AAU basketball will wrap up in the next few weeks, and with that will come a wave of recruiting visits as college staffs and players alike have a bit more time on their hands in August and into the fall. Coming out of the first July live recruiting period, several top IU prospects have said they either have firm plans to visit Bloomington or would like to make that happen. Class of 2023 Massachusetts-based forward T.J. Power is coming off a massive weekend that saw him average more than 30 points per game while shooting better than 51 percent from…
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 Ohio State. Chris Holtmann is entering his sixth season as the man in charge in Columbus. The Buckeyes finished the 2021-22 campaign with a 20-12 overall record including a 12-8 mark…
Bloomington neighborhood kids be warned: While he looks nice, Mike Woodson wants you to stay off his lawn. The second year Indiana head coach is apparently something of a sodfather during the offseason. While he is still trying to put new hardware in the IU basketball trophy case, Woodson has already claimed a landscaping title in his subdivision. And he apparently can’t stop telling his daughter Mariah about it. She went to Instagram to vent. “My dad takes his yard so seriously,” she wrote in a post on the social media platform. “He won yard of the month in his…
It got bloody at times in those early Gunn one-on-one battles out on the playground. Young C.J. tried his best, but with a two-year edge, his older sister Lauren had the early advantage. Both trained by their father Chris to be competitive first and foremost, neither wanted to give an inch on the asphalt courts in Fishers, Ind. And so things got a bit interesting at times. “Where me and my sister grew up, we used to bike down to this elementary playground, and our dad used to take us out there,” C.J. said. “And me and my sister used…
They got the ball rolling, but in the end, life and complications got in the way. It appeared the first IU basketball themed team would compete this year in The Basketball Tournament, the million dollar, winner-take-all event televised live on ESPN. Former IU players Devonte Green and Josh Newkirk were announced in May as competitors for a team named “Assembly Ball.” Other former IU players said they would participate as well. And enough money was raised to make it happen. But the rest just got too messy to reach the finish line. One star player was dealing with an injury,…
6-foot-10 forward Raleigh Burgess thought his 16u Indiana Elite squad had a good shot at winning the Adidas 3SSB title last week in Rock Hill, S.C. when we caught up with him a week ago, and in the end they came through. Burgess is joined by fellow IU target Travis Perry, Iowa commit Cooper Koch, and in-state rising phenom Flory Bidunga on an Indiana Elite team that was just too good inside and out to handle. “Good guards, great size, everyone has a great attitude, and the culture (of his Indiana Elite team) is just everything,” Burgess told The Daily…
UPDATE: The Indiana players intended to play in the Pro-Am but will no longer be participants. The original story follows. —————————— IU basketball players Xavier Johnson, Tamar Bates, Anthony Leal and Miller Kopp will all be in action in Noblesville, Ind. on Tuesday evening as part of a new event. The four are participating in a competition called the Dizzy Run Pro-Am, the brainchild of former Indiana Mr. Basketball and Virginia national champion Kyle Guy, along with former Harlem Globetrotter Derick Grant. The event is being held in the Finch Creek Fieldhouse, at 16289 Boden Rd, Noblesville, IN, 46060. According…
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 Northwestern. Head coach Chris Collins has been in Evanston for nine seasons, and he has amassed a 133-150 record during his time there. The Wildcats were 15-16 overall in 2021-22, and…
This past week was the first of two live periods in July, when college coaches can watch prospects play travel basketball. How staffs choose to allocate their time during live periods always tells a story. With not many days available, just four staff members allowed on the road, and prospects spread out across the country, if IU basketball was watching a player this past weekend, chances are they are fairly serious about them. That is especially true of IU head coach Mike Woodson, who to this point in his tenure leading the program hasn’t always made it a priority to…
For the second straight season, Kyle Schwarber is an MLB All-Star. After a blistering month of June and early July that saw him take the NL lead with 28 home runs, it was an expected outcome for the former IU slugger. “It’s obviously something that you always want to be,” Schwarber told MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki about making his second consecutive All-Star team. Schwarber is batting .222 with 28 home runs, 57 RBIs and an .867 OPS. He struggled through May 29, batting just .181 with a .699 OPS. But from May 30 through Sunday, Schwarber is batting .269 with 18…