Indiana University Press blog

Meet the IU men's basketball team tonight!

Want to meet the 2011-2012 IU men's basketball team that advanced to the Sweet Sixteen this year? You'll have the chance tonight when the IU Varsity Club hosts the Men's Basketball Awards Celebration at Assembly Hall.

Coach Tom Crean and members of the basketball team will be available for autographs from 6 to 7 p.m. with the awards ceremony following. This event is free and open to the public.

In addition, copies of our new IU basketball book This Is INDIANA will be available for purchase at the Varsity Shop during the event.

For more information, visit the IU Athletics website.

Enter to win a free copy of This is INDIANA!

Indiana basketball is BACK! In celebration of the Hoosiers' remarkable season, we are giving away a free copy of our new IU basketball book This Is INDIANA! Relive the best memories of the season, including the unforgettable upset of #1 ranked Kentucky!

To enter the contest, send an email to winiupress@gmail.com with your name and mailing address. Entries will be accepted through April 26 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. Winners will be notified by email and books will ship via USPS.

For more information on This Is Indiana, visit the IU Press website.

This is INDIANA on sale through April 23!

In a whirlwind of about three weeks, we contracted, designed, printed, and are today finally releasing copies of our highly-anticipated IU basketball book This Is INDIANA! To celebrate, we're offering 30% off the book. Use code IUBB30 at checkout. Hurry, offer expires April 23, 2012!

Shop now and GO HOOSIERS!!!

This is INDIANA: New book looks at exciting comeback of Hoosier basketball

In December 2011, Tom Crean led his Hoosier basketball players to an upset win over Kentucky, the #1-ranked basketball team in the nation. In one of the two Wildcats’ losses of the year, Indiana fans rushed the court. Christian Watford's epic game-winning three-pointer has since been viewed over 500,000 times on YouTube. From that moment on, the revival of IU basketball was a reality.

On April 16, This is INDIANA: Tom Crean, the Team, and the Exciting Comeback of Hoosier Basketball will be published by Indiana University Press in partnership with The Herald-Times. The book relives the incredible 2011-12 season—game by game, photo by photo.

Facing many challenges, Coach Crean walked into Indiana's Assembly Hall in 2008, promising a return to glory for Indiana basketball. Four years later, led by Big Ten Freshman of the Year Cody Zeller and the brilliant lineup of Jordan Hulls, Christian Watford, Will Sheehey, Verdell Jones III, and Victor Oladipo, the Hoosiers went 24-7 in a regular season that included upsets over top-ranked teams like Kentucky and Ohio State—quite a difference from the 6-25 program of Crean’s first season. Making it to the NCAA’s Sweet Sixteen, the team once again faced the Wildcats in what proved to be a thrilling season finale.

A New York Times article recently put it this way: “Anything with ice and snow should prominently feature a Norwegian. And Indiana should have a good basketball team. … This is why this season has felt like such a rejuvenation in Bloomington.”

Follow news about the book on Twitter: #thisisindianathebook

'Taliaferro' author Dawn Knight to appear at Barnes & Noble store in Carmel this Saturday

Dawn Knight will discuss and sign copies of her book, Taliaferro: Breaking Barriers From the NFL Draft to the Ivory Tower, at 11:00 a.m. this Saturday, February 4 at the Barnes & Noble store in Carmel, IN.

“We ... are excited during this Super Bowl weekend and Black History Month to have Dawn Knight discuss her biography about the legendary Indiana University football player, NFL star and pathfinder, George Taliaferro, and the challenges he faced as an athlete and citizen,” said Thomas E. McLean, Community Relations Manager for the Barnes & Noble store in Carmel.

For more information on the event, call the store at 317-844-2501.

Susan Neville discusses Butler basketball on WFIU

Attention Butler Bulldogs fans: Susan Neville, author of Butler's Big Dance, will be interviewed on WFIU's Artworks radio program Tuesday, March 29 at 7:00 p.m. Hear what Neville, a professor at Butler, has to say about the Bulldogs' thrilling ride to the Final Four.

Tune in to WFIU HD1 or listen online.

'Butler's Big Dance' author weighs in on tonight's game against Wisconsin

After last year's amazing run at an NCAA title, the Butler Bulldogs hope to repeat their previous tournament success as they face Wisconsin tonight. Susan Neville, a Butler professor and author of Butler's Big Dance, says that the Bulldogs' performance in the NCAA tournament is "particularly sweet this year because the team came alive late in the season, winning the Horizon League championship and then winning that amazing game against the number 1 seed Pitt."

"Butler has been a bracket buster for several years now, and it says something about the coaching and the program that we've made it this far again."

While the campus is excited about the Bulldogs' making it to the Sweet 16 again, Neville says the mood isn't quite as surreal as it was between last year's Sweet 16 game and the Final Four.

"The media descended and the alums came back and all the trees were blooming and we watched the world watching the campus. We were in a world we'd never been in before, and it was giddy. I'm not sure anything will ever feel quite like that one particular week felt."

But the level of excitement may surpass "surreal" if Butler can take home the title this year. Neville is doing her part to make sure the Bulldogs stay contenders for the NCAA championship. For tonight's game, she is repeating the same rituals as she did for Butler's previous Sweet 16 appearance.

"We're having the same friends over to our house that we had last year. We'll have the same food. We'll sit in the same spots in the family room. ...Friday morning we'll all get up and go to work. Unless I drive down to New Orleans for the weekend! And that's a distinct possibility."

Book review: Butler's Big Dance

"Neville gives us an excellent sense of what it's like, as she notes, to be living inside a national myth. ...[This book] will resonate with almost any longtime Bloomingtonian who remembers the joyous surges of energy that have accompanied IU's spate of prolonged tournament runs in the past several decades." —Bloom

Book review: Butler's Big Dance

"...an original book both gentle and bold...containing many passages worth perusing." —Indianapolis Business Journal

Now available: Butler's Big Dance

Just in time for Butler's season opener against Marian tomorrow, we have released Butler's Big Dance by Susan S. Neville. In this book, Neville intertwines her recollections of Butler's amazing run for the 2010 NCAA National Championship with interviews, anecdotes, and photographs to bring readers a taste of the on-campus and courtside excitement.

Good luck to the Bulldogs tomorrow, and while you're waiting for the game to start, pass the time by reading an excerpt from the new Butler book!