Class of '66 Old Fart

North Carolina's Theo Pinson (stress fracture) is out another 8-12 weeks, per a school spokesman. Tar Heels open against Tulane on Friday.

Double digit rebounds for VonLeh in a starting role. 11.09.16 Season W/L Game W/L Min. Pts. FG's 3's FT's Reb Asst Stls Blks TO's PF + / - Brooklyn 3-5 Ferrell L 14 5 2-3 1-1 0-0 1 3 1 0 3 0 -9 Houston 5-3 Gordon W 34 15 5-14 2-7 3-3 2 2 0 1 2 3 -6 Oklahoma 6-2 Oladipo L 36 18 6-16 5-9 1-1 8 2 2 0 1 2 -4 Portland 5-4 VonLeh L 26 5 2-8 1-2 0-0 11 1 0 0 1 2 -7 Memphis Williams No Game Charlotte 6-1 Zeller W 27 12 4-7 0-0 4-8 3 2 0 1 1 3 -6

And this bit of humor. Bob Kravitz ‏@bkravitz 3m3 minutes ago After watching the Pacers play defense this year, I now know what this Mannequin Challenge is.

Gregg Doyel's take on the Pacers.

Justin Smith of Lincolnshire Stevenson signs with Indiana.

11.08.16 Season W/L 11.06.16 Game W/L Min. Pts. FG's 3's FT's Reb Asst Stls Blks TO's PF + / - Houston Gordon No Game Oklahoma Oladipo No Game Portland 5-3 VonLeh W 15 5 2-8 1-4 0-0 8 0 1 1 2 2 -12 Memphis 4-4 Williams W 4 0 0-2 0-1 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 1 -1 Charlotte Zeller No Game

Bruce Pascoe ‏@BrucePascoe 3m3 minutes ago Allonzo Trier apparently a no-show for #arizonawildcats flight to Honolulu as eligibility questions continue: NOTE: Pascoe is a sports reporter for the Arizona DailyStar. And shortly thereafter this from Pascoe: HONOLULU -- Since the Arizona Wildcats didn't fly charter into some off-limits executive terminal today, anyone at Gate 16 of the Honolulu International Airport could see which folks were walking off the team's flight. Allonzo Trier wasn't one of them. American Airlines flight 692 from Phoenix carried eight UA scholarship players, including Talbott Denny (injured ACL) but not Dylan Smith (ineligible to travel as a transfer) nor Ray Smith (who is scheduled to undergo ACL surgery). (Arizona's refusal to comment on anything about Trier, including over whether he would make the trip, prompted me to watch the team get off the plane. I wasn't on the team flight but arrived earlier in the day.) The UA's traveling party also included Arizona AD Greg Byrne, senior associate AD Mike Ketcham, team doctor Donald Porter, all UA coaches and walk-on players Paulo Cruz, Jake DesJardins and Tyler Trillo. But no Trier. His apparent no-show was hardly a surprise. He played in the Oct. 14 Red-Blue Game, but that was only a practice in the NCAA's eyes, and UA coach Sean Miller said he's had a full complement of players available for practice. Then Trier did not show up as scheduled for the Oct. 21 Pac-12 Media Day, and didn't play in UA's two exhibition games.

From Alex B. and Inside the Hall http://www.insidethehall.com/2016/11/08/espn-analyst-jay-bilas-talks-kansas-indiana-og-anunoby-and-more/

Rob Dauster - NBCSports: College Basketball X-Factors http://collegebasketball.nbcsports.com/2016/11/08/college-basketballs-x-factors-14-storylines-that-will-determine-champions/ And hello, Indiana: The Hoosiers have a pair of potential lottery picks on their roster in Thomas Bryant and O.G. Anunoby, so I understand why they’re showing up in the top 15 of national polls. I have them there myself. But I think that we are all undervaluing just how much Yogi Ferrell meant to this team last season, and just how much his absence is going to cost them. Can Robert Johnson and Josh Newkirk adequately fill in that role? And if they can’t, who on this Indiana team do you trust to have the ball in their hands on a critical possession when the Hoosiers have to have a bucket? [Dauster has clearly been following btb very closely- LOL]

