Senior forward Derek Elston played for the first time this season in No. 6 Indiana’s 93-54 victory against Mount St. Mary’s on Wednesday night, but freshmen Jeremy Hollowell and Peter Jurkin failed to get off the bench.
Hollowell had been part of the Hoosiers’ regular rotation through the first 10 games, and he was in uniform and warmed up with the Hoosiers prior to the game against the Mountaineers. And Jurkin, who was suspended for the first nine games of the season and didn’t get off the bench on Saturday against Butler, also didn’t play on Wednesday despite the Hoosiers’ large lead.
Afterward, Indiana coach Tom Crean didn’t offer much in the way of a concrete explanation.
In his opening statement, Crean said: ”We dealt with a multitude of situations with staff and players, whether it be an injury or a sickness.”
He went on to mention that athletic trainer Tim Garl had been sick all day and some of the staff had been as well. But he never said definitively why Hollowell or Jurkin did not play despite repeated inquiries.
When asked if Hollowell was sick as well, Crean said: ”Yeah. We just had a multitude of things we dealt with and we played the guys that were there to play for us and help us.”
And then when asked specifically about Jurkin, Crean continued to be vague: ”I went with the guys that I played. That’s who I went with.”
Elston, meanwhile, returned to the floor ahead of schedule. The Tipton native had knee surgery prior to the start of the season, and the team had targeted a return shortly after Christmas.
But Elston worked hard in his rehabilitation, practiced lightly over the last few days, and got on the floor for nine minutes against Mount St. Mary’s. Elston made his only field goal attempt, scoring two points and grabbing two rebounds to go along with a blocked shot.
Elston received a standing ovation from the Assembly Hall crowd when he entered the game in the first half.
“It felt great to get back out there again,” Elston said. “You can only go through so many practices without it actually hitting you that you want to get out there, get in front of the crowd and see what you can do.
“The standing ovation, that just shows that these people really haven’t forgotten about me. It shows that maybe I do [matter] to this program. Sometimes when you get hurt like that and you’re out so long, you feel like people kind of forget about you. Sometimes, inside of any player, especially me, I feel like people just don’t remember you. But when I go out there and I get that, that standing ovation, it makes me feel special.”
Through its first nine games, Indiana has lived up to the preseason narrative that placed the Hoosiers at the top of the national polls.
Around the Hall is recommended reading from the Inside the Hall staff:
That’s A Wrap: Hanner Mosquera-Perea, Peter Jurkin
Welcome to “That’s A Wrap,” our player-by-player recap of the 2012-2013 Indiana Hoosiers. Today: Hanner Mosquera-Perea and Peter Jurkin.
Mosquera-Perea (20 games): 0.9 ppg, 1.5 rpg, 38.5% FG, 41.2% FT in 5.7 minutes per game.
Jurkin (3 games): No stats recorded in seven total minutes.
A major storyline early in Indiana’s season was the eligibility status of freshmen Hanner Mosquera-Perea and Peter Jurkin. Both players ultimately were suspended for nine games for accepting benefits from their AAU coach, Mark Adams, who was later deemed to be an IU booster by the NCAA because of varsity club bumper stickers he purchased before either player was born.
The NCAA’s ruling, when it was made public in early November, was so unbelievable that it angered many fans and fueled discussion from commentators like Jay Bilas on just how out of touch the organization based in Indianapolis had become.
And for Mosquera-Perea and Jurkin, neither of whom understood at the time why the NCAA had reached its decision to keep them sidelined, it was the beginning of a season that would never get on track. By the time both players became eligible on Dec. 15 for Indiana’s game with Butler at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, valuable game time in the early non-conference season had already been missed.
Jurkin played sparingly in three games — Florida Atlantic, Jacksonville and Penn State — before being shut down with an undisclosed foot injury. By the end of the season, he wasn’t even dressing and was wearing a boot. And Mosquera-Perea, who had an ankle issue in the fall and into the early season, never played more than eight minutes in a game after Big Ten play tipped off.
Coming into the season, Indiana’s depth was viewed by many as a strength and both players (Mosquera-Perea to a greater extent) figured to be a part of a frontline that could spell Cody Zeller when the All-American needed a break. That never materialized. Moving into next season, it’s hard to take inventory and come up with a good idea of the role either player will fill in the program moving forward.
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