It will, however, be available via streaming video on BTN.com for a fee. Unless you use this coupon code: BTDN3FR33, which gives you access to the BTN.com streaming service for free for one month.

No word on how long this offer will last, but here are instructions to redeem the deal and receive a free month of the service:

– Visit video.btn.com
– Click “subscribe” in the top right corner
– Follow the directions to create an account
– Select “Big Ten Digital Network Monthly Subscription $14.95″
– Enter the coupon code BTDN3FR33 and click “Apply Coupon”
– You will see a blue line of text above that says “Applied the coupon:BTDN3FR33, please choose a product or click Clear Coupon to start over.” Your product selected will now say: “Big Ten Digital Network Monthly. First month free, then only $14.95 per month.”
– Fill out payment and contact information, check the “I Agree” box and click “Subscribe” to finalize purchase process

As long as you cancel before the end of the 30-day trial, you will not be billed. IU’s meeting with Stetson on Dec. 4 will also be on BTN.com as will the North Carolina Central game on Feb. 22.

Our goal, however, is to drive that number much higher for a couple of reasons:

– Registered comments do not have to be moderated. That saves us time and eliminates the wait for your comment to display.
– Registered comments are posted in real-time. This will be important for the changes with in-game discussion we’re planning to implement.

Registration is completely free and only requires a valid email address. The process is simple: (1) Click Post As… (2) Navigate to the Disqus tab (3) Click ‘Register a new Disqus profile (4) Fill out the required information (username, e-mail and password) and click Register. That’s it.

You can also link up your Facebook or Twitter accounts and will be able to maintain the same posting alias while tracking old posts and likes. When you sign up for your Disqus profile you will be able to associate old comments you’ve made based on your e-mail address. Having more registered users should cut down on trolls and spammers while allowing registered users to build a reputation.

And now onto the prize described in the headline. If you register a profile and post a comment on this post, you’ll automatically be entered to win one of two $20 gift cards to the new Colts Grille in downtown Indianapolis. The Colts Grille is the official restaurant of the Indianapolis Colts and has 66 HD flat screen TVs, over 80 delicious menu items, 32 beers on draft, 32 bottled selections, 32 wines, and 32 unique specialty drinks and martinis.

This giveaway is open to new and existing users, as long as you comment on this post with a registered profile before Wednesday, November 2 at 7 p.m. (ET).

Another season of Indiana basketball is upon us. For Inside the Hall, it’s our fifth season of coverage and third as a credentialed member of the IU press corps. It’s been a busy seven months since our last update and we hit the road hard in the offseason.

Here’s a list of some of the events we provided coverage from: the Indiana-Kentucky All-Star series, the Indiana Junior-Senior boys exhibition games, the IndyBall.com Shootout in Indianapolis, the Derby Festival Basketball Classic in Louisville, the Spiece Run ‘N Slam Classic in Ft. Wayne, the adidas May Classic, the Eric Gordon All-Star Classic in Merrillville, the NBPA Top 100 Camp, the IBCA Top 100 Camp in Indianapolis, the USSFA Shootout in Indianapolis and Carmel, the adidas Invitational in Indianapolis, the Kentucky Hoopfest in Louisville, the Best of the Midwest in Fishers, the GRBA National Championships in Ft. Wayne and the John Lucas Midwest Invitational in Louisville.

Our mobile site also launched in late May and after some initial techical issues, it’s added a better site experience for mobile browsing. On the desktop browsing side, we recently added in a couple of new custom post types called “Quicklinks” and “Quickvideo” to help us better aggregate and share information.

We’re once again gearing up for our season coverage as we’ll cover most home games in person and will also hit the road for a few contests as well. To fill the void of Zach Osterman’s departure for Inside Indiana last spring, Justin Albers of The Indiana Daily Student will be joining us in late November through the end of the season. Joe Eberhardt will continue to see more games, provide analysis and collect film from the Indianapolis-area high school scene. Pick To Click will return for the Big Ten season.

Our community continues to experience growth as we’ve seen comments posted from 2,036 different readers in 2011. Your support and engagement continues to push us in our effort to move Inside the Hall forward.

Despite inquiries to take Inside the Hall behind a paywall, we continue to believe that our future lies in providing the best free IU content available by relying on advertising and donations.

Over the next few weeks, we’re reaching out, as we’ve typically done twice per year, to ask for your support. We are not asking for a monthly donation and by no means should you feel obligated. If you are able to offer support (no amount is too small), please be assured that your contribution will go directly towards supporting costs associated to maintaining the site (server, writer compensation, travel/gas costs.)

If you’re able to donate, please click the Make a Donation button in the top right corner next to the search bar. Thank you for all of your support.

