It’s the best day of the year for college basketball. (Well, it’d be better if IU were playing, but I think that’s understood around these parts.) With that said, we’ve decided to open up a thread to discuss all things NCAA Tournament.

We’ve also, thanks to our friends at Yardbarker, added a widget below which allows you to track scores as well as a link below to the March Madness On Demand Player. So sit back, minimize that spreadsheet you’ve been working on all day and let the games begin.

Launch March Madness On Demand Player

I know it’s a hard day for most of you, watching now the second tournament in a row that Indiana has missed by quite some distance. And it probably doesn’t help your psyche to bring up some former Hoosiers who will take the floor hoping for their shining moment over the next two days. But I’m going to do it anyway.

Armon Bassett (yes, that Armon Bassett) went absolutely wild for Ohio in the Mid-American Conference tournament last week, scoring 25, 38, 28 and 25 points over four games to lead the Bobcats to a MAC title and an NCAA appearance.

Asked in the build-up to the NCAA tournament during yesterday’s media session about his checkered past, Bassett had this to say:

“I just got to thank God just for blessing me. I know I had some hiccups, but I managed to come out of those and weather the storm. I’m just happy to be here again.”

After having a day to listen to the various interviews after Indiana’s season-ending loss on Thursday to Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament, I came across one particular question and answer that I felt worthy of our attention.

The question came from Indianapolis Star columnist Bob Kravitz, who asked the final question in Tom Crean’s postgame presser. Kravitz asked Crean to address the need for some big guys in the program and received this lengthy response:

“I think we have a lot of needs, Bob. And I think we’ve gotta develop the bigs that we have. We’ve got a very tough situation right now in the sense, if people have followed our program at all, which I know that you have, we had to get a team on the floor before we could build a program. That was last year. Then we were able to recruit guys that we wanted to, that we had a chance to develop relationships with. We’re very bottom heavy and we have to have a balancing act right now between what do we need to do in the short term versus how are we not going to have to start over again when these guys get older.”

“In the purest sense of your question, there’s no doubt we’re trying to address that in a big way. They’ve all gotta get stronger, bigger, better, more athletic that we have in the program. We’ve gotta continue to address that. But I look at our team and we also need somebody that’s better at getting in the lane. We need somebody that can get in the lane and create havoc, that can get into that paint and make decisions to get the ball to shooters. Our team will look different when you add the spacing element into it that Matt Roth and Maurice Creek bring. Obviously Maurice was our best guy at being able to absolutely get in the lane and make a play and make a good decision with it, but we’re not anywhere close to being done recruiting. And that’ll pick up again tomorrow in a big way. We’re going to address it. We have been and at the same time I have to sit here and look ahead into the future and figure out okay, how are we going to have to not do this again. That’s what’s hard because there’s a lot of good young players that we’re recruiting that we want and we’ve gotta make sure that we get those and we’ve gotta make sure we have the ability to sign them when they’re ready to come.”

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The following just popped into our inbox from Amira Schiraz, Inc, a public relations company based out of Philadelphia:

The following is a statement from Roshown McLeod following his dismissal from the Assistant Coach position at Indiana University.

“I greatly appreciate the opportunity afforded me by Indiana University. It gave me the chance to work with some amazing student athletes over the last two seasons. I wish the best for IU as they move forward.”

There will be no further comment from Roshown McLeod on this subject.

If you were looking for a juicy, tell-all story about the dismissal, well, you’re not going to get it, kids.

Listen to Indiana coach Tom Crean’s comments following Indiana’s season-ending 73-58 loss to Northwestern in the opening round of the Big Ten Tournament in the embedded media player below:

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You remember Rick Greenspan, right? Well, I’ll keep this brief, but instead of writing the Kelvin Sampson tell-all book, it appears the former Indiana Athletic Director is on his way to Rice.

KHOU-TV has the scoop:

HOUSTON—Sources tell 11 News that former Indiana University Athletic Director Rick Greenspan has been selected as the new AD at Rice University.

Greenspan will replace Chris Del Conte, who left last fall for the same post at TCU.

Greenspan was at Indiana for four years, during which time he was credited with getting $55 million worth of upgrades on university facilities.

The report goes on to mention that an announcement at Rice could come as early as Friday.

Indiana coach Tom Crean met with the media earlier this afternoon to discuss tomorrow’s Big Ten Tournament game against Northwestern, which tips at approximately 5PM ET on ESPN2. (You can read some quotes from Crean on Northwestern here.)

The second-year coach was also asked about the dismissal of assistant coach Roshown McLeod, who has yet to speak publicly but plans to do so in the coming days via a press release.

Specifically, the question posed to Crean by Dustin Dopirak of The Herald-Times was this, “You said on your radio show the other night it was abundantly clear to you that you had to make the move you did in letting Roshown go. What did he do or not do to make that abundantly clear?”

And here was the response:

“It’s where it’s at. I really don’t want to go a lot further than that. I understand the positions that you guys are in with asking that question and wanting to know more. I understand that. But everything from me right now is to make sure that we are totally focused on what we’re trying to do here. That doesn’t mean that I’m not already in the process of thinking of what I’m going to do the next time. It would be foolish for me to say, ‘Oh, I’m going to put all that off and not think about it until the end of the year.’ Of course I think about it. My job, day in and day out is to make this program better than it was the day before in every aspect and to get everybody pulling in the same direction all the time. It’s a lot easier said than done, but that’s what the challenge is every day and that’s how you want to try to have it.”

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