Meet the Opponent: Lifelong Indiana Roots for Miami of Ohio Coach Travis Steele
Before Travis Steele and his older brother, John Groce, became college basketball head coaches, they grew up in Danville, Ind. admiring the Bob Knight-led Indiana Hoosiers.
So when Indiana reached the 1987 national championship game against Syracuse, they were locked in. Steele, who was 5 years old at the time, remembers his brother breaking down the Syracuse scouting report, primarily concerned with 7-foot center Rony Seikaly, who was averaging 22 points and 11 rebounds in the NCAA Tournament.
“I was scared to death of Rony Seikaly,” Steele said. “And that’s one of the first memories of my life.”
Seikaly scored 18 points, snatched 10 rebounds and blocked three shots in that game, but Indiana got the last laugh when Keith Smart hit the iconic short-corner jumper that gave Indiana a 74-73 victory, handing Knight his third national championship in 11 years.
Steele was hooked.
“The thing that always sticks out about Indiana is just the passion that everybody around the program and the fans have for basketball,” Steele said. “I always say in a lot of places it’s just basketball season, but it’s 365 days a year at Indiana University.”
On Sunday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, roughly 25 miles due east of Steele’s hometown, he’ll coach the Miami of Ohio Redhawks against Indiana, a school where he served as a video coordinator and assistant coach during the Kelvin Sampson era. The game starts at 5:30 p.m. ET (TV: Big Ten Network)
Travis Steele stands on the sideline during his first year as head coach at Miami of Ohio.
Miami University Communications & Marketing
Steele’s coaching career began at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis while attending Butler University. After graduating in 2004, he became a graduate assistant at Ohio State for one season before earning his first collegiate position as an assistant coach at Wabash Valley, a community college in Mount Carmel, Ill.
Steele worked his way to becoming a video coordinator at Indiana in 2006 when Kelvin Sampson replaced Mike Davis as head coach. Sampson arrived at Indiana after leading Oklahoma to 11 NCAA Tournament berths from 1994 to 2006, including a Final Four appearance in 2002, an Elite Eight the following year and a 72.2 overall winning percentage.
In this role, Steele broke down hours of film, putting together opponent and self-scouting reports for Sampson and the Hoosiers. Indiana entered the season with plenty of unknowns after losing leading scorers Marco Killingsworth, Robert Vaden and Marshall Strickland, but one game in particular stands out to Steele when thinking back to his first year at Indiana.
On Jan. 20, 2007, the Hoosiers traveled to Connecticut to take on a Huskies team with four future NBA players led by coach Jim Calhoun, a three-time national champion coach himself. But behind 23 points on 5-for-8 three-point shooting from Roderick Wilmont and 21 points from big man D.J. White, Indiana took down Stanley Robinson, Hasheem Thabeet and the Huskies.
“I was just shocked we were able to win,” Steele said. “It was a big game for us. It gave us a little confidence because we didn’t know if we were good … I thought we really maxed out that team in general.”
This win propelled Indiana to a No. 23 ranking in the Associated Press poll for the first time all year, and Indiana earned a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament before losing to UCLA in the second round. With White returning and the arrival of Eric Gordon, the No. 1 recruit in the nation, Indiana entered the 2007-08 season with major expectations as the No. 9 team in the AP poll.
The Hoosiers were 22-4 after wins over No. 10 Michigan State and No. 14 Purdue, but on Feb. 22, 2008, Sampson accepted a buyout and resigned as head coach amid allegations of NCAA recruiting violations involving improper telephone calls. Dan Dakich — a former Indiana assistant coach from 1985-97 and a former Indiana player under Knight – went from director of men’s basketball operations to interim head coach. Steele was promoted from video coordinator to assistant coach.
“You saw the emotion and the anguish that our guys went through in that period of time when there was a change,” Steele said. “So I just attacked it.”
Indiana’s first game without Sampson was a road trip to Evanston, Ill. to take on Northwestern.
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“Man, it was a wild few days leading up to it just being able to get there and get the team out on the floor,” Steele said. “I think our guys were really confused at that moment, at that point in time. … I just wanted to be there more than anything for our players and make sure that they knew they had guys that had their back.”
Indiana defeated Northwestern and Ohio State in the first two games under Dakich, but the once-promising season crumbled away as Indiana finished 1-4 with a first-round loss to Arkansas in the NCAA tournament.