Humorous tweet of the day: James Fraschilla Verified account ‏@jamesfraschilla Say a quick prayer for my seatmate to Honolulu @DDavis2016. 6'9 in coach on this 8 hour flight

From Craig Fehrman at the Wall Street Journal How Do You Make a Basketball Star? Fifty miles apart in Indiana, Thomas Bryant and Myles Turner are similar developing stars on completely different paths. Last summer, Thomas Bryant, the star sophomore for Indiana University’s men’s basketball team, spent a lot of time by himself. In the mornings, he studied English with a tutor in the lavish study hall built under his campus’s football stadium in Bloomington, Ind. “It was a hard class,” Bryant says. Afterward, he moved to IU’s even more lavish basketball practice facility, Cook Hall, for a different kind of learning. Alone or with a student-manager, he practiced his post-up footwork or his three-point shot. About 50 miles north, another young big man—Myles Turner, the second-year center for the Indiana Pacers—had his own summer routine. He would wake around 10 a.m.; eat under the guidance of a personal chef; and then work with a rotating cast of Pacers’ coaches. Bryant and Turner have come up with different answers to a core question facing NBA front offices, college sports junkies, and above all talented young basketball players: Where’s the best place to get better at basketball—in college or in the NBA? Bryant and Turner strike similar profiles. Both are just under 7 feet tall, with freakish wingspans. Both can score inside and out, a valuable skill for modern basketball bigs. Turner was born in 1996, Bryant in 1997. But while Bryant returned to IU for his sophomore season, Turner went pro after only one year at the University of Texas. The NBA’s age limit means that most players go to college for at least one year. But after that they must weigh many factors. Another college season might guarantee crunchtime minutes and hands-on coaching. But a jump to the NBA will create more time for basketball and certainly more money—not just in the initial paycheck, but in the quicker path to a second, larger contract. Turner admits that he struggled under Texas’s strict system, with its rigid plays and established upperclassmen. It didn’t help that he came in as the country’s second-ranked recruit. “Guys were saying you’re the next this or the next that,” he says. “It gets to your head.” Turner fit in better as his single collegiate season went along, but he didn’t feel like it was making him a better player. “I had a hard time adjusting,” he says. Things have gone smoother with the Pacers, where Turner enjoys more freedom on the court and in his off-season regimen. He has emerged as a young star thanks to his last-to-leave-practice drive. “He spent the entire summer here,” head coach Nate McMillan says. Turner remains skinny, in part because of a late growth spurt. He does not enjoy lifting weights and jokes that once he retires he’ll never set foot in a weight room again. But for now he works hard. “He’s gotten stronger in every area,” says Shawn Windle, the Pacers’ strength and conditioning coach. The other place Turner works is on the court. Rookies often ride the bench, and many of them hire their own basketball-focused coaches to drill with outside of games. “Especially the one-and-done guys get their own trainer,” Turner says. Turner has been lucky—he already starts. But he’s also lucky in that his team is paying more attention to player development. The Pacers recently hired David McClure from the Spurs to focus on this area. ‘This program is based on now and later. We want to win now but we want you to win later.’ —Indiana strength coach Lyonel Anderson This summer, McClure and Popeye Jones, the team’s big man specialist, worked hours each day with Turner, refining his individual post moves and his outside shot. Jones often showed Turner video clips to illustrate not just what to do but why to do it. (“He’s a millennial,” Jones says.) But Turner’s efforts are paying off. “He doesn’t want to be good,” Jones says. “He wants to be great.” While Bryant shares the same desire, he decided a second year of college was the best way for him to achieve it. “I knew halfway through last season I was coming back,” he says. “I knew there were key things I needed to work on.” The NCAA has made it somewhat easier for players to stay in school. A 2014 tweak to its “meals incidental to participation” rule has allowed schools to provide more food to their student-athletes. At Cook Hall, players can find Greek yogurt and fresh green smoothies. Most important, it allows coaches to actually work with players over the summer, which they were banned by the NCAA from doing before 2012. Now coaches get eight weeks of interaction, with a maximum of eight hours per week, two of which can be “skill-related instruction.” Even incoming freshmen can participate so long as they’re enrolled in summer classes. IU head coach Tom Crean uses his eight weeks in June and July. His program prioritizes developing NBA talent; the court in Cook Hall includes both the college and NBA three-point lines. During this summer’s “skill-related instruction,” Crean frequently put Bryant with the guards and not the big men, to improve his quickness. In the players’ downtime in May and August, the program still guides them. IU’s strength coach, Lyonel Anderson, sent each player home with a detailed packet of voluntary exercises. One was titled “Grind or Get Ate,” and for each day it specified the movements and reps—even the type of surface he wanted the players to run on. Anderson says that IU’s coaches always think about the next level. “This program is based on now and later,” he says. “We want to win now but we want you to win later.” He points to their emphasis on three-minute runs, a drill where players sprint up and down the floor as many times as possible in three minutes—and a drill NBA teams often use to measure prospects. Yogi Ferrell, a recent (and speedy) IU star, made it 27 3/4 court lengths during a workout with the Phoenix Suns. When Bryant first came to IU, he could manage only 22 1/2 lengths. Now, after his second summer of hard work, he’s up to 26 1/2 lengths. That endurance will help him score fast-break points for the Hoosiers, but it will also impress future NBA evaluators. Turner, who enrolled early at Texas and experienced part of a summer there, remembers his college workouts acutely. “You definitely work a lot harder in the off-season in college than in the NBA,” he says. “They’re trying to kill you. They’re trying to prove a point.” But for an NBA-minded coach like Crean, the point, at least in part, is that good summer habits should last. “I’ve rarely coached a player who went on to the next level who didn’t have the desire to be in the gym,” he says. “I think that starts in college.”

