mamasa

BERRY COMMITS TO IUWBB FOR 2021 May 30, 2020 Jon Blau Women's Basketball Leave a comment Indiana women’s basketball gained a verbal commitment from 2021 prospect Keyarah Berry on Saturday. Berry, a 5-foot-11 guard from Rockmart, Ga., is the Hoosiers’ second commit in the class, which also includes Australian guard Paige Price. IU won out over Murray State, Alabama A&M, Seton Hall, and Georgia Southern for Berry’s services. Considered a three-star prospect by ESPN, Berry ranks as the No. 100 recruit in the country. She’s very much a scorer, amassing a school-record 2,437 points in her career thus far. IU extended its offer to Berry on May 12. Below is Berry’s commitment video, which includes game highlights. From watching the tape, it’s evident she’s not afraid to shoot the 3. Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners

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First time in Pacific Northwest! Staying on a little island named Vashon, directly between Seattle and Tacoma. They’re still doing carry out only and no retail stores are open. We’ve driven through many parks (Northern Cascades is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen). Pretty easy to social distance- entire island is 10k people. Everyone is amazingly nice! As always, I’ve met Hoosier fans on this trip (always wear something IU). Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners

It's gotta be true!

I'll go with 5/28. I'm on vacation next week, seems like we always get one while I'm on vacation lol

IU football adds graduate transfer Khameron Taylor to the 2020 roster May 20, 2020 Mike Schumann IUFB 2 With question marks at the tight end position, Indiana has added experience and depth to its 2020 roster. The school announced on Wednesday that South Alabama graduate transfer Khameron Taylor will join the program for the 2020 season. With a massive 6-foot-4 and 270 pound frame, Taylor will provide a big body in the running game. “We are really excited about adding Kham to our program, head coach Tom Allen said in a release by the school. “He brings experience to the tight end room. Other than Peyton Hendershot, we have a young group that needs some depth. Kham is a big, strong blocker with untapped potential in the pass game. He has a great combination of size, length and athleticism that immediately helps us become a better football team.” Taylor started all nine games in which he appeared in 2019, and he posted two catches for 18 yards including a 13-yard touchdown at Nebraska. That score is the first play in the highlight reel below. Overall Taylor appeared in 24 contests with 14 starts for the Jaguars. He caught five passes for 67 yards in 2018, and added three kickoff returns for 23 yards. A Gainesville, Florida native, Taylor has one year of eligibility remaining.

Good news on this rainy day!

