For better or (and) worse, this exciting Hoosier team can only quench some of my college basketball thirst. What about the other names the Peegs.com forum has discussed for years? Its time to scratch those itches that don't go away when a player commits to the wrong school or transfers to another program and so we have my initial contribution, Diaspora Afficianado, Indiana University style.
Gone But Not Forgotten:
Remy Abell: The man most remembered for a three pointer on the road to take control of a Purdue game and Big Ten race is in his final year of eligibility at Xavier and continues his strong play. At least one thread on the forum today discussing him and comparing him vs Rob Johnson. For this observer's money, Remy is a good tough all around guard and a good player who compares fairly with RJ, but as a fifth year senior vs a soph. Remy can handle, defend, pass, and plays physical while shooting nice percentages from three. He averaged about 8 ppg last year for Xavier and is doing about the same early this year playing alongside former Bloomington South star Dee Davis.
Peter Jurkin: The eternally-booted Peter Jurkin is getting about 9 mpg at East Tennessee State where he's finding a way to get 5 ppg and 2 rpg and a block in early action. We all hope he keeps healthy and turns it on in a year or two with some health and somehow, for any reason at all, produces more of those pictures with he and his former prep school coach Muggsy Bogues. He plays alongside some former Indiana Elite players including the dynamic Ge'Lawn Guyn, who just hung 26 and 8 on a solid Green Bay team before getting rolled by Villanova yesterday. Former teammate Hanner Perea will join Peter in 2016.
Luke Fisher: Yes, this one still burns for IU fans. He has been hitting the weights and was excellent in some early Marquette games where his talented teammates (guards) were fighting among themselves for competing displays of astonishing selfishness in a game vs IUPUI. Hopefully for Luke's sake his teammates bury the hatchet and grow from this because they have nice talent and Fisher has put on good strength and is a fun player to watch. Luke is averaging 12 and 7 in this, his junior year, and will be fun to watch as they navigate the rest of their season after suffering some early setbacks including a blowout loss at home to Iowa.
Devin Davis: Hoosier fans rejoiced a bit when former rising star Devin Davis was cleared to play in September. http://collegebasketball.nbcsports....-davis-cleared-to-continue-basketball-career/ Devin has started all 11 games for the Wranglers and is averaging 15 and 7. Here's a link to his player page on their excellent website for those interested. http://www.wranglersports.com/sports/mbkb/2015-16/players/devindavis2o3a
Jeremy Hollowell: After sitting out last year, Hollowell is starting for Ron Hunter's Georgia State program and is leading them in scoring at 18.5 through the first two games as the Panther's got out to an early 2-0 start. The next three games will tell Georgia State fans a lot about their team and Hollowell. Wed they travel to Ole Miss, then they play at home against IUPUI where he can catch up with former AAU teammate Ron Patterson who is sitting out after leaving Syracuse and then Hollowell and the Panthers will travel to Dayton to play Wright St.
Austin Etherington: The former Indiana forward transferred to Butler where he was a bench player last year where his 2ppg from Indiana followed him last year. Austin did have a couple of 7 point games to open the season in blowout wins.
Local Boys Made Good:
There are far too many to make a comprehensive list, here are some of the outstanding exploits of former Indiana high school players that chose to leave paradise for the great beyond...
Dee Davis and Trevon Bluiett are starting alongside former Hoosier Remy Abel at Xavier and off to a strong start. The impressive trio anchor Xavier's backcourt and give Xavier a strong and familiar Indiana flavor. Dee is averaging about 9 points and 6 assists and has an a/to rate just over 2:1 as well as is a fairly decent three point shooter. Trevon is leading the Muskateers early in minutes and scoring at 14 and 7 to lead Xavier over a nice trio of wins to start the season (Michigan, Miami, Missouri).
Ohio State has a couple of former Hoosiers IU had great interest in as well. Five star Jaquan Lyle and redshirt sophomore Trevor Thompson will be key to OSU's success this year. The Buckeyes easily lead the Big Ten with 8 four and five star players per rivals while no other conference foe has more than six, but these two key newcomers will define just how far this extremely talented, but unproved group will go. The dynamic Lyle is starting and handling the ball a lot, going for about 10 ppg, 6 assists, and 4 rebounds early while not being real efficient yet in parts of the game. Thompson came off the bench and went for 5 ppg and 3 rpg as Ohio State has had to turn to offensively raw freshman and former IU target Daniel Giddens for more minutes early.
