Class of 2014 guard Isaiah Whitehead is ready to announce his college decision. The Lincoln High School (N.Y.) standout will make his destination known on Thursday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in a press conference at his school. Whitehead shared his plans for a Thursday announcement on his Twitter account and Inside the Hall's Jordan Littman confirmed those plans with his high school coach, Tiny Morton. He'll choose from five schools: Indiana, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Seton Hall and St. John's.
Five publications - Athlon Sports, Blue Ribbon, Lindy's Sports, Sporting News and USA Today Sports - are out with preseason college basketball preview magazines this month or early next month. Each has a projected top 25, as well as a projected finish for the Big Ten. Indiana is No. 20 nationally in Lindy's Sports, No. 23 in USA Today Sports, No. 25 in The Sporting News and unranked by Athlon Sports and Blue Ribbon. But more interesting is the vary opinion on how the middle of the pack in the Big Ten could potentially shake out. While more than one publication can agree on the top three and bottom four, the middle five teams have produced a wide range of predictions.
With the start of college basketball season on the horizon, we’ll be taking a long look at the conference at large as well as Indiana’s roster over the next month. Today, we continue our look at the Big Ten with the Minnesota Golden Gophers. Despite reaching the 20-win plateau five times and the NCAA tournament three times over six seasons, Minnesota relieved Tubby Smith of his duties on March 25 and immediately began a search for a new head coach. Nine days later, after whiffing on its top choices, Norwood Teague hired 30-year old Richard Pitino, who had just completed his first season as a head coach at Florida International. Whether or not Pitino works out in Minneapolis, his hiring was a bit of a reality check for a program that had the belief that it could nab an elite young coach like Shaka Smart. As Pitino gets settled into his first major head coaching job, the reality of the task that lies ahead is beginning to sink in. Three elite talents from Minnesota in the class of 2014 — Tyus Jones, Rashad Vaughn and Reid Travis — are likely to leave the state. And the graduation of Trevor Mbakwe and Rodney Williams left the Golden Gophers relatively bare in the frontcourt for the upcoming season.
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Several class of 2014 prospects being recruited by Indiana will be making official visits this weekend and our latest recruiting notebook takes a look at those campus trips as well as other notes from the first week of the fall recruiting period: · Goodluck Okonoboh, one of IU's top targets in the 2014 class, will make his first official visit this weekend and Bloomington is the destination. The Hoosiers have long been considered one of the favorites to land Okonoboh and getting him on campus is the next logical step in making that happen. It's been well documented, but the relationship between Okonoboh and current IU freshman Noah Vonleh is a very good one and this weekend provides Okonoboh the opportunity for his first up close look at the Indiana campus. · Lourawls Nairn hosted Tom Crean for an in-home visit earlier in the weekend, but the major development for Nairn this week was the addition of Michigan State to his list of three finalists. Nairn had been considering a final three of Indiana, Minnesota and Oklahoma, but the Spartans are making a late push with Tyler Ulis seemingly headed to Kentucky. Nairn will be in East Lansing this weekend and then Indiana will host him for an official visit next weekend.
Indiana completed its 2013-2014 schedule on Thursday evening when it announced a pair of exhibition games that will be played at Assembly Hall. Here are the complete details, per a release from media relations: Indiana University men's basketball coach Tom Crean has announced that the Hoosiers will host the University of Southern Indiana at 7 p.m., Saturday, October 26, and Hillsdale (Michigan) College at 7 p.m., Monday, November 4 in exhibition games.
Penn State may have taken a step back last season from a wins and losses perspective, but the rebuilding effort being led by Pat Chambers continues to move along at a program with little historical success on the hardwood. If there is such a thing as a competitive two-win Big Ten team, Penn State fit the bill a season ago. The Nittany Lions struggled to find their footing after losing Tim Frazier to a torn Achilles' tendon, but finished the conference slate with a home win over eventual national runner-up Michigan and a win at Northwestern. Penn State also played Wisconsin to a narrow 66-63 loss to close the regular season at the Bryce Jordan Center. With Frazier back in the rotation to go along with D.J. Newbill, Penn State boasts one of the league's best backcourts. Frazier was a first team All-Big Ten selection back in 2011-2012 and while he's never been particularly efficient, he posted a ridiculous assist rate of 45.2 (second nationally) while also averaging 18.8 points, 4.7 rebounds and 2.7 steals per game in his last full season.
