INDIANAPOLIS – More than four decades have passed since Bob Hammel, the former sports editor of the Bloomington Herald-Times, would rush back from the airport after Big Ten road games, pound out his Indiana basketball column on a typewriter for the afternoon edition and emerge from the office well after sunrise.
He’s a throwback from an era when sportswriters traveled with the team and frequently ate chili and pie with Bob Knight at local diners.
With Gonzaga in Indianapolis attempting to become the first Division I men’s team to complete an entire season and postseason undefeated since the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, few are more qualified to link eras than the man who most diligently chronicled college basketball’s last undefeated team.