“Obviously, it was very unfortunate, the situation that happened,” Steele said. “But I’ve always loved the quote — ‘Adversity introduces a man to himself.’ You’re going to go through some tough times in life, and you know it’s not going to be the last one for all the men that were in that locker room. It’s how you respond to things. That’s the whole key. That was kind of our messaging in trying to stick together and represent Indiana as best as we possibly could.”
While Steele’s second and final season at Indiana didn’t end the way anyone hoped, he was grateful for the opportunity to coach at the school he grew up rooting for while learning from a coach of Sampson’s caliber in the early stages of his career.
“He’s the best coach I’ve ever been around,” Steele said of Sampson, who now coaches at Houston and has a team ranked No. 3 in the nation. “And it’s really not even remotely close.”
Steele accepted an assistant coaching position under Sean Miller at Xavier before the 2008-09 season, but Miller left for Arizona a year later. Steele was retained by new Xavier head coach Chris Mack, whom he worked with through the 2017-18 season. Mack and Steele led the Musketeers to three Sweet 16 appearances and the 2017 Elite Eight, and when Mack left for Louisville, Steele was promoted to his first college head coaching position.
Steele went 70-50 across four seasons at Xavier, but the Musketeers were .500 or worse in Big East play each season. Xavier was ranked as high as No. 17 under Steele during the 2021-22 season, but went 2-7 down the stretch to miss the NCAA Tournament for the fourth consecutive season. Steele was fired after an NIT first-round win over Cleveland State, and Xavier went on to win the NIT championship without him.
Miami of Ohio basketball coach Travis Steele talks to his team during a timeout against Georgia at Stegeman Coliseum in Athens, Ga. on Nov. 14, 2022.
Tony Walsh-University of Georgia Athletics
Steele wasn’t out of work long. He became the head coach at Miami of Ohio last March, knowing he was entering a rebuilding process. Miami is 1-3 this year and has gone over .500 just one time in the last 13 seasons, a 12-11 mark in 2020-21. They’ve lost to Evansville, Georgia and Marshall so far this season, with their only win against Goshen College, an NAIA school.
Steele, however, is excited about the program’s future growth.
“It’s a great place and it’s got a lot of potential,” Steele said. “I think we’ve got to get our culture right and our connectivity has to be right on the floor.”
Steele said his team will be without five injured players on Sunday against Indiana — Kamari Williams, Morgan Safford, Javin Etzler, Curtis Harrison IV and Eli Yofan. This leaves Mekhi Lairy a 5-foot-6, 140-pound point guard as the only guard with significant college basketball experience. Lairy, whom Steele called the focal point of the offense, nearly willed the Redhawks to a win at Georgia on Monday by scoring 34 points, but the Bulldogs escaped with a 77-70 win.
Against a deep and talented frontcourt, Steele stresses the importance of limiting Indiana to one shot, pushing Trayce Jackson-Davis and others off the block and slowing the game down.
“It’s almost like football where they have time of possession,” Steele said. “We have to have the ball a heck of a lot longer than Indiana has the ball.”
And for Steele, Sunday’s game is a special opportunity to coach against the school that sparked his basketball interest.
“Any time you get an opportunity to play against a great program like Indiana — coach Woodson is doing a tremendous job — it’s a blessing,” Steele said. “I’m glad our guys are getting the opportunity. I know it’s going to be a packed house.”
Related stories on Indiana basketball:
- TOM BREW COLUMN: In the closing minutes of Indiana’s 81-79 victory over Xavier on Friday night, it was freshman Malik Reneau who got all the playing time down the stretch, and he responded in a big way for coach Mike Woodson. “I trust him,” Woodson said. CLICK HERE
- INDIANA BEATS XAVIER: Trayce Jackson-Davis scored 30 points and Indiana held off a late Xavier rally to win 81-79 on Friday night. It was a huge nonconference road win for Indiana, its first since 2011, and it’s the first of many difficult tests away from home in the next month. CLICK HERE
- WATCH XAVIER JOHNSON HIT HUGE 3: Xavier went into a 2-3 zone late in the second half, and Indiana point guard Xavier Johnson responded with a key 3-pointer. Watch the highlight here. CLICK HERE
- WATCH JACKSON-DAVIS’ BLOCKED SHOT: Indiana forward Trayce Jackson-Davis refused to allow an easy layup from Xavier’s Souley Boum in the first half. Watch the highlight here. CLICK HERE
- WATCH JACKSON-DAVIS SCORES FIRST BASKET: Indiana forward Race Thompson connected with Trayce Jackson-Davis down low for the first points of Friday night’s matchup with Xavier. CLICK HERE