Great article on Ernie Thompson's journey to get his degree! EX-HOOSIER THOMPSON EARNS HIS DIPLOMA AT 50 May 17, 2020 Jon Blau Football 5 comments In the shadow of Memorial Stadium, the old Hoosier fullback’s thumbs pecked at his iPhone keyboard. One character at a time, Ernie Thompson was finishing something he left undone for nearly three decades. Back in 1991, Ernie was a 6-foot-1, 237-pound junior with pro football dreams. One year short of graduation, he left Indiana for the NFL draft. One year short, which nagged at him as he worked in Terre Haute’s schools as a dropout prevention specialist, going into students’ homes and stressing the importance of graduating. He felt like a hypocrite. “It’s one of those things, it would haunt me and it would not let me rest,” Ernie said. “I thought about it, and I felt it. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I felt it.” Now seated in his 2012 Nissan Altima, with IU’s football stadium nearby, Ernie was making things right. He would spend upwards of three hours there, stringing together sentences on his phone, finishing his coursework for the spring semester. The 50-year-old moved back to Bloomington for a much-delayed senior year, taking the bus to class with fellow students. He never did get a laptop, though. When he needed the internet, he worked from the clubhouse at his apartment complex. Then a pandemic hit, and a Wi-Fi hotspot near the stadium became his go-to. By whatever means, Ernie was going to finish. He wasn’t too proud to tap away at a little keyboard, running his car engine whenever he needed a blast of warm air. Once his professors learned about his new routine, they told him to write out his answers by hand, take a picture, and email it in. All of that typing on a phone wasn’t necessary. All that mattered to Ernie was finishing. He was going to finish it, however possible. For the kids in Terre Haute who could have labeled him a hypocrite. For his coach, Bill Mallory, who never stopped hassling him about leaving that diploma unclaimed. For his brother, Randy, who tried to stop him from walking away all those years ago. *** Randy still remembers the conversation vividly. They were in the upstairs bedroom of their mother’s house in Terre Haute. They shared that room in the summer months, but there was a question of where Ernie was headed next. Ernie had talked to people who had talked to people in the NFL. There was a chance, if he left school, he could get drafted. He was just a junior, fresh off a 323-yard season for the 1990 Hoosiers, but NFL teams were interested. “I tried to provide that ‘Well, wait a minute, think about this. You got your whole life to get to the NFL,’” Randy said. “But I didn’t walk in his shoes, I don’t know what it was like day-to-day, being there. I didn’t know what that was like.” For much of their life, the two brothers were literally hip-to-hip. A year older, Randy was held back in third grade, putting him alongside Ernie all through school. Their older brother, Anthony, remained a couple of steps ahead, blazing a trail for Terre Haute North’s Thompson brothers. Randy recalls one 1985 contest versus Sullivan when the Patriots rushed for a program-record 488 yards and nine touchdowns. It was evenly distributed between the three brothers, first the senior Anthony, then the sophomores Ernie and Randy in the quarters that followed. But that full house of talent complicated things. In fact, Randy transferred to Terre Haute South as a senior to ensure both brothers had their deserved bounty of carries. Randy then went to Indiana State, washing out from the football team in a year and a half. At IU, Ernie spent his first two seasons in relative obscurity as Anthony scorched Big Ten defenses. In his junior year, Ernie continued to split runs with the likes of Vaughn Dunbar and Calvert Miller. But the NFL still wanted Ernie. Staring him in the face was an opportunity to make a name for himself. Right then. “I think he reached a point at that time where he felt like it was time to go and turn the page,” Randy said. “I begged and pleaded for him not to make that decision. But he did.” Ernie did get drafted — in the 12th round by the Los Angeles Rams. He ran the ball twice for just nine yards as a rookie. The next year, he was out of the league. After one more season with the Chiefs in 1993, Ernie’s pro career ended. He found another career quickly, training local athletes at the Terre Haute YMCA. He then ended up in the school system. Even with hindsight, Ernie doesn’t regret his NFL decision. Everything happens for a reason, he believes. But Randy was quite the foil. After taking a couple of years off from ISU, he returned to college and earned two bachelor’s degrees. He did it all while financially supporting a wife and son, working at the Coca-Cola bottling plant. In his mid-40s, he went back to school again and got a master’s. Quite a deed for a man who didn’t have an abundance of resources as a boy, aside from an attentive church community and coaches. He didn’t have a library close by. He didn’t come from money. But he got his education. As the years passed, Ernie couldn’t shake what he’d left undone. In 2014, IU announced as part of its Student-Athlete Bill of Rights the “Hoosiers for Life” program, which promised to pay the tuition of any former student-athlete who left in good standing and wanted to finish a degree. Ernie put age 50 in his head as a cutoff. It was then, or never. He even saw Bill Mallory on the sideline of an ISU practice, there to visit his son, head coach Curt. Ernie told the old man he was going to finish. “Make sure you do it,” Bill said, his hand on Ernie’s chest. “Yes sir, I’m gonna do it,” Ernie replied. In 2019, a year after Bill died, Ernie made his move. He filled out his paperwork with IU. He met with an academic advisor. He was on his way — until he took his first test in his Sociology of Mental Illness class. Simply put, Ernie bombed. “If anyone else looked at my test, they would have swore I fell asleep,” Ernie said. Thirty years of test-taking rust made those 50 multiple-choice questions like a book of riddles. “I felt like every question was a trick question,” Ernie said. “I had multiple answers I thought was right to every question.” Ernie needed help. So he called the man who knew school better than anyone in his family. For