standings.

To them, Saturday’s game may just be a matchup with the No. 1 Michigan Wolverines, taking place 9 p.m. in Assembly Hall.

But to the students who will spend all day bundled up in layers of cream and crimson waiting for the best seats to catch a glimpse of Jay Bilas and Digger Phelps in the morning and watch the basketball game in the evening, and to the Bloomington residents who have watched IU crawl all the way back from obscurity in the college basketball world, Saturday may mean a little more.

ESPN College GameDay is finally here.

As the crew from Bristol, Conn., pays Hoosier Nation a visit Saturday, IU Associate Head Coach Tim Buckley said he hopes that everyone involved with bringing the program back to national prominence gets to enjoy everything the day brings.

“I would hope the community, the students, all the people that were here when we were first getting started with this, I hope they feel the satisfaction of all the hard work and support and energy that they provide for the program,” Buckley said.

“This is kind of the culmination of that. Obviously with a day like this, you want to be at your best and playing your hardest, and hopefully they get a chance to enjoy the whole situation.”

To complete the atmosphere of ESPN College GameDay in Bloomington come two of the top three teams in the country.

When the schedules were released in August, both IU and Michigan sat in the top five in the NCAA, with Indiana taking hold of the top spot until mid-December.

Now, after shuffling around during the heart of the college basketball schedule, Michigan comes into Bloomington with a hold on the top spot in the country.

At No. 1 and No. 3, Saturday’s matchup will be the highest pair of teams to ever play in Assembly Hall in its history as the Hoosiers attempt to take down their second top-ranked foe at home in two seasons.

Although Buckley said that to him and the players, Michigan is simply the next team on the schedule, he said the community couldn’t have asked for a more perfect storm to roll into Bloomington for a primetime game on Saturday.

“It was one of those things where we looked at building the program to a certain point, and hopefully having a great situation with them here,” Buckley said. “It’s probably worked out a lot better than a lot of people may have thought with having the No. 1 and No. 3 here.

"It’s one of those scenarios you hoped would play out that way.”

Two weeks ago, IU and the rest of the country had a chance to watch ESPN College GameDay from just a couple miles up the road in Indianapolis where Butler hosted Gonzaga at Hinkle Fieldhouse in one of the storied buzzer-beater games of the season.

Sophomore guard Remy Abell said having the GamedDay crew stationed twice in Indiana just shows how important basketball is to Hoosiers around the state, and said Saturday surely won’t disappoint.

“Michigan is coming in here, and they’re a very good team,” Abell said. “They’re coming to Assembly Hall. College GameDay is coming to Assembly Hall. Great announcers. ESPN, Dick Vitale, the whole crew is coming, and it’s going to be fun.”

At the same time, though, Abell said he knows the team can’t get carried away in the hype surrounding the top-ranked teams or the festivities inside Assembly Hall prior to the game.

The sophomore had the fortune of playing in several big games on Branch McCracken Court last season, including IU’s win over top-ranked Kentucky, but he said everything surrounding Saturday will be even harder to handle, especially for IU’s freshmen class.

“You’ve just got to tell them to stay focused on what we’re trying to accomplish and what we’re trying to get done,” Abell said. “There’s going to be some adversity, but we’ve got to stay together as a unit, stay together as a team.”

Buckley echoed Abell’s hopes, saying the Hoosiers have to stay focused on the task at hand on the court, rather than the excitement surrounding it.

“If the racecar driver focuses on the wall, he runs into it, so we don’t want to be focusing on the wall. We want to be focusing on the track,” Buckley said. “Our preparation is key, just like it is all the time. This atmosphere shouldn’t be any different for us that it has been the entire year.

“We know we’re in a Big Ten race, and we’re going to play one of the better teams, not only in our league, but in the country, and we’ve got to be prepared.”