For my money, Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis is one of the better college basketball journalists in all of the land. Most of you probably know him best from his work in the studio alongside Greg Gumbel on CBS, but Davis also writes columns for SI and published When March Went Mad earlier this year.

Since most of us are trained to read recruiting writings from the likes of Jody Demling of The Louisville Courier-Journal or Dave Telep of Scout.com, it’s not often that we get the opinion of a scribe who normally doesn’t follow recruiting as a religion.

Davis hit the recruiting trail hard last week and today published his scouting reports of several of the nation’s top players, including three IU recruiting targets:

Kyrie Irving, 6-2, 175, Elizabeth, N.J.: Irving is the point guard at St. Patrick’s High, which includes 6-8 junior Michael Gilchrist, whom I wrote about last week. You think that’s a tough inside-outside combo? Irving isn’t as strong as Selby, but he is such a deft ball-handler with a mean crossover that he repeatedly gets by his defender in the half court. Irving is more of a true point guard than a scorer, and his outgoing personality enables him to be a strong leader. His recruitment seems to be wide open, but his coach at St. Patrick’s, Kevin Boyle, told me that Indiana, spearheaded by its assistant Roshown McLeod, a New Jersey native who played for Bob Hurley at St. Anthony, has been working especially hard to get him.

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CBS and Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis has a new book out, titled “When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball.” For my work at Yahoo!, I had the chance to read an advance copy of the book and interview Davis about it the other day. Here’s a confession I’ll make: I did not know the Larry Bird-leaving-IU story. I mean, I knew it, vaguely, but I didn’t know the details of it, which is why this excerpt from the book interested me. I assume it will interest you as well:

The start of classes only intensified Bird’s feelings of isolation. Here he was, a poor, sheltered, intensely introverted teenager who had barely set foot outside his hometown of fewer than three thousand people, and he was stuck without any friends on a campus of more than thirty thousand undergraduates. He couldn’t get over the fact that he had to walk several miles just to get to class. And, as he often said half-jokingly, “I ain’t no genius in school.”

If he thought he might get some emotional support from the coaches, that notion was quickly dispelled as well. One night, while walking down the street with Jan Condra, who had also enrolled at Indiana, at Larry’s behest, and her sister, Larry looked up and saw Knight walking toward them. He stiffened and readied himself to speak to his head coach for the first time since arriving on campus. Knight walked toward Bird; Bird said hello — and Knight blew by without saying a word. “Larry didn’t say anything, but I could tell with his demeanor that his feelings were hurt,” Condra says. “Larry was used to people being a lot nicer to him. He didn’t like Coach Knight’s personality.”

Knight would later regret treating Bird so coldly. “Larry Bird is one of my great mistakes,” he said. “I was negligent in realizing what Bird needed at that time in his life.”

Bob Knight, for all his faults, was a great coach, but come on, dude. You let one of the all-time greats slip through your fingers because you couldn’t say hello to him on his walk back from class? Couldn’t give him a quick fatherly nod or something? Some sign you recognized he existed? It’s not Knight’s fault Bird was so thin-skinned, but really. Help the greatest player to ever come from Indiana (right? is there someone else that takes this title?) out a little bit.

Anyway, if you want to read the interview about all this stuff, including about how Larry Bird almost didn’t play basketball after he left Indiana, Part One of my interview with Davis is here, and Part Two is here.

There’s been no shortage of articles addressing Kelvin Sampson and the IU program over the last six days. Most have rehashed the same thing over and over, but Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated (he’s also a studio analyst for CBS) hit the jackpot yesterday when he penned a column on the current state of the Hoosiers.

Davis gave us a little bit of everything, including some candid thoughts from Sampson regarding recent comments made by former players Kent Benson, Ted Kitchel and Joe Hillman.

Here are some of the highlights:

Sampson on the former players and their recent comments:

“Whatever the former players say is fine with me, because this is their program. I’m just coaching it right now.”

Sampson on his reputation:

“My reputation will take a hit. But you know what? It should, because I’m the leader of this program and this is my responsibility.”

On Jordan Crawford:

“Jordan Crawford is the best player out here,” he announced at one point. “He’s like a stallion that hasn’t been broken yet.”

He also revealed the Sampson has received calls of support from Pat Graham, Calbert Cheaney, Todd Leary and Larry Bird. That’s an impressive list.

We’ve heard about Jordan Crawford all summer from other players and the media, but this is further confirmation that he’ll make an immediate impact. The one time I saw Crawford he was very raw, but I felt that his length and athleticism would net him significant playing time from day one. With Crawford, Jamarcus Ellis, Armon Bassett and Eric Gordon, A.J. Ratliff could have a hard time finding minutes upon his return.

Davis’s fearless prediction for the Hoosiers is a Big Ten title and beyond that, a tough out in the third or fourth round.

If you think clicking on a national writer’s column and reading a fawning take on a soon-to-be Hoosier is ever going to get old, well, you’re wrong. The latest props for an incoming IU recruit? Seth Davis’ take on Devin Ebanks, IU’s top 2008 get:

Skinny: Every kid growing up in Queens dreams of playing his college ball in … Bloomington, Indiana? That’s where Ebanks is headed next season, and the Hoosiers faithful will love what they’re getting. Ebanks reminds me of a young Rudy Gay, but mentally he’s ahead of where Gay was at this point. For example, the gold medal game at the USA Basketball Festival tipped off at 8:30 in the morning. Most of the players were barely awake when the game began, but Ebanks put himself through a hard warmup routine (he listened to an iPod as he went through the paces) and was the only guy ready to go when play started. As IU coach Kelvin Sampson likes to say, that shows he’s got a little mud in his blood.

Ain’t it great? Attracting top talent is one thing. Getting kids like Eric Gordon and Ebanks, players who seem to care every bit as much about intense self-improvement as their coach, well, what more can you ask for? Put your crimson shades on — that future is awfully bright.