We’ve tracked Kelvin Sampson, Brandon McGee, Jordan Crawford, Eli Holman, Armon Bassett, DeAndre Thomas and you can all sleep easy now that Jamarcus Ellis has surfaced at Oklahoma City University.

As much as I’d like to keep an eye on the progress of these fine young men at their new institutions, they’re no longer a part of the IU family and will be treated as such on this very blog.

Translation: Unless you hit up the archives, you won’t be reading about McGee, Crawford, Holman, Bassett, Thomas or Ellis around these parts. Sampson is a different story because we’ll always welcome opportunities for cheap shots until the NCAA dust settles. (We’ll also welcome your attempts at heckling him when he returns for the Bucks and Pacers later this season in Conseco Fieldhouse.)

It’s been an offseason of recruiting that has produced a lot of what-might-have-beens for Northern Kentucky University men’s basketball coach Dave Bezold, but he may be on the cusp of a major coup.

Multiple sources say former Indiana University forward Jamarcus Ellis, who was selected honorable mention All-Big Ten this past season, is strongly considering transferring to NKU. According to the sources he visited NKU a few weeks ago and came away impressed, especially with the new Bank of Kentucky Center.

So in a little more than a year Ellis has gone from the Junior College Player of the Year to a guy who will be lucky to suit up at a Division II school. Probably not what he had in mind when he arrived in Bloomington, but when you combine an attitude that was poisonous to the team environment down the stretch with shaky academics, what do you expect?

{HT: Basketblog}

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – ­ Indiana Men’s Basketball Coach Tom Crean announced today that junior DeAndre Thomas has been dismissed from the program and will not have his scholarship renewed. In addition, sophomore Armon Bassett will not be reinstated for failing to comply with University and Athletic Department guidelines. Junior Jamarcus Ellis also will not be reinstated to the active roster. Both Bassett and Ellis were originally dismissed from the program on March 31. Crean also announced on Thursday that freshman Eli Holman could not return next season.

“Before you build a team, you need to develop a family,” said Crean. “We will go through the learning process, feel some growing pains and experience some bumps in the road along the way. We need the Hoosier Nation to rally around this program as we go through these stages.”

“Our staff if going to ensure that anyone who attends this University and wears the Indiana uniform will make this privilege among their highest priorities and not treat the opportunity as an entitlement,” added Crean. “We fully expect our student-athletes to accept the responsibilities academically, athletically and socially that come with representing one of the top programs in college basketball history.”

New Indiana coach Tom Crean will be down to three returning scholarship players and eight players in all for next season once the school officially announces the departures of four Hoosiers later Friday afternoon, a high-ranking Indiana source told ESPN.com.

Sophomore Armon Bassett and junior Jamarcus Ellis, who had appealed their suspensions by former interim coach Dan Dakich, were dismissed from the program. Junior forward DeAndre Thomas will also not return and neither will freshman Eli Holman, who has elected to transfer after a meeting Thursday that required a call to campus police when Holman became agitated.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does. More later today after we’re able to wrap our collective brains around this mess. For now, I’ll just say: Thank you Kelvin Sampson. Not.

So what does this poor academic standing mean for the team at large? Perhaps a scholarship loss.

If Indiana fails to meet the NCAA’s cutoff score, 925, it faces the prospect of losing more scholarships. The school already stripped itself of one next season because of Kelvin Sampson’s alleged phone call violations, and The Indianapolis Star reported the men’s basketball team is expected to turn in a score of 899 next month.

Neither Crean nor team spokesman J.D. Campbell would confirm that number Tuesday.

NCAA rules say any team below 925 could lose a scholarship for each player who leaves the school while academically ineligible. The maximum penalty in men’s basketball is two scholarships.

Crean declined to identify specific players who were struggling in the classroom because of privacy laws, but acknowledged he is concerned about the Hoosiers’ academic performance as a whole. Plus, he still has not decided whether to reinstate starting guards Armon Bassett and Jamarcus Ellis, who were dismissed from the team just hours before Crean took the job April 1.

