Cosmic disturbances

 I suppose there are worse portents. A plague of locusts could have fallen on those ancient championship banners. That equally ancient Indiana jersey -- the one with No. 42 on it, Mike Woodson's back when he was thin and young and the proud owner of a luxurious 'fro -- could have shrunk in the wash.

But on the day the man who needed no introduction was introduced as Indiana University's new men's basketball coach, stuff happened. And not good stuff from a karma/portent situation.

First, the Indiana women, carrying the Indiana brand forsaken by the men these past four years, finally ran into a team they couldn't crack, falling to 3-seed Arizona in the Elite Eight. It was the first time the women had reached the Elite Eight in the program's history,  and the first time any IU basketball team had gone that deep into March Madness in 19 years.

And then, in Indianapolis, in the heart of a state where his name is not well-favored among those of a certain allegiance, Kelvin Sampson reached the Final Four.

His Houston Cougars dispatched Oregon State 67-61 in the Elite Eight, and now it's on to college basketball's summit weekend. In Indianapolis. In Indiana, where the whole blamed tournament has been played.

Kelvin Sampson.

So on the day the Bobbyheads finally got themselves a Bob Knight guy to restore IU basketball's dusty glory, the man who left a smoking crater where that glory once had been reached the pinnacle of his own resurrection. And now we'll all have to choke down one of the media's favorite tropes -- Cue Redemption Story, take eleventy-thousand -- against an Indiana backdrop, 45 miles north of the scene of Sampson's original sin.

After the breaking the same rules at Indiana he broke at Oklahoma, the NCAA threw him out of its circus for being too corrupt, which is a hell of a feat considering the entity doing the throwing. Then they let him come back. Now he's really back, and let the feel-good features flow.

Maybe that's a bad omen, portent, whatever, for Mike Woodson and IU. Or maybe it just suggests the past is the past and now it's on to a brighter future -- even if the Woodson hire is itself a significant nod to the past.

Then again, I could be reading too much into all this. I suppose that's possible, too.

"Ya think?" you're saying now.

Oh, be quiet.