And as hard as it is to believe, there are kids from Indiana who leave to play college basketball more than a few miles away. 2014 in-state players like Sam Longwood who made his way to New Mexico and several found outlets all over the country such as Vermont. Longwood has started and gotten 9 and 3 so far for the 3-0 Lobos and will be fun to watch. Another popular Hoosier haven far from home lies in beautiful Burlington, Vermont. 2014 recruit Ernie Duncan joined the Catamounts this year and is starting and averaging 32 mpg and scoring 12, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and had a nice game against PU going for 18 points including 3-6 from 3. Duncan's brother Everett is also on the club and their coaches are regulars in Indiana gyms.
Bulletts Dodged and Shots Never Fired:
2012: Indiana wrapped up some big names early in the 2012 recruiting cycle and missed on offering some names that would be bigger, among the most notable including Michigan State's Eron Harris and Butler's Kellon Dunham among many others. But this class was full of early big names that petered out worse than any "movement". TJ Bell and Edward Seay were can't miss superstar freshmen drawing early IU interest. They were both 6'7 kids that kept getting called 6'9 and both had some connections or disproportionate coverage with some Chicago basketball media that put them at the top of some early wish lists in that class. Bell bounced around and had some Bloomington sightings and some IHSAA drama before settling in back in Chesterton, IL. He wound up at Indiana State where he has been a deep bench player. Seay started in junior college and wound up signing with Texas State but I don't see any evidence of his playing there and haven't tracked him down beyond that.
2013: A couple of early Indiana targets that were at the top of early player rankings lists in 2013 the Daryll's from the Kentuckiana border regions. They were both skilled physical specimens who dominated AAU ball their whole lives, the kind of player early recruiting teams like Indiana are sometimes vulnerable to missing on but neither to this point have shaped into the stars they once appeared to be destined to be. How did Daryll Baker and Daryll Hicks wind up? Baker initially committed to play for former Hoosier passing legend Pat Knight at Belmont but didn't make it academically and then went to their junior college campus in Janis Joplin's hometown of Port Arthur and then was seen at Lincoln Trails JC where he averaged 18 and 8 in 2014/15. Hicks did make it to D1 and is a sophomore at Boston College but their website list no stats for him from last year or this year.
Bye Bye Birds and Kyrie Ball Hogsdons:
Here is where we reflect on the one that got away. Clyde Lovelette, Larry Bird, Greg Oden, and Oscar Robinson have always been in the imagination of Hoosier fans if not hanging banners at Assembley Hall. Fresher wounds may not be as deep, but they do cut nonetheless. Lets see what's going on with some familiar names...
2013: BeeJay Anya was once upon a time the big (very big in his case) name on Indiana's recruiting target list as he visited the Hoosiers and was seemingly joined at the hip with former IU assistant coach Kenny Johnson. Beejay has been an important bench guy for NC State for three years including 2.5 blocks per game last year. Marcus Lee and Derrick Willis have been patient and become important bench players at UK and appear to be on their way to being the rarest of UK treasures, college graduates. No doubt they would have been special basketball players at other schools, especially Lee, but its a lot more rare and special to be basketball players with UK degrees so kudos, boys. Another name IU chased hard that year was Semi Ojeleye who initially signed with Duke. Coach K wasn't quite a good enough coach for Semi, so he traded up and went with the incomparable gentleman and coaching legend Larry Brown who of course he will most likely never play for and if so, not in postseason.
2014: Isaiah Whitehead and his Tiny coach were recruited to Seton Hall shortly after an IU visit that looked promising for a few days, Whitehead had a nice freshman year with lots of turnovers (3.3) but productive at 12 ppg. He's off to a nice start his sophomore year at 15 and 4 assists early on as the Pirates start 3-1 without much competition to this point and Tiny has moved on leaving Seton Hall with only three full assistants like the rest of college basketball, gotta love NYC recruiting (que up Rawle Alkins for some unexpected twists and turns in March). Devin Robninson seems to have taken a jump if his play in some early wins against easy competition holds up as he went for a couple of double doubles and is averaging 14 and 8 early on after just 6 and 3 last year. Ahmed Hill had a nice freshman year for former Tom Crean assistant Buzz Williams at Virginia Tech going for 9 and 4 while shooting 39% from three. Hill is a redshirt candidate this year as he had knee surgery this summer and his progress is being monitored. , Goodluck Okonoboh was perhaps Indiana's most hotly pursued near miss last fall, choosing UNLV late in the process causing lots of ulcers in Hoosier land. Goodluck was known to be raw offensively and his points and rebounding numbers were pedestrian at 6 and 4.5 for the Rebels but he put up an extremely impressive 3 blocks per game which implies some game changing potential defensively. He hasn't played as many minutes so far this year as UNLV starts out 3-0 against some weak competition. Last spring Indiana found itself with a major shortage of players on the roster due to various misdeeds and misfortunes and had to go out and find four players (Priller, April, Holt, Zeisloft). Some of the guys they chased and were left at the alter by turned out pretty good or had some nice moments. Josh Cunningham was a nationally ranked kid Indiana lost to Bradley where he started and scored 7.5 ppg and had 7 rpg. After the season he transferred to Dayton where he is sitting out this year. About that same time Tom Izzo and Tom Crean both made a push for Yante Maten who visited both schools but ended up choosing Georgia. Maten played with some physicality for a freshman and showed some promise even against good competition like Kentucky but ended up averaging about 5 ppg and 4 rpg as a freshman. So far he's averaging 12 and 11 for the Bulldogs this year as they started 1-1.