So basically here’s the deal: if Armon Bassett or Jamarcus Ellis or anyone else ends up leaving IU — and they also happen to be academically ineligible — IU could very well lose another scholarship. Hoosier Nation reported that Ellis was one of the seven players on the team that had a GPA above 3.0 first semester, so if he happened to leave, a betting man would say he might be leaving in good (enough) academic standing.

This certainly isn’t the worst thing to befall the program in recent months, but it’s a bit unsettling nonetheless. Crean has a stellar graduation rate and a strong focus on grades; hopefully this is the last time we have to deal with something like this under his tenure.

From a basketball standpoint, allowing both Bassett and Ellis to return to the program is a no-brainer. The duo represents IU’s only returning starters for next season’s team and their presence would go a long way in solidifying a shot at middle of the road stature in next year’s Big Ten race.

Unfortunately, due to the actions of both players over the course of this past season, this decision is not simply about basketball. In his press conference following IU’s loss to Arkansas, then interim coach Dan Dakich talked about changes that were needed to send the program in the right direction. And a couple of weeks later, Dakich, with the approval of the athletic department, booted Bassett and Ellis from the team.

While it is unclear exactly what type of infractions were committed to lead to their dismissal, rest assured it was much more than missed meetings and refusals to “own up” to those missed appointments. Neither guy seemed willing to let Dakich do his job in the tough situation he inherited. Ellis was shown in a few instances talking back to Dakich on the sidelines and Bassett had already been suspended once before. No matter how tough the situation was for everyone involved, their disrespectful behavior towards Dakich cannot be justified.

Now the responsibility to sort out this mess falls on the shoulders of Crean. I’m confident he’ll make the right decision for the program, the university and the players. If that means allowing both guys to return if they meet certain criteria set out by Crean, we should welcome them back to the program once they’ve paid the price. Or if Crean decides they don’t deserve another shot, I’m positive the rationale behind that decision will be plentiful.

Either way, it’s important to remember that no one individual is, or ever will be, bigger than the program.

Those of you interested, I wrote a quick post this morning discussing Dan Dakich’s huge huevos for dismissing Armon Bassett and Jamarcus Ellis at the Dagger. Here’s a little taste:

The entire situation is incredibly weird: According to this report in the Indianapolis Star, the two players missed a meeting that they weren’t allowed to miss, which is not something one should be doing but which is not at all grounds for dismissal. According to the Bloomington Herald-Times, Dakich wanted the players to run sprints, and they told him they wouldn’t, another act of insubordination that’s not exactly polite but which isn’t grounds for getting the long boot goodbye, either.

Of course there’s more: Both players had disciplinary issues under former coach Kelvin Sampson that caused them to miss games, and those issues were never revealed. So Dakich’s sudden curb-kicking was seen by some last night as an administration cleaning house by using a surrogate lame-duck coach to do so; all the while Dakich gets coaching cred among Indiana’s conservative faithful for clearing the team of troublemakers. [...]

Check out the whole piece if you have a chance, and feel free to leave a comment at The Dagger.

This thing is so incredibly weird. Either Dakich is acting alone, without the permission of the university and the athletic department, and just dismissing players he’ll never have a chance to coach again … or the administration is using him to clean house before they bring in a new coach. I still don’t get it. Does anyone else?

According to a report by Terry Hutchens of the Indianapolis Star, interim head coach Dan Dakich has dismissed Armon Bassett and Jamarcus Ellis from the team. Here is the rationale, according to Hutch:

Both players missed two prearranged meetings last week. They were told if they missed the second meeting, they would be kicked off the team.

There has to be more to this story than missing a meeting. Both players were suspended at one point this past season for undisclosed reasons. As a fan, I must say I’m not real comfortable with an interim head coach kicking players off the team. At the same time, the players do need to listen to Dakich as long as he is in charge. The soap opera that is Indiana basketball seems to be getting worse as the days go by. Someone, please stop the bleeding.

Update: A report tonight by the Hoosier Scoop says both players hope to return to the program when a new coach is named.

