Former IU basketball big man Thomas Bryant is going to return to where his NBA career started. According to a report by Chris Haynes of Yahoo! Sports, the free agent center will sign with the Los Angeles Lakers and be given the opportunity to win the starting job. The New York product will join LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the West Coast on what could be an NBA title contender. Bryant has spent the last four seasons with Washington after beginning his career with the Lakers in 2017-18. After suffering a torn ACL during the 2020-21 season, Bryant returned…
Author: Mike Schumann
Maintaining success has never been more difficult in college basketball. The combination of the transfer portal and the NBA Draft makes each offseason both eventful and potentially transformative for most programs. Now that the smoke has mostly cleared following the 2021-22 season, we’ll go team-by-team in the Big Ten to assess which programs are set up for success, and who might take a step back. ———— Next up is Nebraska. Believe it or not, Fred Hoiberg is going into his fourth season leading the Cornhuskers. He has amassed a 24-67 record during his first three years in Lincoln, with just…
College basketball recruiting is way more art than science. Nobody knows that better than Jordan Hulls. There was a time when Hulls, a star at Bloomington South H.S., couldn’t get a look from college programs. Early on in fact, he was the recruiter. “I was sending out tapes to anybody who would even take a look at it when I wasn’t getting heavily recruited,” Hulls said last week during a Q&A session with the media. Running with the well-known Indiana Elite program, Hulls wasn’t particularly tall or athletic relative to the other players on the floor on the AAU circuit.…
Relative to its peers in the Big Ten, IU football doesn’t have top-tier facilities. While they’ve made major upgrades to Memorial Stadium in recent years, the Hoosiers don’t have a dedicated football only training facility or weight room, something many in the league have, mostly as a result of lucrative television deals. But respected college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit believes what Indiana has to offer stands out compared to schools outside of the Big Ten and SEC. And that highlights for Herbstreit why a move to the Big Ten by UCLA and USC makes a lot of sense. Both schools…
Shot making from the wings is something that continues to be a priority for Indiana on the recruiting trail, and class of 2024 Chicago-based shooting guard Nojus Indrusaitis has the IU staff’s attention. Indiana has been taking a look at Indrusaitis going back at least to April, and he continues to be someone the program is evaluating. Indrusaitis is a wing who can handle it like a guard, shoot it from the outside, and score from all three levels. He’s best known for his ability as a perimeter shooter. The 6-foot-5 Indrusaitis is the No. 50 player in the 2024…
Spring reports indicating Montverde Academy rising senior Kwame (K.J.) Evans would visit Indiana in June proved to be inaccurate. A weekend report by Zags Blog quotes Evans’ father, indicating the 5-star class of 2023 forward is now down to Arizona, Auburn, Kentucky and Oregon. Despite having two former Montverde teammates (Malik Reneau and Jalen Hood-Schifino) at IU, Evans never made it to Bloomington. Evans had previously included Indiana in his top-five, and later added Arizona to the mix. Although they came into the picture late, Arizona is seen by many as the current favorite to land Evans. The Hoosiers have…
For folks who hoped to see Indiana play in the Rose Bowl once more in their lifetime, well, we’ve got good news. It may not go down exactly how you planned, but chances are Indiana will be playing in the Pasadena, Calif. stadium in the not too distant future. Okay, it may not be THE Rose Bowl, but with the addition of UCLA and USC to the Big Ten, at some point the Hoosiers are going to get sent to Rose Bowl Stadium to face the Bruins. Whenever IU football faces UCLA, it will be the first time the programs…
Despite the fact that they already have two verbal backcourt commits in the class, Indiana isn’t done exploring new options in the 2023 guard ranks. Rising senior guard Elmarko Jackson announced an offer from Indiana on his Twitter page on Friday morning. The 6-foot-3 Jackson is ranked No. 91 overall in the 2023 class according to the 247Sports Composite, and the No. 17 combo guard according to that same outlet. This is how 247Sports national analyst Adam Finkelstein recently described Jackson’s game: “The combo-guard is one of the most physically imposing guards in the class with good size, strength, and…
It is the free agency period in the NBA, and already two former IU basketball stars have been impacted. Former Indiana star guard Victor Oladipo has reportedly agreed to an $11 million one-year deal to stay in Miami, according to Shams Charania of the Athletic. The 30-year-old Oladipo spent most of the last two seasons recovering from a quad tendon injury that ultimately required two surgeries. He played in just eight regular season games in 2021-22 for the Heat. But his play in those games plus the playoffs was enough to convince Pat Riley and the Heat to give him…
Indiana has diverted from its normal course and released its full nonconference schedule much earlier than it has in the past. The Hoosiers will play seven nonconference games at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, and four away from home. The schedule includes multiple opportunities for fans to see the Hoosiers away from Bloomington, including games in Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Kansas and Indianapolis. Here is the full slate, via a release from IU Athletics on Friday morning. BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Indiana University men’s basketball team, currently ranked 14th in ESPN’s Way Too Early Top 25, will face four potentially ranked opponents…