a third time, Randy and Ernie were having a conversation about what should have been. The second time was right before Ernie returned to IU, telling Randy he planned to commute. Randy told him that wouldn’t work. Randy was right. “Wait a minute, slow down,” Randy recalled of Talk No. 2. “If you are going to do this, you have to walk through the campus, smell the grass. Go buy you a crimson and cream backpack and put your books in that backpack. “Don’t take any shortcuts.” In Talk No. 3, Randy reiterated those points. This time, Ernie listened. He moved into a student-oriented apartment complex in Bloomington, The Village at Muller Park. He bought the backpack. He rode the bus to class every day with students who weren’t born when he played for the Chiefs. That liberal studies degree became his sole mission, especially after unrelated circumstances led to Ernie losing his job with the school corporation early in the fall semester. That degree became Randy’s focus, as well. Ernie’s older brother was calling every day, checking in. “I felt he owed me that from when he was 20-something years old and he did not listen to my advice,” Randy said, laughing. “You’re going to listen to me this time. You’re going to stay locked in.” *** After a meeting with her tutoring supervisor, IU senior Olivia Totten went to google her next student. She does that, regardless, just to know what he or she looks like the first time they meet. But also, it’s not every day a tutor is paired with a 50-year-old former NFL player. Turns out, Ernie and Olivia’s birthdays are five days apart. “We bonded over that,” Olivia said. “I learned where he played, too. But I don’t remember any of that part.” In Ernie’s experience, he didn’t feel like some Adam Sandler or Rodney Dangerfield character in a back-to-school movie, sticking out like a sore thumb in a crowd of younglings. Most students and professors embraced him as one of their own. Ernie liked riding the bus to class. A piano enthusiast, he frequented the student union and played Elton John and Billy Joel for his classmates. He became a part of the community at Muller Park, walking around the fitness center and engaging 20-somethings in conversation. “I’d try to figure out where they were from, what’s their goal,” Ernie said. “It always ended with ‘Hey, I’m 49, turning 50. You don’t want to be still chasing your degree when you’re 50 like me.’” Ernie was determined to finish his chase, and getting a tutor was one of Randy’s suggestions. Always delving into their athletic background to offer analogies, Randy told his younger brother, “Don’t be a Dennis Rodman.” If Ernie was “coachable,” professors would be more likely to help him. In his tutoring sessions, Ernie was different from many of the athletes Olivia worked with. He was totally engaged, armed with his pen and notebook. He was so eager to get started, he had Olivia memorize his Canvas password and log him in. She was just a tad more tech-savvy. “For that hour, Ernie was going to be listening intently, he was going to be taking notes. He was making the most of that hour,” Olivia said. “I was able to really do my job and not just sit there while a student reads, you know?” Once he overcame that first test, multiple-choice questions weren’t a problem. If anything, Ernie just had to gain confidence in his abilities as a writer. As a trainer, and working in the school system, Ernie wasn’t writing essays. He needed to be reminded about introductory paragraphs, thesis statements, and the like. It would take Ernie about three hours to write essays on his phone in the spring semester, but that’s mostly because he was always doubting his choice of words. He really just needed a bit of encouragement, because he had a story to tell. Ernie drew from his experiences, crafting essays about kids in the school system, about playing in the NFL, about being a black man in America. “Ernie was really hard on himself and he really thought he was doing worse than he was doing,” Olivia said. “He was a great student. Not to bash on the athletes, but a lot of them didn’t want to work. They didn’t want to do their homework. But Ernie, every single time he was there, he was all-in. He was the most dedicated student I tutored.” His attention to the task paid off. Ernie says he finished with a 3.25 grade point average. He pulled that off despite a horrible first test, then losing his job in Terre Haute, then moving classes online due to a pandemic. Because of the pandemic, his final moments as a student were somewhat anticlimactic. Ernie turned in his last assignment from his Nissan, receiving a notice from IU with animated “blooms” to mark the occasion. It felt good, but there was nothing to do other than put his keys in the ignition and drive back to his apartment. But Ernie made sure to come back to Memorial Stadium on graduation day, exactly when the ceremony would have begun. He jogged some laps around the venue, thinking about Bill Mallory and all of the coaches who brought him to IU, and all of the people who pushed him to finally graduate. When he downloaded what would have been the program for his graduation ceremony, he took a screenshot of the page with his name on it, texting it to his mom and his brother Randy. “I got chills. Is this real?” Ernie said. “That was the reaction when I saw it, too. This surreal feeling.” His loose end was tied. Now he’s just like any recently graduated student, wondering where he’ll go next, and where he’ll find his next job. But with one chapter closed, Ernie thought about a story that’s still unwritten. Of his mother’s seven children, four now have degrees. Ernie texted his 46-year-old sister, saying “Tag, you’re it.” “When you get your degree, tag your other sister in,” Ernie said. “That was kind of a fun moment, too. The goal is for every one of my mother’s children to get their degree.” The fact that it took No. 4 a little longer than usual, it’s not a fact that bothers Ernie. Again, he doesn’t regret declaring for the NFL draft all those years ago. He believes it was better this way, even if it meant writing paragraphs on his iPhone in the middle of a parking lot. “Graduating at 50, this is an inspiration to a lot of people who still have those dreams inside of them and now realize, hey, maybe age is just a number,” he said. “If Ernie can do it, I can do it.”

