Kelvin Sampson, Indiana’s cheating coach, has just been fired. Looks like the school bought him out – $750,000 – and the press conference is going to happen shortly.

His cell phone malefeasance won’t put him in Tark the Shark or Jim Harrick territory, but when the votes are tallied this weekend (you know, the imaginary ones) Sampson will probably be remembered more along the lines of serial Memphis cheater Dana Kirk or Baylor’s duplicitous Dave Bliss, although no players have died (yet) at Indiana. What’s the over/under on when Sampson gets his next head coaching job? Two years? Figure he’ll be out of basketball for a few months, and then some low D1/D2 program will grab him as an assistant this summer (just in time for recruiting!), said team will proceed to win eight more games next season, whereupon Sampson then makes the leap to assistant at a D1 mid-major. There, the program will magically qualify for the NCAA tournament, and presto, by the fall of 2009, Sampson will have himself a head coaching gig at a low D1 program.

Lastly, early in the season, we took a chance on Indiana at 25:1 to win the title, and it sure would be nice if Dan Dakich pulled a Steve Fisher and made a nice March run.