Cody Zeller has reached a decision, and I must tell you that I am not pleased.
He will make his announcement at the historic Hatchet House, thus eschewing an even more storied and significant lump of tradition: the local Ponderosa.
I was crushed when I heard the news. Convening near a steaming buffet to hear Tyler Zeller announce his decision, with that mixture of baked apples and mac and cheese wafting through the air, was a highlight of my career. While Tyler, the middle brother, explained his reasons for choosing North Carolina, I constructed a most excellent ice cream sundae. (Not really, but I wish I had.)
No, seriously, it was an interesting day. Here were the Zellers, already basketball royalty in the state and about to send a kid off to one of the most prestigious basketball programs in the country, hanging out in a the poorly lit wood-paneled room near the local Wal-Mart. Now I don’t mean to portray them as bumpkins. Quite the contrary. The answers they all gave were insightful, and they clearly by then had a sophisticated understanding of how college basketball — a ruthless and intricate undertaking that ends up spitting out many of those who it first accepts — works at the highest level.
Which is why I’m here today to say this: anybody who has claimed to this point to have anything more than a hunch about where Cody Zeller is going to go to college is fibbing. The Zellers simply do not work that way. They don’t do drama. If Cody at some point in the last few weeks had come to a final decision, he would have just gone ahead and said as much. The very act of holding a press conference is, I’d guess, an uncomfortable display verging too closely on boasting. But it’s necessary because otherwise they’d have to field phone calls from 50 reporters, all with the same questions.
Maybe word has leaked out in the past few days since Cody decided he was ready for an announcement, but I simply don’t see a scenario in which he knew, for sure, a few weeks ago. That’s when he became fodder for radio and internet folks who needed to grab your attention. Because, economically, it’s not very complicated: attention equals money. That’s a pretty straight line, and one that is, unfortunately, often easier to see than the connection between being responsible and building a loyal audience that will guarantee revenue.
Cody Zeller to IU: What it all means
He walked into a gym on the first day he was allowed to, found just the man he wanted to — Washington boys’ basketball coach Gene Miiller — and discussed the player he knew he needed to have, and finally got today: Cody Zeller.
This was in the spring of 2008, not long after Crean took the head coaching job at Indiana. Originally unable to recruit on the road due to sanctions stemming from NCAA violations committed by Kelvin Sampson and his staff, Crean received clearance to head out on the road for a few days during the early period. He attended the Top 100 workout at Ben Davis. Upon walking into the long hallway leading to the gym, he saw Miller and stalked straight to him.
This was, even then, about Cody Zeller.
At the time, Zeller could hardly walk. His feet seemed as big, heavy and nimble as cinder blocks. The rest of him was rail thin. Guards whose bodies had filled out earlier would muscle him in the post. Wings with better coordination swooped past him often. While he was certainly a valuable high school and AAU player at the time, you had to know something about the Zellers before you could realize how important landing him was.
Not that Indiana had pushed for Luke. Mike Davis barely gave him a look. While that didn’t cause too much consternation among the fan base — the first Zeller was not all that hyped — it did cause some concern. To many it felt as though Indiana should have at least handled the situation with more class; it always paid, they felt, to recruit top players in Indiana and find a way to make them a part of the program if that is their desire.
Kelvin Sampson did recruit Tyler Zeller, and he and his staff felt they were in good position with the middle brother. During Sampson’s first year, the Hoosiers showed traits that anybody who cares about basketball the way people from Indiana do adore: hustle, dedication to defense, desire to rebound. That appealed to Tyler. What happened next didn’t. Sampson became distracted by the violation situation, and the players on his team lost discipline. The culture didn’t feel right for the Zellers, and they knew trouble was on the horizon.
So as the dust settled or the clouds lifted or the smoke cleared — whatever it was that happened in those first days after Crean arrived — it became abundantly clear that recruiting Cody Zeller would be important. Even as gawky sophomore, Zeller showed as much — if not more — promise than his brothers. He’d had to play them over and over in family games, after all. But this much was inevitable, too: he was the type of player that traditional IU fans wanted the team to be built around. He’s not flashy. He appreciates the fundamentals. He keeps it simple. He plays with gusto.
Crean knew this then, and Zeller’s importance only grew over the next few years. He showed a strong inside-outside game, something Crean loves. He got stronger. He bonded with other players around the state during a time when, even by Indiana’s lofty standards, the classes were pretty impressive. He showed that he was a winner.
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