2015: Too early to tell a lot about freshmen, but there seem to be a lot of good ones from the players Indiana looked at in 2015 early on. Jalen Coleman-Lands is a 6'3 Indianapolis product that chose the fighting Illini and has started off hot for the Illini averaging 12.5 ppg for the 1-2 Illini including a 17 point performance against Providence where he hit 5-7 from 3. Indiana is about to see former targets Doral Moore and Bryant Crawford at Wake Forrest Monday. Crawford is leading the Deamonic Preachers in minutes and ppg at 17 and 5 assists and rebounds early going 4-5 from three against a solid Richmond team last game out. Moore is coming off the bench and getting about 3 ppg early and was not as serious of an IU target but someone they recruited for a while. Shake Milton is off to a great start at SMU getting lots of minutes and 12 ppg. Raymond Spalding and Donovan Mitchell are both getting bench minutes for Louisville right now. The talented duo were both Indiana targets and Indiana was considered the leader for Spalding for a while before hometown Louisville got serious. Stephen Zimmerman is getting the lions' share of the action in his platoon with Goodluck Okonoboh at UNLV at this point going for 13 and 10 early for the 3-0 rebels who will get their first look at a good opponent Monday night against former Hoosier legend Steve Alford and his UCLA club.
Thanks for reading if you are still awake. I may revisit it next Saturday if its cold and rainy out and the kids are watching terrible movies again...
Gone But Not Forgotten:
Remy Abell: The man most remembered for a three pointer on the road to take control of a Purdue game and Big Ten race is in his final year of eligibility at Xavier and continues his strong play. At least one thread on the forum today discussing him and comparing him vs Rob Johnson. For this observer's money, Remy is a good tough all around guard and a good player who compares fairly with RJ, but as a fifth year senior vs a soph. Remy can handle, defend, pass, and plays physical while shooting nice percentages from three. He averaged about 8 ppg last year for Xavier and is doing about the same early this year playing alongside former Bloomington South star Dee Davis.
Peter Jurkin: The eternally-booted Peter Jurkin is getting about 9 mpg at East Tennessee State where he's finding a way to get 5 ppg and 2 rpg and a block in early action. We all hope he keeps healthy and turns it on in a year or two with some health and somehow, for any reason at all, produces more of those pictures with he and his former prep school coach Muggsy Bogues. He plays alongside some former Indiana Elite players including the dynamic Ge'Lawn Guyn, who just hung 26 and 8 on a solid Green Bay team before getting rolled by Villanova yesterday. Former teammate Hanner Perea will join Peter in 2016.
Luke Fisher: Yes, this one still burns for IU fans. He has been hitting the weights and was excellent in some early Marquette games where his talented teammates (guards) were fighting among themselves for competing displays of astonishing selfishness in a game vs IUPUI. Hopefully for Luke's sake his teammates bury the hatchet and grow from this because they have nice talent and Fisher has put on good strength and is a fun player to watch. Luke is averaging 12 and 7 in this, his junior year, and will be fun to watch as they navigate the rest of their season after suffering some early setbacks including a blowout loss at home to Iowa.