Looks like we need a thread title change to "Retired".... Credit: Jon Blau As former Indiana basketball player Will Sheehey mentally scrolled through his list of competitors, he did it with unchained honesty. “Derek Elston is going to be terrible. Cody (Zeller), if he plays, he’ll be terrible,” Sheehey said. But this wasn’t Sheehey putting others down to pump himself up. The 28-year-old, recently retired hooper was actually talking about an upcoming NBA 2K tournament, which he’s organizing purely as a fun weekend for gamers and basketball fans alike. Called “The Bounty,” the May 23 contest of button-pushing and virtual dunk-slamming will not necessarily be Sheehey’s moment to shine. “I’ve never owned a video game system in my life, N64, GameCube. I can’t even name them all,” Sheehey said. “I’m absolutely going to be terrible.” This is the teammate Hoosiers came to know, reckless on the floor, and equally unafraid to share his thoughts, positive or negative, when the cameras weren’t rolling. When they were, Sheehey was often blunt in his approach, just eager to say his piece and move on. His senior speech clocked in at just under a minute, very on-brand for IU’s rebel baller. Sheehey the Event Organizer is somewhat of a sharp turn, especially considering his relative absence from IU’s basketball scene of late. Once he left campus and headed overseas for a pro career, he wasn’t calling former teammates a ton. He wasn’t on social media. He just wanted to get away from everything Indiana for a while. When he approached former IU players and other basketball friends about “The Bounty,” a 2K contest pitting fans against hoopers, with their competitive banter live-streamed on Twitch, it was a confusing proposition. “I think my friends know I’m just not that kind of guy, I don’t want to be in front of the camera and do all that kind of stuff. It was fun to contact them and they were like ‘You seriously want to do this? You, Will, want to do something for the fans?’” Sheehey said. “I was just missing it. I miss being around them. I think it took a pandemic for me to realize how much I missed them.” These are strange times. Sheehey, who recently took a sales job with a tech startup, moved into his New York City apartment with his wife in March. Right before COVID-19 put “The City That Never Sleeps” on lockdown. Even if Sheehey had a place to play pick-up basketball, he couldn’t. A groin injury he’s had surgically repaired just won’t heal properly. Sheehey was set to play this past season in Germany alongside IU classmate Jordan Hulls for s.Oliver Würzburg. That never happened. He gave his body a few more months to rest and returned in December to his former team in Portugal, Porto. He didn’t see the floor there, either. “The way I played, sacrificing my body, it caught up to me. I was a reckless player,” Sheehey said. “You can’t be a reckless player and play until you’re 35. It ended, and I’m sad about it, but life goes on.” Right now, life for most is moving at a tedious pace. In early April, Sheehey got to talking with one of his IU friends, Josh Hodgens, about what they could do to make things interesting. They liked the idea of Esports tournaments, starting with basketball because of Sheehey’s connections. IU’s Elston, Hulls, Christian Watford, James Blackmon Jr., and Jonny Marlin have all signed on. Zeller has agreed to commentate, but the 7-foot-1 novice gamer is flirting with the idea of actually playing. Sheehey will have a controller in-hand, but he expects to be giving his two cents and answering fans’ questions the majority of the time, once he’s very quickly and decisively eliminated from the field. A player’s demise, in this case, is good. The tournament is called “The Bounty” because a victory over a pro is worth $250. Of that money, the winner keeps $125, while the other half goes to a charity for COVID-19 relief efforts. There will be both an XBox and a PlayStation tournament, and the winner of each will receive a grand prize of $500. Of the IU-affiliated pros, Hulls would appear to be one of the stronger contenders, because he was an avid gamer in college. But he hasn’t had much free time the past couple years raising two kids. “I did buy an (XBox) during this pandemic, because I do have a little bit of time in the middle of the night or whatever,” Hulls said. “I will say, I’m going to be practicing nonstop until that day comes so I won’t look so terrible.” Hulls hopes there will be a lot of IU fans watching, and hopefully playing. Sheehey purposefully kept the entry fee low at $5, just to attract more contenders. There will be at least one bountied pro in each bracket, with 24 currently committed from across the overseas ranks, as well as the G-League and NBA. The field includes ex-Pacer/Warrior Brandon Rush, the Raptors’ Malcolm Miller, Louisville’s Kevin Ware, Iowa’s Peter Jok, and Kansas’ Isaiah Moss, to name a few. When participants register for the event on The Gaming Stadium’s site, they are also encouraged to enter a pro’s name as a referral. Doing so kicks back money to whatever charity the pro is representing. Sheehey is hoping to lure in sponsors, as well, who will have their names mentioned or their logos displayed during the livestream. It’s been an effort to put all of this together, but Sheehey doesn’t expect Esports to become his full-time job any time soon. He just needed this tournament, at this time in his life. Being without a team is quite an adjustment. “For a lot of people, it ends in high school and they get over it in college. They join a frat,” Sheehey said. “I’ve been doing this for 28 years. It’s weird to transfer to this next step. This tournament, it brings my friends together. Maybe I’m not playing in a real game, but I’m getting ready to play in this little tournament and it brings me joy.” The interaction between gamers on the Twitch livestream should be one of the more entertaining aspects of the tourney, giving fans the opportunity to learn some more about their favorite IU alums as people. As someone who tends to speak in brutally honest fashion, or not much at all, Sheehey wasn’t always longwinded in response to pre- and postgame questions. It just wasn’t his scene. “You always had to give this nice, clean answer about your opponent, when half the time we knew we were going to beat the (crap) out of the other team,” Sheehey said. “My freshman year at IU, we got our teeth kicked in every single game and no one was trying to be nice to us. And then we’re good and I’m supposed to be nice to everyone? “Being a young kid, feeling what I really felt, and what was really in my mind, it would have gotten me in a lot of trouble with coaches and teammates and friends. It was better if I could just shut up and go away.” With his teammates at IU, though, he didn’t need to maintain that filter at practice. Especially with Zeller and Hulls, they were able to motivate each other with honesty. “Everyone thinks I was yelling at guys, like ‘Hey, you suck.’ That’s part of it, but half of it was ‘Hey, you are (frigging) amazing,’” Sheehey said. “Every bad thing I would do or Jordan would do in practice, there are three good things we’d be clapping hands and loving each other about. “There is no person I hyped up more than my teammates. And there’s no person I hated on more than my teammates.” Now, he has no issue honestly assessing the field in The Bounty. Even though he didn’t play with Blackmon, Sheehey would consider the Hoosier sharpshooter a favorite because of all the time he’s spent overseas. “The overseas guys, they get really bored,” Sheehey said. “You don’t speak the language, your teammates aren’t American. I think James has had a lot of time on his hands.” While Hulls will talk about his lack of recent 2K experience, Sheehey isn’t completely buying that. The guy can hit 3s both right- and left-handed for a reason. “That’s a very Jordan way to go about it. ‘Oh, woe is me, I’m going to be terrible.’ I’m sure Jordan is in his room, practicing an hour a day,” Sheehey said. There is only one thing Sheehey feels completely confident about. He’s not good. And neither is Elston. “Derek, he’s going to suck,” Sheehey said. “I know Derek is going to suck.” ***