We’re staying way west of campus, because when you plan trips like this with old college friends at the last minute, options are limited.

A cab picks us up. We’re headed to Kilroy’s. Our driver tells us his family used to gather round the television for Saturday Indiana basketball games without fail during the Bob Knight era. But since The General’s been gone, he refuses to watch. Once a pillar of love, Indiana hoops has turned his heart hard.

I tell him to give Tom Crean and the new guys a chance. Tell him Crean values a lot of the same things Knight did: Academics, graduation rates, young men of character.

As we exit the cab, I don’t think I’ve changed his mind.

###

Kilroy’s is different. Unrecognizable, even. The booths along its south wall have vanished for a stairway to a second floor. The famed birth canal — inconvenient as it was — is gone. There’s a patio out back now.

This is not what I remember. This is not how it was.

And maybe, just maybe, I can empathize with our cab driver.

###

We’re walking across 17th from the tailgate fields — which are more tame these days — to Memorial Stadium. With its recent addition, the stands now wrap behind the north end zone. The sun shines off its glass.

It’s nice.

I see the newly-constructed Cook Hall in the parking lot to the east. Kids in my dorm at Briscoe used to park their cars there. Now, brand-new courts and whirlpools and weights and 24-hour access entry points reside, and the state’s finest high-school basketball talent comes for open gyms to get their first taste of the program.

It’s a strong first impression.

The five banners inside Assembly Hall, once the defining trait of the program, don’t matter as much to these kids born years after Keith Smart hit that baseline bucket.

###

Inside the Hall turns four years old today. Or maybe its our four-year anniversary.

Things have changed since the summer of 2007. Our design got a makeover, and will again soon, if I ever get around to it. Joe joined to provide recruiting news. Eamonn has left. As has Zach. Someone new will be helping us in the fall.

Alex has gone from anonymous blogger to professional journalist. He now has sources in and around the program. He’s credentialed for games. He has a relationship with both the media relations and coaching staff. He knows what’s happening with this team on an intimate level.

He’s relentlessly pounded the recruiting pavement on the weekends this summer, leaving behind his wife and baby boy — new additions to his life since ITH’s inception — to provide content for the site.

I admire his dedication and hustle.

Me? I grew a beard.

Change continues to come in the Tom Crean era: Cody Zeller is on campus. The class of 2012 brings with it an excitement not seen in Bloomington in too long.

We thank you for being here. We thank you for reading. We invite you, as life’s impermanence continues to come for all, to continue to join us on this journey.

Earlier this afternoon, we launched a mobile-friendly version of Inside the Hall that you’ll now see when you access the site from your mobile device. (It was originally launched earlier in the week, but we ran into some performance problems.) We’re still looking into the possibility of apps for both the iPhone and Android, but this theme will allow for easier reading and navigation for basically every mobile web browser.

Many of the same features on the desktop theme of ITH are available on the new mobile theme: Commenting via Disqus, most video is also available for viewing and you can browse recruit profiles and other pages by using the navigation menu in the top right corner of your screen.

We’ve received quite a bit of positive feedback via Facebook and Twitter thus far, but if you haven’t had the chance to check it out, let us know what you think in the comments.

It should take about five minutes to complete, and your participation will help us learn more about the collective you, which is important in determining what you like about the site.

This survey will help keep Inside the Hall free to read, since both current and prospective advertisers need to know their audience.

Please be assured that your responses will be anonymous and any personal information will be kept strictly confidential. No one will sell you anything.

You can access the survey by accessing the link below. We appreciate your help.

UPDATE: The survey is now closed. Thanks to all who participated.

To avoid hyperbole or unnecessary rambling: I’ve signed onto 247 Sports’ new venture with Inside Indiana. I will, unfortunately, be leaving this space, which has grown rather dear to me over the last year-plus.

I signed on with Alex and Ryan in January of last year, but the truth is, much like many of you, I had been reading Inside The Hall pretty much since its inception.

To be a part of the impressive growth the site has undertaken — even if just a small part — has been a real treat, and something I’ll probably treasure forever.

I guess this isn’t quite goodbye, as I’ll still be around. In fact if anything, my responsibilities will expand to covering football as well, so you’ll be hearing more from me than surely you could ever want to.

Again, I promised I would be brief — plus I’m awful at goodbyes — so let me please just say thank you to all of you for making my time on the site as fun and as wonderful as you have. It really was a treat.

We graciously accepted their request to be profiled for The CJR’s News Frontier Database.

The writeup, which can be viewed at this link, is something we’re proud to share with you as it speaks to just how far this community has come thanks to your support and dedication.

Another basketball season is in the books, the fourth we’ve covered since launching Inside the Hall. The on the court results were not ideal, but your passion and interest in the program and this community is growing stronger as the years move along.

