ITH contributor Joe Eberhardt passed along the following video he put together of 2014 Park Tudor guard Trevon Bluiett from the Indiana Basketball Academy Summer League.
Bluiett was recently offered a scholarship by Tom Crean, according to this report by Kyle Neddenriep. Here’s a quick first look at Bluiett, who is rated the No. 22 prospect nationally by ESPN and No. 7 nationally by The Hoop Scoop.
Pretty solid series of video interviews with 2011 commit Austin Etherington from KentSterling.com. Background of where these took place looks somewhat familiar.
When IU (3-0) and Michigan (4-0) kick-off Saturday at 3:30 on ESPNU, Tom Crean and his staff are expected to be in the midst of hosting one of the most impressive list of visitors on a single weekend since Crean’s arrival in Bloomington.
According to their Twitter accounts, Hamilton Heights’ Austin Etherington (pictured), Hamilton Southeastern’s Gary Harris, Lawrence Central’s Jeremy Hollowell and LaPorte La Lumiere’s Hanner Perea will all be in attendance on unofficial visits.
(Edit: Cody Zeller will also be in Bloomington, according to a message board post by Mike Pegram on Peegs.com. Zeller is scheduled to take his first official visit, to Butler, next weekend.)
Park Tudor’s Kevin “Yogi” Ferrell, a frequent visitor to Bloomington, could also attend but homecoming at his high school may prevent that from happening.
Ferrell and Perea were both in Bloomington last weekend for IU football’s 35-20 win over Akron.
Also expected: 2012 Detroit Pershing guard Sherron Dorsey-Walker, 2013 Jeffersonville guard Darryl Baker, 2013 Warren Central forward Devin Davis Jr, and 2013 Heritage Christian guard Basil Smotherman.
2014 commit James Blackmon Jr. will be participating at the John Lucas Basketball Resources Midwest Invitational Camp in Louisville this weekend.
I had planned, as of Thursday, to write a fairly lengthy piece on 2014 Indianapolis Arsenal Tech forward Trey Lyles prior to his visit last Sunday to Bloomington.
But alas, life happens and I never got the opportunity to write a story after my conversation with Trey’s father, Tom, last Wednesday night. So as an alternative, here are a few key quotes I took away from talking with Tom Lyles last week about his son:
+ I asked Mr. Lyles to explain why he believed his son was garnering so much recruiting attention at the age of 14. Since Trey’s father played professionally and also serves as an assistant coach for Tech, I asked him to answer from a coach’s perspective rather than as his father. And in talking with many parents and recruits over the past three years, this was one of the most impressive answers I’ve ever been given:
“First of all, Trey studied the game. He was truly a student of this game. Not just the running and gunning, the shooting, the dunking. He was a student of the game as in he went back and kind of checked out the legends of the game. And studied a lot of what Rick Barry was doing. Jerry West, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Darrell Dawkins, Moses Malone, Tiny Archibald, Pete Maravich. The kid’s done his homework. And I’ve always told him, ‘before you go any place, you have to know where you’re coming from. You have to know where you have been before you can go anywhere.’ So I think that right there, understanding and being a student of the game, I honestly believe that has given Trey the basketball IQ that he has which I think is just impeccable for a kid his age. Second of all, his work ethic. The kid will work. And he wants more, he wants more, he wants more. 6 o’clock in the morning workouts. We hit 6 o’clock in the morning workouts twice a week, sometimes three days a week. And the 6 o’clock in the morning workouts are harder than any workout that he’s probably been through with any other coach because like I told him, ‘being in middle school, I was training you for high school. Now that we’re in high school, I’m training you for college.’ “
+ And along the same lines, more on Trey’s game:
“Right now the kid is about 6-10. And as a father, I’m very, very happy for him. As a coach, it’s pretty impressive that a kid his age at that size can play every position on the floor and play it fluently. If you need him to be the point, he can run it. He has the handles of some of the best point guards out there. He might not be as fancy with his ball handling, but that’s not what we work on. We don’t work on being fancy, we work on being precise. Fanciness causes turnovers and it’s just for show. We’re about being precise and making things happen. If you need for him to go in the post and play that five position, that’s where he started at. We started on the footwork and the fundamentals, understanding the basics of the game. If you need for him to step out and shoot that midrange shot consistently, he can do that. If you need for him to step out and hit the long ball, college or NBA distance, he can do that consistently. If you need for him to be that wing man and fill the slots and run the floor, he can do that. I’m strictly speaking in a second-party sense, as a coach. It’s amazing that a kid 14 that’s his size, for him to be able to do that, that’s probably the part most of the coaches are impressed with.”
One of the great things about our growing community is the opportunity to dabble into new ventures. And the magazine you see above, the 2010-2011 Maple Street Press Hoosier Tip-Off, is a perfect example.
The magazine, which is $12.99, is 128 pages, contains no ads and can be ordered online here and will begin shipping on October 11 (it will also hit newsstands on October 26). Our resident ginger, Zach Osterman, served as editor and did a fantastic job. There are also stories by Ryan Corazza, Chris Korman, Hugh Kellenberger, Dustin Dopirak, Jordan Cohen, DeAntae Prince, Chris Engel, Ryan Gregg, Lee Hurwitz, Peter Stevenson and yours truly.
We hope you enjoy.
On Facebook, Twitter and tweeting
Following up on good friend Dustin Dopirak’s quick hit earlier today on the Scoop, I thought it prudent to bring a little bit of further attention to this notion of social media and recruiting.
By now, most of you have heard about the Cody Zeller Facebook group, which created something of a firestorm when freshman Victor Oladipo and 2011 commitment Austin Etherington became involved. (For its part, Indiana denies that Oladipo had anything to do with the creation of the group, which would appear to have been a violation of NCAA recruiting regulations. Austin Etherington also denies he had anything to do with it, and that he was simply made an administrator once he joined and asked to be removed when he realized that had happened.)
This comes on the heels of something Dustin and I had been looking into separately, which came to a head today via an answer from the NCAA. Oladipo — who is among IU basketball’s most regular users of Twitter — was having something of a conversation via Twitter with Yogi Ferrell on Sunday, which prompted Dustin and I to wonder about the legality of such action. I was further intrigued today by a tweet from Kyrie Irving (we all remember him, surely) essentially congratulating Austin Rivers on his commitment to Duke, where Irving is now a freshman.
And so, ringing the NCAA, I got almost word-for-word the same answer Dustin did:
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