Devin Davis: Hoosier fans rejoiced a bit when former rising star Devin Davis was cleared to play in September. http://collegebasketball.nbcsports....-davis-cleared-to-continue-basketball-career/ Devin has started all 11 games for the Wranglers and is averaging 15 and 7. Here's a link to his player page on their excellent website for those interested. http://www.wranglersports.com/sports/mbkb/2015-16/players/devindavis2o3a
Jeremy Hollowell: After sitting out last year, Hollowell is starting for Ron Hunter's Georgia State program and is leading them in scoring at 18.5 through the first two games as the Panther's got out to an early 2-0 start. The next three games will tell Georgia State fans a lot about their team and Hollowell. Wed they travel to Ole Miss, then they play at home against IUPUI where he can catch up with former AAU teammate Ron Patterson who is sitting out after leaving Syracuse and then Hollowell and the Panthers will travel to Dayton to play Wright St.
Austin Etherington: The former Indiana forward transferred to Butler where he was a bench player last year where his 2ppg from Indiana followed him last year. Austin did have a couple of 7 point games to open the season in blowout wins.
Local Boys Made Good:
There are far too many to make a comprehensive list, here are some of the outstanding exploits of former Indiana high school players that chose to leave paradise for the great beyond...
Dee Davis and Trevon Bluiett are starting alongside former Hoosier Remy Abel at Xavier and off to a strong start. The impressive trio anchor Xavier's backcourt and give Xavier a strong and familiar Indiana flavor. Dee is averaging about 9 points and 6 assists and has an a/to rate just over 2:1 as well as is a fairly decent three point shooter. Trevon is leading the Muskateers early in minutes and scoring at 14 and 7 to lead Xavier over a nice trio of wins to start the season (Michigan, Miami, Missouri).
Ohio State has a couple of former Hoosiers IU had great interest in as well. Five star Jaquan Lyle and redshirt sophomore Trevor Thompson will be key to OSU's success this year. The Buckeyes easily lead the Big Ten with 8 four and five star players per rivals while no other conference foe has more than six, but these two key newcomers will define just how far this extremely talented, but unproved group will go. The dynamic Lyle is starting and handling the ball a lot, going for about 10 ppg, 6 assists, and 4 rebounds early while not being real efficient yet in parts of the game. Thompson came off the bench and went for 5 ppg and 3 rpg as Ohio State has had to turn to offensively raw freshman and former IU target Daniel Giddens for more minutes early.
And as hard as it is to believe, there are kids from Indiana who leave to play college basketball more than a few miles away. 2014 in-state players like Sam Longwood who made his way to New Mexico and several found outlets all over the country such as Vermont. Longwood has started and gotten 9 and 3 so far for the 3-0 Lobos and will be fun to watch. Another popular Hoosier haven far from home lies in beautiful Burlington, Vermont. 2014 recruit Ernie Duncan joined the Catamounts this year and is starting and averaging 32 mpg and scoring 12, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and had a nice game against PU going for 18 points including 3-6 from 3. Duncan's brother Everett is also on the club and their coaches are regulars in Indiana gyms.
Bulletts Dodged and Shots Never Fired:
2012: Indiana wrapped up some big names early in the 2012 recruiting cycle and missed on offering some names that would be bigger, among the most notable including Michigan State's Eron Harris and Butler's Kellon Dunham among many others. But this class was full of early big names that petered out worse than any "movement". TJ Bell and Edward Seay were can't miss superstar freshmen drawing early IU interest. They were both 6'7 kids that kept getting called 6'9 and both had some connections or disproportionate coverage with some Chicago basketball media that put them at the top of some early wish lists in that class. Bell bounced around and had some Bloomington sightings and some IHSAA drama before settling in back in Chesterton, IL. He wound up at Indiana State where he has been a deep bench player. Seay started in junior college and wound up signing with Texas State but I don't see any evidence of his playing there and haven't tracked him down beyond that.
2013: A couple of early Indiana targets that were at the top of early player rankings lists in 2013 the Daryll's from the Kentuckiana border regions. They were both skilled physical specimens who dominated AAU ball their whole lives, the kind of player early recruiting teams like Indiana are sometimes vulnerable to missing on but neither to this point have shaped into the stars they once appeared to be destined to be. How did Daryll Baker and Daryll Hicks wind up? Baker initially committed to play for former Hoosier passing legend Pat Knight at Belmont but didn't make it academically and then went to their junior college campus in Janis Joplin's hometown of Port Arthur and then was seen at Lincoln Trails JC where he averaged 18 and 8 in 2014/15. Hicks did make it to D1 and is a sophomore at Boston College but their website list no stats for him from last year or this year.
Bye Bye Birds and Kyrie Ball Hogsdons:
Here is where we reflect on the one that got away. Clyde Lovelette, Larry Bird, Greg Oden, and Oscar Robinson have always been in the imagination of Hoosier fans if not hanging banners at Assembley Hall. Fresher wounds may not be as deep, but they do cut nonetheless. Lets see what's going on with some familiar names...
