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ESPN.com: Unassuming Cody Zeller keys Indiana Hoosiers’ turnaround

With the Zellers, competition never bred contempt. The boys are extremely close — Cody and Tyler speak on the phone frequently, especially now that they share the common war story of college basketball.

Instead, competition bred excellence.

Cody may very well wind up the best Zeller, but that could be due as much to his backyard education as to genetics. Luke, older by five years, took no mercy on his kid brother, and his constant beatdowns only made Cody tougher and more comfortable in the body-smashing world of the low post.

Tyler, taller and heavier than Cody, forced him to find ways to shoot over his bigger brother, helping Cody to develop some finesse moves. “Cody has never had a problem asserting himself,” Tyler said. “He’ll go play against anybody and compete against anybody. When it comes to basketball, he’s done just a fantastic job of learning from us, trying to become the best basketball player he can be.”

It is that combination of brawn and touch that attracted so many coaches to Cody. They loved that he had great hands and mobility for a big man, came armed with a nifty jump hook, and could score with his back to the basket and rebound.

Tags: Cody Zeller, Dana O'Neil

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Q & A: ESPN’s Dana O’Neil

by Alex Bozich in Interviews | January 20th, 2010

Dana O’Neil covers college basketball for ESPN.com. (Quite well, for those of you unfamiliar with her work.) So to help us get a sense of what it’s like working for the World Wide Leader, a national perspective on the current state of the IU program and the Big Ten as well as a few other interesting topics, Dana generously agreed to answer a few questions for Inside the Hall. You can follow her on Twitter here. The transcript of our e-mail Q & A is below:

You made the move to ESPN.com a little over two years ago after writing at The Bucks County Courier Times and The Philadelphia Daily News. What was the transition like moving from a newspaper to one of the most widely read Internet sports properties in the world?

For me, the hardest thing about moving from Philly to ESPN was getting my arms around the scope of this new job. It was a little daunting at first. There’s a comfort in familiarity. I knew Philly, Villanova, the Big 5 and the Big East so well that I could automatically put stories and situations into context. I knew the history of the programs and most of the players for four years. I knew Jay Wright since he started at Villanova. Even more, I knew the people and best of all, they knew me.

When I jumped to ESPN all of college basketball was my beat. Major gulp. I’m a college basketball fan, so I always knew what was going on in the national scene and knew the major players, or at least about them, but they didn’t necessarily know me. It was a little overwhelming to fly in to a city, watch a game, introduce myself and bam, come up with a column or a 2,000-word feature.

Like anything else, the solution was simple: do your homework and work hard. I went to the AAU tourneys in Vegas, not to watch recruits but to catch up with coaches while they were relaxed and introduce myself. Every time I went to a game if the opportunity presented, I introduced myself to the players I was interviewing. I read everything before I did a feature so I knew what I was writing about and so the person I was speaking to respected the effort.

I’m not great at this gig yet. Far from it. But I feel like I have my arms around it finally.

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Tags: Dana O'Neil