Recruiting also picked up steam. The decisions of Cody Zeller and Yogi Ferrell to attend Indiana, both of which we covered in person. In fact, the day of the Zeller decision broke all of our previous traffic records. In the coming weeks, we’ll continue our coverage of the Indiana state tournament and then move right into AAU.

Our social media presence also continues to grow. The Inside the Hall Twitter following is now over 4,300 strong and over 1,250 of you “like” us on Facebook.

And last month, we finalized a new partnership agreement with Yardbarker and will continue working with our friends there for the foreseeable future.

On the technical side of things, the Zeller decision forced us to step back and look at our former hosting solution and make a significant upgrade. The result has been no downtime since late November and a much faster browsing experience.

We also enhanced the Disqus/commenting experience, adding a “plus” package to allow for real-time updating of comments. This is something we plan to take more advantage of in the future with some live commenting threads as an alternative to the Cover It Live chats.

If you have any ideas — including suggestions or concerns — please voice them in the comments or drop us an e-mail.

It’s been a busy time for us, but we’re more excited than ever about the future of this community and we hope you share those sentiments.

Over the next few weeks, we’re reaching out, as we’ve typically done twice per year, to ask for your support. We are not asking for a monthly donation and by no means should you feel obligated. If you are able to offer support, please be assured that your contribution will go directly towards supporting costs associated to maintaining the site (server, writer compensation, travel/gas costs.)

If you’re able to donate, please click the Make a Donation button in the top right corner next to the search bar. Thank you for all of your support.

Just like last year, the group is public, so let friends and family know about it. The more, the merrier. And most importantly, have fun out there. (If the first group fills up, we’ll open a second group and so on as needed.)

Join the Pick ‘Em Challenge at this link.

As the beginning of the season grows closer everyday, we once again come before you to ask for your support of Inside the Hall.

A couple of things to point out:

- The site is free and will continue to be free for everyone to read. Much of the information we publish is considered to be “premium” elsewhere. We began with a goal of building a community that would be available to and resonate with all IU fans and we feel like it’s been mission accomplished so far. 64,000 comments later, we feel like we’re well on our way.

Plans for the season:

Last season, we had our first experience on press row at Assembly Hall and once again, we’re planning to provide the same type of coverage for home games. Only this season, we expect it to be better. Alex will continue providing multimedia coverage (presser video and audio), Ryan will continue penning the Minute After, the best postgame IU baskebtall read anywhere on the Web and Zach will join Alex for in-game coverage at Assembly Hall, adding another valuable perspective to the fold. And Chris Korman will be around here and there, too.

And yes, we will continue our recruiting coverage that we’ve ramped up recently and the Pick to Click will return for a second season.

Where you come in:

Collectively, the best way for us to make all of this happen is to ask for your support. We’re not asking for a monthly donation and by no means should you feel obligated. If you are able to offer support, please be assured that your contribution will go directly towards supporting costs associated to maintaining the site (server, writer compensation, travel costs.)

We’ve decided the best way to approach this is essentially have a “donation drive” once before the season starts.

If you’re able to contribute, please click the Make a Donation button in the top right corner next to the search bar. We look forward to your feedback and questions.

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.

To address this, we’ve added two comment moderators: eph521 and Kelin Zeller. Both have graciously volunteered their time to assist us and for that we are thankful. You’ll notice a blue star by each of their names in the comments.

(It didn’t, for the record, take much to convince Kelin. He’s on the site more than any of us. Only kidding, Kelin.)

Beyond that, the best course of action is to encourage all of our commenters to get a Disqus Profile.

If you’re already commenting frequently without a Disqus Profile, you can find your existing comments using your email address and bring them into your new Disqus Profile. Easy enough, right?

You only need three things to sign up: A username, a valid email address and a password.

Once you’re registered, your comments will no longer require moderation, you’ll be able to customize an avatar that will appear with all of your posts, you’ll be able to track and subscribe to the comments of others and you’ll also have the ability to edit or delete your comments.

What are you waiting for?

Less than three weeks from this very moment that I type to you, my better half and I will (hopefully) be ensconced in our new apartment down on Dunn Street, just north of the happiest place on Earth. I am, to say the least, giddy with anticipation.

Why do I tell you this on a Friday morning? Well, because it means an even greater expansion of Inside the Hall, for you, our loyal reader.

Last season, we began to bring you on-site game coverage, and this is essentially just more of that. Alex and I will tag-team at as many home and road games as possible, and Ryan will still bring the thunder as he so capably does.

Fear not, for the face and purpose of the site do not change, that we promise. We’re just expanding the amount of content we’ll be providing you, so that Inside the Hall can continue to grow as a media outlet in the IU basketball coverage world. Plus it gives me something to do when I’m not doing hoodrat stuff with my friends in my stormtrooper body suit. (Much love, Chronic and Engel.)

