IU basketball, Kent State have March Madness history, ties beyond NCAA tournament

BLOOMINGTON – Some things, time never fully forgets.

Indiana earned the No. 4 seed in the Midwest region Sunday, when the NCAA tournament selection committee’s full and final bracket was announced. The Hoosiers open play Friday in Albany, N.Y., against No. 13 Kent State.

They have history with the Golden Flashes, who eliminated IU from the same tournament in San Diego in 2001, before Indiana exacted revenge a year later in Lexington, Ky., on its way to its most-recent Final Four.

But, more recently and more pointedly, Indiana has history — ancient yet somehow not at all — with the man now running the Kent State sideline.

Rob Senderoff, who’s won 247 games across 12 seasons in Kent, served for parts of two seasons as an assistant at IU, between 2006-07. Senderoff was an assistant under Kelvin Sampson, and a central figure in the recruiting scandal that eventually cost both him and his boss their jobs, and left Indiana grappling with a messy set of NCAA sanctions it took the Hoosiers three years to fully recover from.

March Madness: IU gets No. 4 seed, will play No. 13 Kent State in Albany

Should Indiana defeat Kent State, and then the winner of No. 5 Miami vs. No. 12 Drake, the team most likely to be waiting in the Sweet 16 in Kansas City would be … Sampson’s No. 1-seeded Houston.

It will feel like ancient history in Bloomington, a decade and a half removed from the program’s most-serious recruiting scandal ever. IU has hired three different head coaches since it relieved Sampson of his duties in February 2008. Mike Woodson, the Hoosiers’ current head man and a legendary former player in Bloomington, said Sunday night he only interacted briefly with Sampson when asked early in Sampson’s tenure to speak to the team that year.

As for Senderoff, Woodson said simply, “I’m sure I probably met him when he was here, in passing.”

He’ll meet Senderoff’s team Friday. The Golden Flashes (28-6) made the NCAA tournament field by virtue of winning the Mid-American Conference tournament. This marks Kent State’s seventh postseason appearance under Senderoff, and its second trip to the NCAA tournament.

Kent State boasts a top-40 defense nationally, per KenPom, and the most-efficient in the MAC in league games this year. The Golden Flashes are particularly stingy in defending the 3-point line, and they’re 20^th nationally in opponent turnover rate.

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All their best wins this season came in conference, but they acquitted themselves well in a clutch of high-major losses. Kent State lost true road games at Houston and at Gonzaga by just five and seven points, respectively, and they fell by just two in a road defeat at fellow NCAA tournament participant Charleston during nonconference play as well.

Those will be the bullet points that concern Indiana’s players, and to a great extent Woodson. The lingering specter of a program melted down does not cast its shadow over them anymore.

Will they over the coach now preparing his team to face Woodson, Trayce Jackson-Davis and company? That’s for Senderoff to say.

His role in what unfolded into a scandal dramatically altering the trajectory of a program primarily involved regulations in place at the time governing phone contact with recruits. Sampson had brought sanctions with him from Oklahoma for similar infractions, and was then found to have run afoul of those sanctions in particular around more than 100 separate recruiting phone calls.

Senderoff placed some of those calls and then transferred them to Sampson’s phone. He was relieved of his duties before Sampson eventually was as well.

The NCAA has since rescinded virtually all the rules broken during that episode. To his credit, Senderoff has not shied from talking about his role in the entire episode, and he sat with IndyStar for a lengthy interview at the expiration of the ensuing sanctions nearly a decade ago.

“Why the NCAA changed those rules, I don’t know,” Senderoff told IndyStar in 2013. “Should they have been rules in the first place? I don’t know. That’s above my pay grade. It’s just like the speed limit. You’re supposed to follow the speed limit. … The person driving the car doesn’t get to make that decision. I shouldn’t have transferred those calls to coach Sampson, and I wish I hadn’t.”

Since, he’s built himself a solid career at Kent State. And, after spending most of six years coaching in the NBA, Sampson has returned high-level success in college. Since taking over at Houston in 2014, he’s won 230 games and at least a share of four conference titles. The Cougars have been invited to each of the last five NCAA tournaments, with runs to the Sweet Sixteen (2019), Final Four (2021) and Elite Eight (2022) on their ledger.

Sampson even coached a game in Bloomington during that 2021 run, when Houston appeared in the tournament hosted entirely within the state of Indiana.

Perhaps he will revisit a few more old memories in two weeks’ time, if both IU and Houston advance to a second-weekend matchup in Kansas City. Before then, his former assistant — with whom Sampson is still close — will travel through his own past, for better or worse, as he prepares for Friday’s round-of-64 matchup.

All of it, a reminder: The things we leave behind never truly leave us.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Selection Sunday: IU to play Kent State, ex-assistant Rob Senderoff