More from ITH:

• Complete coaching search coverage

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College basketball seasons are long and dynamic things. They’re not like college football seasons, which require drilled excellence from the outset and where a midseason loss can kill your chances at winning a truly screwed-up national championship. They’re not like NFL or NBA seasons, where each team is basically what they are starting in training camp. They’re not baseball seasons, either, where the playoffs are such a comparably small sample size that all a fan can hope for is a division title — the rest feels like a crapshoot.

Instead, college basketball teams, the ones that compete in March, have similar blueprints: They roll the balls out in October, look terrible in November and December, coalesce in January, fade slightly in February, and, if they’re really good, peak in March when the games matter most. This blueprint hits close to home; just look at Michigan State this year. Or North Carolina. Or any of the teams still playing basketball next weekend. Or any of the 20 or so teams that lost last weekend that deserved to win. That’s the blueprint you’re supposed to follow.

I wish we could look back at IU’s season, as this TMA intends to, and say they followed the blueprint. A loss to a good Arkansas team under those auspices would have been OK. But we can’t say that. Instead, they didn’t push to the finish, or peak in their late games. They quit. They just quit. And for some reason, I’m not even mad.

What can you be mad about? Not at the players. I’ve said this before, but it’s like mom (IU) and dad (Sampson) divorced in the middle of high school. College basketball players aren’t so removed from their teenage years. How did you think they’d respond? How would you have responded?

You can get angry at the administration for bungling the situation on about 100 different levels, but you can’t really get angry at them for firing Sampson in-season. Fans were calling for his head, and to save their own face and improve the prospects of a top-flight coach coming to IU in the next few weeks, they had to act quickly and decisively. Sampson had to be gone. You can’t blame them for trying to end a bad situation as soon as possible.

If you want to get angry, don’t blame the players, and don’t blame the administration. (At least not for this. Fall break — now that’s an issue to get mad about.) Blame Kelvin Sampson. He ruined everything, not only for himself, but the players he claimed to love, and for the university he devoted himself to. He had the balls to sit in the office of the winningest coach of all time — a coach with his own flaws, but with high standards, too — and merely pay lipservice to the notions many fans hold dear to their hearts. But he didn’t get it. It’s not just talk. It can’t be, not at IU. That Sampson didn’t understand the difference, that he was simultaneously so audacious and dumb as to assume his words were nothing more than a pacifier to his constituent public — well, that’s why he deserves scorn.

He made the season a sad footnote, made Dan Dakich an ineffective interim babysitter, made the players wonder where their father was. That’s where the anger belongs, if you believe it belongs anywhere: at Sampson’s feet.

Me? I’m not mad at all, like I said above. Anything positive that would happened after Sampson’s departure would have been a bonus. What’s the point in being all pissed off about a season that ended eight games ago? All you can do is gear up for the coaching search, throw your support into one corner or another, enjoy the rest of the tournament, and move on. Here’s trusting IU won’t make the same mistake twice. Here’s hoping they get the right guy. And here’s saying goodbye to everything that came before, where we — because this is sports, and not real life — can say without a drop of cynicism that a new day is dawning. And who could be mad about that?

– As for Arkansas, there’s not a whole lot to add. Eric Gordon (more on him below) didn’t suddenly start hitting shots again; IU didn’t suddenly start defending again; Dakich continued to force them to play man-to-man, a style at which they were never adept. It was the same sad story as every other post-Sampson game. IU gave up 86 points — 86! — on 66 possessions, and though their offense was OK, it’s very, very difficult to win when you allow 1.3 points per possession.

Positives? They’re hard to find. Maybe Lance Stemler hitting a couple of shots? Maybe, um … I don’t know. That was probably it, and even that felt kind of bitter. (Stemler waits until now to start shooting. Fantastic.)

– Friday’s loss meant saying goodbye to both Eric Gordon and D.J. White, and I’d assume that most fans have remarkably different opinions of the two players. We all know D.J. White’s story, and we all know that he was really the only player on the team fighting for anything down the stretch, or at least the only player having success doing so. White’s legacy will be one of loyalty and devotion and unfulfilled promises, but he will be canonized in Hoosier lore in very positive ways. In four years of tumult, he was a constant. He deserves credit — and every IU fan’s best wishes for a profitable pro career — for that.

