You can read the transcript of our chat with ESPN.com senior writer Pat Forde below. Special thanks to Pat for joining us and to everyone who participated.

I’ve already said my piece on attendance at Assembly Hall this year, but since then and the addition of the $5 tickets in the balcony, attendance hasn’t been too shabby. If you make it cheaper, they will come. Sunday against the Illini, IU is going for a stripe out, having certain sections wear red, and others wear white. This is an idea I’ve heard proposed among students for a while now; I’m glad someone in the athletic department decided to actually follow through on it. Should be cool to see in action. (Correction: IU did a stripe out last year for the Michigan State game. Thanks commenter BornRed.)

According to Pat Forde (a one-time interview subject here at ITH), Assembly Hall is near sold out for the stripe out and compared to at least one team that’s been successful this year, we’re outdrawing them.

The first was the sight of Indiana (2) players and coaches engaging in a virtual group hug with the crowd of 14,247 in Assembly Hall after (finally) winning a Big Ten game last week against Iowa. The second was the news that Arizona State (3) is hoping to draw more than 11,000 fans for the first time this season when UCLA comes to Tempe on Thursday.

You read that right. The Hoosiers are 6-16, enduring what might be the worst season in school history — and easily outdrawing the 18th-ranked, 18-5 Sun Devils.

This is what’s known as the difference between a basketball school and a non-basketball school.

At Indiana, the winning percentage is .273 this season, but the gym is full to 79.8 percent capacity (average attendance is 13,933). The fans are overachieving.

At Arizona State, the winning percentage is .783, but 14,198-seat Wells Fargo Arena has been only 58.2 percent full. The fans are missing out on a good show from coach Herb Sendek, James Harden & Co.

Well, that’s sure comforting. In a year where the product on the court has been pretty brutal, our fans are still showing up in bigger numbers than a ranked program at the moment.

Small victories. I’ll take it.

I woke up this morning to an interesting exercise performed by longtime Courier-Journal columnist Rick Bozich. The question posed to 30 knowledgeable college basketball minds was as follows: “If you were buying stock in 10 college basketball programs, which 10 would you buy and in what order?”

Some of the names of those who participated (and among my favorite college hoops scribes in the country): Pat Forde of ESPN.com, Blair Kerkhoff of The Kansas City Star and Skip Myslenski of The Chicago Tribune. It’s also important to note that Greg Doyel of CBS Sportsline wasn’t included, which immediately brings more credibility to the survey.

Here were the results:

Ten points were awarded for a first-place vote, nine for second and on down to one point for a 10th-place vote.

The voting (first-place votes in parentheses):

1. North Carolina (23) 293 points; 2. UCLA (4) 264; 3. Kansas (1) 208; 4. Duke (2) 171; 5. Florida 126; 6. Texas 106; 7. Louisville 99; 8. Kentucky 89; 9. Memphis 73; 10. Georgetown 62.

Also receiving votes: Michigan State 45, Connecticut 36, Indiana 24, Ohio State 19, Tennessee 13, Arizona 9, Stanford 4, Gonzaga 4, Wisconsin 3, Washington State 2, Xavier 2, Southern California 1, Marquette 1, Pittsburgh 1.

To be perfectly honest, I was surprised to see IU this high on the survey given the recent tournament success (or lack thereof) and the uncertainty regarding the program due to possible NCAA sanctions. However, I think the results speak highly for not only the tradition of the program but also the potential for success under Tom Crean moving forward.

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We’re already hearing things about the coaching search — Kevin Stallings this, Scott Skiles that — so it’s probably appropriate to make a note of Pat Forde’s story today about Bruce Pearl. It’s a lot of stuff most of you probably already know. For example, Pearl’s fiasco at Iowa, when he turned rival Illinois in for recruiting violation — and that made him a pariah in the tight-knit, stop snitching world of college basketball coaching — is common knowledge. Also, if you aren’t privy by now to the man’s record, or his charisma, you probably don’t have ESPN.

Still, after reading Forde’s story, it’s pretty impossible not to want Bruce Pearl to be the next head coach at IU. See for yourself.

We spend plenty of time discussing IU basketball here, but there’s a whole world of hoops just beyond these borders. To help us get a national perspective — as well as discuss media and, OK, the Hoosiers too — we exchanged some lighthearted and interesting emails with ESPN.com’s Pat Forde.

Forde is one of ESPN.com’s more talented and consistently entertaining writers. He covers college football and basketball for the .com, and is a former columnist at the Louisville Courier-Journal. Our questions are in bold.

Inside The Hall: You left the Louisville Courier-Journal after 17 years in 2004 to join ESPN.com. What was the transition like moving to the most widely read sports Web site in the country? What are the pluses and the minuses of working at a newspaper versus a Web site?

Pat Forde: The transition has been great. It was hard to leave behind a lot of friends and emotional capital invested in the newspaper, and the newspaper business. It was the only place I’d ever worked as an adult. And even after moving on I’ve come to have even greater respect for some of the people there and the care given given to every story.

But if I complain about my current job, shoot me. I work for the industry leader in sports coverage, where they never think small, and never plead poverty as an excuse for not doing the job right. The impact of ESPN is amazing and was brought home to me my first fall on the job, when we broke the news that Urban Meyer had said yes to Florida. Within minutes I was on Dan Patrick’s radio show and a satellite truck was on its way to my house to do live TV for most of the rest of the day. When ESPN mobilizes to cover breaking news, it’s something to see.

As for pluses and minuses: The greatest advantages to ESPN.com are the lack of limitations. Deadlines and space are never problems, so we can cover events and issues in much greater detail than newspapers. Especially night games. Our travel budget is robust, so we go places where newspapers no longer go to report stories. The only minuses for me is the increased travel, which can be difficult with a wife and three kids. I miss a lot of stuff.

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