Indiana mens basketball players should be focused on their huge conference matchup against Wisconsin tonight (one game in a treacherous three-game homestand that sees Michigan State and archrival Purdue come to Bloomington in the next week) but instead they may be having to worry if they will have a coach by year’s end.

The NCAA released allegations yesterday saying that head basketball coach Kelvin Sampson misled (see: lied) to Indiana University and NCAA investigators regarding improper contact with recruits. In a letter sent by the NCAA to Indiana University, it is alleged that Sampson knowingly and willingly violated telephone recruiting restrictions (set in place because of violations made during his tenure at Oklahoma) and then lied about it. Not good.

That allegation is among five “major violations” that Sampson has been accused of by the NCAA. When I see the words major violation, I’m thinking vacating wins and I’m thinking postseason ban, both of which mean that Kelvin Sampson’s tenure as Indiana University head basketball coach is over.

Sampson, Indiana Athletic Director Rick Greenspan, and other university officials will appear before the Division I Committee on Infractions in June and have until May to issue a written response to the allegations.

So where does Indiana go from here? Self-imposed sanctions, unless it’s a postseason ban in 2009, aren’t likely to be enough and as an Indiana alum and an IU fan I am embarrassed. Sampson needs to go and he needs to go right this second. If Rick Greenspan isn’t sitting down at his desk right now to negotiate the terms of Sampson’s firing or resignation then he deserves to be fired too. Enough is Enough.

I think Bob Knight is an egomaniac and I am certainly the furthest thing from a Bob Knight fan that any Indiana University alumnus could be but at the very least, he ran a clean program that managed to win three national championships. Make no mistake, Indiana basketball fans (and boosters) want to win but they want to win the right way, the fair way, the clean way.

Before anyone says anything, the return of Bob Knight as Indiana head basketball coach would be a horrible, horrible idea and a gigantic leap backwards for the program. Knight couldn’t win at Texas Tech because he couldn’t recruit and I’d venture to say that Eric Gordon, Derrick Rose, Kevin Love or Michael Beasley aren’t going to come to IU and get screamed at for a year or two before heading to the NBA and it’s that quality of player that Indiana needs to compete against Michigan State, Illinois, Wisconsin and a Purdue team that, under Matt Painter, appear to be headed back to Big Ten contention. They are the league’s top team at present.

Rick Greenspan hired Coach Hep, a move that saved the IU football program from permanent obscurity and has led a capital funds campaign for brand spanking new athletic facilities at IU and if he’s interested in keeping his job, he needs to make sure that Kelvin Sampson doesn’t keep his for very much longer.