(Editor’s note: the response to the piece below inspired an interesting follow-up to the article below, read that over at this link)
It’s another year of Indiana basketball Coach Tom Crean coming off as a basketball version of Ron Zook.
He’s elite at bringing in top tier talent, but again fails in maximizing it. OG Anunoby is the Big Ten’s top overall pro prospect, at least according to a consensus of current NBA mock drafts. Thomas Bryant is right there behind him as the second best blue chip in the league.
Now NBA mock drafts aren’t gospel or anything, but they do give you a general idea, and the patterns show that the league is very lacking in kids with sky high pro potential. The league’s noticeable poor presence in the national polls is also reflected in their MIA from mock drafts.
You won’t currently find any B1G kids in the top ten picks in any mock, anywhere.
In 2013, Indiana basketball produced the #2 (Victor Oladipo) and #4 (Cody Zeller) overall picks in the NBA Draft. While that was an extremely weak draft, the Hoosiers vastly under-achieved that March, only reaching the sweet 16, with a #1 seeded team that was the majority’s pick to win it all.
All the hype of “The Movement,” a vastly overrated group of consecutive recruiting classes, only resulted in sound and fury signifying ultimately nothing beyond the second weekend of March madness.
While Michigan State is the B1G bellwether for millenials and young generation Xers, older Gen-Xers, and those above them in age know Indiana basketball as the league’s banner program.
The league is down and so is IU. For the league to rise again, they don’t need the Hoosiers to be elite, but it would help. Crean’s program is now 1-4 in their last five, 1-3 in league play and 3-5 over their past eight.
While RPIs at this time can often be as meaningless as a St. Patrick’s Day make-out session with a stranger, the Hoosiers currently sport an ugly 96 in that metric. For an #IUBB team to be around this level, is always unacceptable. They’re in very real danger of being relegated to the NIT this season.
That IPFW loss (RPI 126) really hurts. However, they also have the league’s two best marquee non-conference wins (Kansas RPI 4 and North Carolina RPI 16). Every team has ups and downs but IUBB has polarities. It’s easy to understand why so many in the Indiana basketball community are fed up with Tom Crean; yet again. Such maddening inconsistency is tough to swallow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the true bonafide upgrade coaching replacement is really available right now. If there is a tremendous upgrade candidate out there, he’s an unknown as of now.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, Bold and the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication, appears regularly as a guest on CGTN America, WGN CLTV News and KOZN 1620 The Zone.
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