Class of 2014 combo guard Robert Johnson has set a date to announce his college decision. As first reported by Paul Biancardi of ESPN.com, Johnson will pick from one of his four finalists and end his recruitment on Friday, Sept. 20. Johnson confirmed the date of the announcement in a text on Tuesday evening to Inside the Hall. Johnson, who has already taken official visits to Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina, has an official visit to Florida State scheduled for this weekend. According to the Twitter account of the Benedictine (Va.) guard, Tom Crean had an in-home visit with Johnson on Monday and North Carolina coach Roy Williams conducted an in-home visit on Tuesday.
One of Indiana's top recruiting targets in the class of 2014, Goodluck Okonoboh, will take an official visit to Indiana next weekend. It will be the first official visit for Okonoboh, a 6-foot-9 center who plays at Wilbraham and Monson Academy, which is just outside of Springfield, Mass.
One of the top young players in the class of 2016, Braxton Blackwell, is planning to visit Indiana next month for Hoosier Hysteria. Blackwell, a 6-foot-8, 215 pound forward who plays for former Vanderbilt standout Drew Maddux at Christ Presbyterian Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, is rated the No. 19 prospect nationally in the 247Composite. Indiana tracked Blackwell closely this summer as he was a standout playing at the 17-and-under level for the Atlanta Celtics in events like the adidas Invitational in Indianapolis and the adidas Super 64 in Las Vegas.
The Inside the Hall Mailbag is a collection of questions tweeted to us via Twitter (@insidethehall) and sent to us via our Facebook page. Submit your questions and we’ll answer as many as we can. Authentic Hoosier writes: How do you see Evan Gordon contributing to this year's team? Gordon will bring experience and a high basketball IQ. He's a bit undersized for a two-guard, but he's proven himself capable of contributing at the highest level of college basketball. As a junior at Arizona State, Gordon put together four games with 20 or more points. To get a better sense of his game, we talked to Doug Haller, the Arizona State beat writer for The Arizona Republic last spring.
Labor Day has come and gone, which means that college basketball preview magazine have started to hit newsstands. And as we mentioned earlier today on Twitter, Indiana is being touted as a preseason top 25 team by Lindy's Sports and The Sporting News. The Hoosiers are No. 20 in the Lindy's Sports preseason top 25, which has a regional cover featuring Indiana's Yogi Ferrell, Purdue's Terone Johnson and Notre Dame's Jerian Grant. And in The Sporting News preseason rankings, the Hoosiers are slotted in at No. 25. The Sporting News regional cover sold in Indiana features Indiana's Yogi Ferrell and Ohio State's Aaron Craft.
Victor Oladipo was an All-American in his junior season at Indiana and the No. 2 pick in June's NBA Draft. His meteoric rise was one of the stories of college basketball a season ago. So when Oladipo returned to Bloomington a couple of weekends ago to host Tom Crean's Basketball ProCamp, it was perfect timing for Indiana, which was in the midst of a huge recruiting weekend. One of the major guests was Robert Johnson, who was making his first official visit and receiving his first up close look at a program that has pursued him relentlessly for months. Oladipo's message to Johnson, a late riser from Richmond (Va.) in the class of 2014, was straightforward according to his father, Robert Sr. "Victor talked to Robert and I met with him and talked with him," Johnson Sr. told Inside the Hall. "He just told Robert how Indiana is a great school and gave him his blessing that if he decides to go there, he can wear No. 4."
All six Indiana freshmen – Collin Hartman, Devin Davis, Luke Fischer, Noah Vonleh, Stanford Robinson and Troy Williams – met with the media on Friday afternoon to discuss their progress since arriving in Bloomington earlier this summer. Among the topics ...
Devin Robinson’s rise from fringe top 100 to a five-star prospect nationally was one of the top recruiting stories of the spring and summer. Now, the Christchurch School (Va.) senior forward is ready to begin the next step of his ...
Indiana University announced the complete men’s basketball schedule for the 2013-2014 season earlier this afternoon. Nearly the entire non-conference schedule had already been revealed, but now the finalized schedule with all Big Ten dates is out. Start times, broadcast information and an ...