Stay tuned, sports fans.

Hard to believe, right?

Many of you have been reading us from the beginning. Others have joined in along the way. But the one common passion amongst all of us is the same: Indiana basketball. This community, which has contributed over 52,000 comments in three years, is one of the best anywhere on the Web.

The last 12 months have been our best yet.

We were able to cover home games from press row for the first time. We ramped up our recruiting coverage and continue to expand in that area. Ryan picked up right where Eamonn left off with “The Minute After,” which has become must-read postgame analysis. We continue to tweak our design and brainstorm new features we think you’ll enjoy.

We know that this community is resonating with IU fans because it shows in the numbers: Our readership increased by an amazing 57 percent year-over-year. Thank you.

Our future, however, is not met without challenges. We continue to aggressively seek advertising partners to help us support our growth and provide compensation for the time associated with producing great content. What started as a hobby must now be viewed as a business as well.

We’ve also asked and will continue to ask for donations as a source of support. While this has been characterized as “begging for money” by some, the fact remains that this support is essential to continuing our growth and more importantly, keeping the site free.

In closing, we once again say thank you. We’re looking forward to celebrating birthday number four next year. Happy Birthday, Inside the Hall.

So, after going back to the drawing board for a bit, we’re happy to roll out the feature below. Use it wisely.

Introducing Fan Reports on Inside the Hall

Our friends over at Yardbarker have asked that we solicit your answers to a brief, 10-question survey to help get a better understanding of how often and why you’re reading Inside the Hall and other sites on the Yardbarker Network.

Not only will your participation help in gathering valuable data for the growth of our partnership with Yardbarker, you will also have a chance to win a $100 gift card from American Express for completing the survey.

So if you’re able to answer a few questions, please click the link below. We appreciate your help.

Yardbarker Network Survey

+ First, a recap of this past season. I was able, for the first time in the three seasons we’ve been covering the team, to make my way onto press row. (Thanks to Indiana Media Relations and J.D. Campbell for this opportunity.)

While I didn’t make it to every home game, I did make it to quite a few and was able to provide some coverage above and beyond the past few seasons (postgame audio and videos). I also got to rub elbows with the likes of Chris Korman and Dustin Dopirak, which was in a word, thrilling.

Ryan continued to produce the best post-game analysis on Indiana basketball you’ll find anywhere and we welcomed Zach into the fold and his work has exceeded expectations. The future of ITH is bright and all of us are excited about it.

+ We’ll continue our “That’s a Wrap” series over the next few weeks, hit the Indiana state finals at Conseco Fieldhouse this weekend, the Derby Festival Classic game on April 10 in Louisville and then hit some AAU events in the spring and summer.

+ Ryan and I have discussed the potential of adding a message board as the next phase in enhancing the ITH community. There are certainly pros and cons to consider before a final decision is made, but since we built this site with you, the reader, in mind, we wanted to throw this possibility out there for your discussion. There are a couple of ways we could do this:

1. An open message board where anyone is able to register and start topics. (This is a bit scary from a moderation standpoint. And also, how would it detract from comments on posts?)

2. A message board where only established users are able to start topics. Everyone else would be able to respond. (Of course, we’d need to come up with the rules.)

3. A “fan posts” option where readers would be able to submit topics and we would publish the best ones.

4. No message board. Leave things as is.

We realize there’s no “perfect” solution here, but we wanted to open this up for discussion. If you have a suggestion that’s not listed, please feel free to bring it up.

+ In closing, we’re reaching out over the next few weeks to ask for your support of the site. We’re not asking for a monthly donation and as I stated last fall, by no means should you feel obligated. Maintaining this site and consistently producing quality content is no small task, so anything you’re able to contribute is appreciated.

Consider the spring “donation drive” as starting … now.

If you’re able to donate, please click the Make a Donation button in the top right corner next to the search bar. Thank you for all of your support.

The Inside the Hall Pick’em Challenge is back. Just like last year, we’ve set up a group over at Yahoo! where you’ll be able to compete against other ITH’ers for bragging rights.

Just like last year, the group is public, so let friends and family know about it. The more, the merrier. Have fun out there, kids. (If the first group fills up, we’ll open a second group and so on as needed.)

With that said, any orders placed until the end of the February will receive a 10% discount by entering the promo code “insidethehall” at checkout. (Note: The discounted prices will not show until payment information is entered. You will then be able to review your order, with the discount applied, before submitting.) Below is a photo of the crimson men’s t-shirt. Thanks in advance for your support and as always, thanks for reading.

Inside the Hall apparel at Project571