But what about Eric Gordon? What legacy does he leave?

I think it’s safe to say, as the year closes, that Gordon is still vastly overrated in a variety of ways … but not as overrated as the last few games would make him seem. It’d be easy to jump on without remembering that Gordon is a freshman, and that freshmen are prone to injury, wear and tear, streaky shooting, and turnovers. We saw all of that in Gordon. We also saw some remarkable potential that he can fill, potential that might yet make him a slightly bigger version of Ben Gordon. The shame is that we won’t get to see what Gordon might have done with a year under his belt, what his progress as a sophomore might have been, if he could have competed for national awards commensurate to his obvious ability.

His legacy is mixed. It’s a shame — though an entirely justifiable one — that it’s also so short.

– As for the rest of these players, I’ll be the first to say I’m glad Jamarcus Ellis is going to come back, and I’m glad he seems to be saying the right things in regard to dealing with a new coach. Next year is Ellis’ shot — as a Juco guy, he only gets two — and he’d do well to make use of it. Same goes for DeAndre Thomas. Thomas needs to continue to shed pounds and to work on his vertical jump and strength in the post. He could be a valid contributor next year.

Armon Bassett was perhaps this season’s most pleasant individual surprise. He unveiled a truly consistent outside jumper, showed lots of defensive progress, and developed as a “true” point guard. Here’s hoping the new coach does enough to win him over before Bassett is swooned by a big program in need of a dead-eye shooter.

Lance Stemler was Lance Stemler. Lance was always asked to do things he had never done before in his life, so I will always appreciate his willingness to do so to find a spot at a higher level. If only he had been the shooter we were all promised; turns out, he was a volume guy, and there was no reason to give Stemler volume, like, ever.

Jordan Crawford was also a pleasant surprise this season. Crawford is a much more typical freshman than Gordon or Derrick Rose or any of the other super-frosh heading to college these days, but a few years ago, when the rest of those players would have gone pro, Crawford’s game would have been even more highly touted. All told, he’s a good shooter, a creative offensive player, a decent, if turnover-prone, passer, and a really bad defender. In other words, he’s a freshman. It’d be great to see him blossom over four years, but you couldn’t blame Crawford if he found somewhere else that recruited him a year ago. He has a bright future ahead.

Farewell, Mike White. We hardly knew ye.

Kyle Taber found a home this year. So long as he never, ever shoots the ball outside four feet — something Taber understands well, which is refreshing — I’ll be glad to have him back.

Eli Holman says he’ll be back. Please, Eli — harness that athleticism. Please.

And everyone else: It was a season. It was OK at points. Bad at a lot of others. But like I said above, a new day is dawning. Let’s try to have some fun with it.

Editor’s Note: You can read more of PostmanE’s take on college basketball at the Dagger on Yahoo! Sports.

Indiana’s players were all over the board when asked about their future at IU. All of them said they want to wait until a new coach is named and they could meet with that coach.

Two in particular — junior college transfers Jamarcus Ellis and DeAndre Thomas — indicated they plan to be back next season. Freshman center Eli Holman also thought he would be back. But Armon Bassett, Jordan Crawford and Brandon McGee all said they needed time to sort everything out before deciding.

Ellis said he didn’t feel comfortable talking about what anyone else on his team would do.

“I can only speak for myself, and I’m just looking forward to getting to know the new coach, whoever that may be, and getting in the gym and working hard, because I have a lot of things I can do better in my game,” Ellis said.

Crawford said he plans to see what comes about with a new coach.

That was about the best quote Jamarcus could have given. If he has that attitude going into next season and buys into the new coach, expect him to return to the stat-stuffing player we all loved early on. As far as the other players go, if Indiana makes the right hire, I think everyone will be back. In my view, Bassett is the most important piece to keep in Bloomington. He is on track to develop into an All-Big Ten player and he’s a big piece of the puzzle if IU hopes to field a team capable of making the NCAA Tournament next season (assuming the NCAA doesn’t drop the hammer in June).