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Analysis: My thoughts on the Grant Gelon commitment


IndyHutch
  • There seems to be a lot of conversation about Indiana's first commit in the 2016 men's basketball class. Good pick up, or big time reach? Myself, I think the positives may outweigh the negatives. But it's close.

When Grant Gelon became the first commit in Indiana’s 2016 basketball class on Wednesday I purposely didn’t want to weigh in right away.

 

It was one of those announcements that just felt like you should wait on. Don’t rush to judgement. Gather as much information as you can. And then sit back and try to put it into perspective.

 

Two days later, though, I’m pretty much still where I was on Wednesday night.

 

There are some things I like about the commit and some things that worry me.

 

I like the fact that he’s an Indiana kid and he clearly wants to be a Hoosier. IU has had a lot more of those types of players who have worked out than have not. They get what it means to play for the state school. They have grown up on the tradition. They don’t need to be told why it’s so important to beat schools like Purdue or Butler or Kentucky. They know it. It’s part of their DNA.

 

They know what it means to be an Indiana kid at IU, not just when they’re playing but years later when they’re looking for a job. It means everything. They get no names on the jerseys. They get the candy stripes. They just get it. I think when you get Indiana kids to commit it’s always a good thing at some levels.

 

So I think the fact that Gelon is from Crown Point and played with Indiana Elite are both big positives here. It doesn’t matter to me so much that he’s ranked 14th in the state or whatever the case may be. So often you hear so many complaints that Indiana isn’t getting enough kids from the state. So the in-state thing works for me.

 

I also like the fact that the kid can shoot. I’ll admit I’m relying on the opinion of a few people I know who have seen him play because I haven’t seen him myself other than on tape. And whenever that’s the case I’ll admit I’m a little hesitant to go out on a limb. But he does appear to have big time range and I’ve always believed you cannot have enough shooters.

 

Some say he’s another Matt Roth. Some say he reminds them of Nick Zeisloft. In terms of his shooting ability I’ve also heard Jordan Hulls’ name. As far as I’m concerned that’s pretty good company. And this program is going to need shooters beginning in 2016 and beyond. To add a shooter – and a shooter that is an in-state kid – is a positive.

 

This just feels like the kind of player that three years from now, Indiana could have been taking a beating on because he wound up shining in another program. What was Indiana thinking back then? How could they have let Grant Gelon slip away? We’ve all heard it. For that matter, we’ve probably all said it. Pick a player that flew a little bit under the radar in high school and then blossomed somewhere other than Indiana when they went to college. You know the kind of kid I’m talking about. Gelon could easily end up being that kid.

 

Now, of course there’s the chance that three years from now, you’re shaking your head and wondering what Tom Crean was thinking, too. And if that were to happen, there would be a lot of people in the camp that would be saying that this was the opinion they had held since Gelon committed in August of 2015. And they’d be right.

 

But ultimately that’s what this is going to come down to: one of those two scenarios. Either you’re sitting here in the summer of 2018 thinking it was a great pickup or you’re wondering what the coach was thinking. That’s just the way recruiting plays out. There are not enough sure things. There are a lot more players that have some risk factor to them.

 

And I guess that’s where I fall on this one. I think there are some things to like but there’s also a risk factor involved. And like most people that are weighing in on this, the risks are worrisome.

 

My biggest reservation at this point is why? What do you gain by adding Gelon right now? It doesn’t feel like a momentum shifting commit which would be a reason to get a kid on board at this point. I look at his list of other offers and it’s not exactly a Who’s Who of college basketball. To me it looks more like a list of a player that if IU was to swoop in at the 11th hour it still could have picked him up. But maybe that’s not the case. Perhaps, by then, a bigger program would have gotten involved and Indiana would have missed out.

 

That’s the crap shoot that you deal with in recruiting. Sometimes you reach for a kid you really like and my guess is that this is a player that Crean and his staff really liked. The fact that IU offered and he accepted right away tells me something, too. Do you think that hasn’t happened before and IU has advised the young man that it wants to wait and see how things play out with the class before they take his commitment?

 

The fact that didn’t happen here tells me that this is a kid they wanted.

 

It may not be the glitzy, highly-ranked recruit that Hoosier Nation wanted to brag about and puff out their chests about. Instead it seems like a lot of people are still in that fact gathering mode and trying to find a tangible reason to get excited about it.

 

But I still think Indiana kid and a great shooter with range are simply positives that you can’t ignore.

 

I guess I’m willing to give the IU staff the benefit of the doubt at this point.

 

@IndySportsHutch

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