He isn’t big or tall and still looks very young, but none of that is stopping high majors from jumping in on 2025 point guard Mikel Brown, Jr. Indiana was the latest to enter the mix on Friday when they offered Brown after the IU staff had multiple chances to see him live during Adidas 3SSB action in Rock Hill, S.C. Brown is just 5-foot-11 and likely well under 150 pounds, but he already has offers from Seton Hall, Maryland, Florida, Texas A&M, Auburn, and Baylor. He doesn’t appear in the early rankings for 2025, but that should change with…
Author: Mike Schumann
On a team that returns 78 percent of its minutes from a year ago, there aren’t a ton of clear openings for immediate playing time for newcomers. When he arrived in Bloomington a month ago, freshman forward Kaleb Banks knew what he was up against. “Coming in, I expected us to have a pretty good team. I knew that it was going to be competitive during practices,” Banks said on Thursday. As a high school product in Georgia (Fayette County H.S.), it wasn’t clear what direction Banks would go positionally at the next level. Was he a three or a…
“Two walls of red, with a game in the middle of it. My ears are still ringing.” That’s how ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas recalled the atmosphere at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in 2017, when he called a game involving his alma mater Duke in Bloomington. Bilas typically makes at least one stop at IU over the course of the college basketball season in connection with a marquee matchup that ESPN picks up. His most recent call at Indiana was when the Hoosiers faced Wisconsin in February. This week Bilas named his top-5 college basketball venues, and with some…
IU basketball class of 2023 commit Gabe Cupps has a connection to LeBron James that started before he entered high school. It began when he played on the North Coast Blue Chips spring and summer travel team with James’ son Bronny in 2018, and continues to this day. James was in Ohio over the weekend for a final reunion of the Blue Chips team, which because of James, drew national attention when a highly talented group of middle-school players played across the country, drawing massive crowds along the way. Cupps drew national fame on the team, and specifically when he…
IU Athletics named its male and female athletes of the year on Wednesday. Below is the full release from the school: ————- Indiana swimming and diving junior Brendan Burns and sophomore Tarrin Gilliland were named the recipients of the IU Athlete of the Year awards for the 2021-22 season in which each won an individual NCAA Championship. “Congratulations to Tarrin and Brendan for their remarkable accomplishments this season and for being selected as our 2021-22 Athletes of the Year,” said IU Vice President and Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Scott Dolson. “Our men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs have produced some…
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…
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…