Pretty sure I derailed my own thread lol Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners

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We got a good one here!! Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners mobile app

https://www.thedailyhoosier.com/iu-football-recruiting-class-of-2021-new-zealand-punter-james-evans-commits-to-hoosiers/ We have quite the pipeline Down Under! Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners mobile app

Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle) The Indiana Hoosiers received a verbal commitment from three-star wide receiver Jordyn Williams on Friday afternoon. Williams, out of Westover High School in Albany, Georgia made his announcement on Twitter. He chose the Hoosiers over Power Five offers from Alabama, Kansas, Louisville, Maryland, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Rutgers, Tennessee, Wake Forest and Washington State. According to 247 Sports, Williams’ decision came down to Indiana and Louisville. Williams is the sixth commitment of Indiana’s 2021 recruiting class. He is rated as a three-star (85.76) prospect by 247 Sports Composite ranking. He is listed at six-foot-one and 180 pounds. Williams’ statement on Twitter read:

I would hope that @JerryYeagley23 would come back soon, I thought he added a lot to several different threads

My oldest went to high school w Cam, my youngest goes to school w the younger sister (and 2 of my coworkers know the older brother). My oldest says that Cam is a great guy, and she’s very not into the “sport hero worship “, said he’s a very caring intelligent young man. Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners

This is just horrible and heartbreaking. Former Columbus East player and current IU player Cam Wilson’s parents. His younger sister is graduating from East this year https://www.wthr.com/article/columbus-police-identify-woman-shot-and-killed-apartment-complex Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners mobile app

Just wanted to try and steer this back lol

I'm going to have them photoshop the bottom half of my face onto the mask lol (or perhaps someone who is actually good looking!)

Leal definitely help the leadership mantle for Bloomington South the times I saw him play

Definitely! I'd even give Loaded Chicken Sandwich a big man hug! I met @Str8Hoosiers at a game once- really cool to put faces with names!

Love to meet up with you! Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners mobile app

Welcome! We have a pretty knowledgeable base here, pretty active! Sent from my iPhone using BtownBanners

https://www.thedailyhoosier.com/hoosier-sights-iu-womens-basketball-star-ali-patberg-talks-her-career-and-memorable-season/ Nice video with Patberg