Bahamas trip this weekend.

It's easy to lose sight of this with football season beginning, but IU gets a head start on the basketball season this week with a trip to the Bahamas. (Let's face it, for most Hoosier fans, it's easy to lose sight of the football opener when there is basketball to be played). As I have noted before, a trip like this will particularly benefit this year's Hoosiers, a very talented team with a bunch of guys who have never played together before.

The first rule is wins and losses don't matter; working hard does and without the trip, NCAA rules would have prohibited Sampson from working in earnest with players until mid-October.So this will give him a sneak peek at what needs refining.
"I don't think there's a lot of value on these games," Sampson said. "What we'll do is let the kids play as equally as possible. We're going to see the new guys play as much as possible."

Here's a link to the official site's article, which includes player quotes from DJ White and Lance Stemler. No indication of whether the games will be available on TV anywhere (it's always possible that people with the big dish could find something like that) but I'll keep an eye out.