Indiana's Will Sheehey talks dunk on Iowa's Melsahn Basabe

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Indiana forward Will Sheehey literally posterized Iowa sophomore Melsahn Basabe the last time the teams met at Assembly Hall.

Sheehey, a sophomore, drove from the top of the key and blasted a one-handed dunk over Basabe early in the second half last year. The dunk received plenty of airtime on ESPN and other networks and was nominated by Facebook as one of the year's best dunks.

Paced by Basabe's 20-point, 13-rebound performance, Iowa did win the game, however, 64-63. That's a point Basabe makes every time he discusses that play.

"I'm not really worried about that to be honest with you," he said. "People get dunked on every day in basketball. We won that game, at the end of the day that's what really matters.

"I haven't been keeping up with him or nothing, and I hope he's more worried about his team than dunking on me because that was last year. I'm going to do the same."

The dunk did come back to life as part of Hoosier Hysteria in mid-October. In the finals of the team's dunk contest against Victor Oladipo, Sheehey re-enacted the dunk - almost step-by-step - to win the contest. Then to a loud ovation, he held up a poster of his dunk over Basabe.

At Big Ten Media Day in Chicago, Sheehey talked about the dunk contest and explained the re-enactment was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

"What happened was, there was a fan in the front row, he had a poster of it saying like '10,' and it was a 3-round dunk contest and I had three dunks planned," Sheehey said. "And I'm not the greatest dunker. I don't have all the tricks and the person I was competing against, Vic, has a lot of tricks.

"It went four or five rounds, and I had no more dunks left and one of my teammates was like, 'Well, I'll just sit under the basket and you try and dunk on me or whatever.' Then we did that. Then he held up a poster and was like, 'Here, take this, take this.' So I took it and it said '10.0.' It was a poster of me dunking."

Basabe said his father saw the re-enactment video on YouTube, which Basabe later watched.

"I was just laughing," Basabe said. "That was so long ago. I've got so much stuff to do I can't be worrying about stuff that happened a year ago. I scored 20 a year ago, and I can't get that back. He can't get that dunk back, either."

As for the initial dunk, Sheehey said, "I just took advantage of the play in front of me, and it was a close game and it was kind of a momentum swing. Of course we didn't win that game, they played a great game."