2013: BeeJay Anya was once upon a time the big (very big in his case) name on Indiana's recruiting target list as he visited the Hoosiers and was seemingly joined at the hip with former IU assistant coach Kenny Johnson. Beejay has been an important bench guy for NC State for three years including 2.5 blocks per game last year. Marcus Lee and Derrick Willis have been patient and become important bench players at UK and appear to be on their way to being the rarest of UK treasures, college graduates. No doubt they would have been special basketball players at other schools, especially Lee, but its a lot more rare and special to be basketball players with UK degrees so kudos, boys. Another name IU chased hard that year was Semi Ojeleye who initially signed with Duke. Coach K wasn't quite a good enough coach for Semi, so he traded up and went with the incomparable gentleman and coaching legend Larry Brown who of course he will most likely never play for and if so, not in postseason.
2014: Isaiah Whitehead and his Tiny coach were recruited to Seton Hall shortly after an IU visit that looked promising for a few days, Whitehead had a nice freshman year with lots of turnovers (3.3) but productive at 12 ppg. He's off to a nice start his sophomore year at 15 and 4 assists early on as the Pirates start 3-1 without much competition to this point and Tiny has moved on leaving Seton Hall with only three full assistants like the rest of college basketball, gotta love NYC recruiting (que up Rawle Alkins for some unexpected twists and turns in March). Devin Robninson seems to have taken a jump if his play in some early wins against easy competition holds up as he went for a couple of double doubles and is averaging 14 and 8 early on after just 6 and 3 last year. Ahmed Hill had a nice freshman year for former Tom Crean assistant Buzz Williams at Virginia Tech going for 9 and 4 while shooting 39% from three. Hill is a redshirt candidate this year as he had knee surgery this summer and his progress is being monitored. , Goodluck Okonoboh was perhaps Indiana's most hotly pursued near miss last fall, choosing UNLV late in the process causing lots of ulcers in Hoosier land. Goodluck was known to be raw offensively and his points and rebounding numbers were pedestrian at 6 and 4.5 for the Rebels but he put up an extremely impressive 3 blocks per game which implies some game changing potential defensively. He hasn't played as many minutes so far this year as UNLV starts out 3-0 against some weak competition. Last spring Indiana found itself with a major shortage of players on the roster due to various misdeeds and misfortunes and had to go out and find four players (Priller, April, Holt, Zeisloft). Some of the guys they chased and were left at the alter by turned out pretty good or had some nice moments. Josh Cunningham was a nationally ranked kid Indiana lost to Bradley where he started and scored 7.5 ppg and had 7 rpg. After the season he transferred to Dayton where he is sitting out this year. About that same time Tom Izzo and Tom Crean both made a push for Yante Maten who visited both schools but ended up choosing Georgia. Maten played with some physicality for a freshman and showed some promise even against good competition like Kentucky but ended up averaging about 5 ppg and 4 rpg as a freshman. So far he's averaging 12 and 11 for the Bulldogs this year as they started 1-1.
2015: Too early to tell a lot about freshmen, but there seem to be a lot of good ones from the players Indiana looked at in 2015 early on. Jalen Coleman-Lands is a 6'3 Indianapolis product that chose the fighting Illini and has started off hot for the Illini averaging 12.5 ppg for the 1-2 Illini including a 17 point performance against Providence where he hit 5-7 from 3. Indiana is about to see former targets Doral Moore and Bryant Crawford at Wake Forrest Monday. Crawford is leading the Deamonic Preachers in minutes and ppg at 17 and 5 assists and rebounds early going 4-5 from three against a solid Richmond team last game out. Moore is coming off the bench and getting about 3 ppg early and was not as serious of an IU target but someone they recruited for a while. Shake Milton is off to a great start at SMU getting lots of minutes and 12 ppg. Raymond Spalding and Donovan Mitchell are both getting bench minutes for Louisville right now. The talented duo were both Indiana targets and Indiana was considered the leader for Spalding for a while before hometown Louisville got serious. Stephen Zimmerman is getting the lions' share of the action in his platoon with Goodluck Okonoboh at UNLV at this point going for 13 and 10 early for the 3-0 rebels who will get their first look at a good opponent Monday night against former Hoosier legend Steve Alford and his UCLA club.
Thanks for reading if you are still awake. I may revisit it next Saturday if its cold and rainy out and the kids are watching terrible movies again...
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