Favorite ‘Son’ Mattingly to Return to Indiana for IU Game

The Lamar University men’s basketball team has ties to Indiana beyond being scheduled to play the Hoosiers at Assembly Hall on Saturday (8 p.m., Big Ten Network).
After a few years of playing minor-league baseball, Preston Mattingly—a three-sport standout at Evansville Central High School who averaged more than 20 points per game on the court as a senior—joined Lamar’s basketball team last season. He is averaging 7.3 points in three starts for the Cardinals this season.
Mattingly is better known, however, as the son of Evansville product Don Mattingly—“Donnie Baseball”—who logged an impressive .307 career batting average and racked up more than 200 home runs and a thousand RBI in 14 seasons with the New York Yankees. He is currently the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
During the telecast of IU’s Thursday-night gave against Southern Methodist, the Big Ten Network’s Eric Collins hinted that Donnie Baseball might attend his son’s game in Assembly Hall on Saturday, but a source in Lamar’s athletics department told IM that the baseball would not, in fact, be in Bloomington.
The elder Mattingly did appear with his son in a viral YouTube video in which Preston—a dead ringer for his dad—knocks down a series of trick basketball shots.

Another Indiana native, Indianapolis product and Northwest High School star Donnell Hinton, is also on the Lamar roster.
As of last season, Lamar had yet another strong tie to Indiana: head coach Pat Knight, the former IU player, assistant coach, and, of course, the son of Bob. Knight was fired last season after going 3–22.