Latest from Jordan: http://albersangle.com/index.php/2016/11/08/inside-life-jordan-hulls/

11.07.16 Season W/L 11.06.16 Game W/L Min. Pts. FG's 3's FT's Reb Asst Stls Blks TO's PF + / - Houston 4-3 Gordon W 32 11 4-10 3-6 0-0 1 2 1 1 2 1 +4 Oklahoma 6-1 Oladipo W 33 17 6-9 1-2 4-4 2 2 0 0 1 1 +15 Portland VonLeh No Game Memphis Williams No Game Charlotte 5-1 Zeller W 23 13 5-7 0-0 3-3 5 0 0 0 0 2 +21

2017 Tyler JC (TX) F Eden Ewing has committed to PUke. 6'9" 215 lb.

Tweet from HoosierHaze: UCLA's 2017 Bball recruiting class is really starting to make me wonder if Alford made a deal w/ the ghost of Sam Gilbert.

Howard joining fight against pulmonary fibrosis which claimed his dad at age 52 after a 9-year battle. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chicago-bear-jordan-howard-brings-his-fight-to-pulmonary-fibrosis-300357886.html#continue-jump

REMINDER: Replay on basic BTN channel tonight at 7:30 E.T.

"I just can't listen to Coach Cal another second longer; he's so damn obnoxious and boring."

From Adam Zagoria: " I'm told there are 10 NBA scouts expected Friday at the Armed Forces Classic -- Arizona vs. MSU, Indiana vs. Kansas."

Indiana247 High-flying McSwain shows flashes of promise in Indiana debut Fans gasped and exclaimed throughout Assembly Hall as the ball clanged off the back rim of the south basket. Junior forward Freddie McSwain’s first shot attempt as a Hoosier didn’t go in, but the moment proclaimed McSwain as one of the team’s most athletic players. It came about seven minutes into IU’s exhibition win against Bellarmine on Saturday, as freshman forward De’Ron Davis missed a layup and McSwain flew into the paint. When he leapt for the rebound, his head rose above the rim. He snared the ball and threw it back down, but it was a little too strong and banged off the back of the rim. Still, the junior college transfer who had talked up his leaping and rebounding ability lived up to his word Saturday. That missed dunk was his only shot attempt, but he collected a team-high eight rebounds in just eight minutes of play. It was his first game action for the Hoosiers after undergoing minor knee surgery earlier in the fall. IU head coach Tom Crean said McSwain will still take a little time to get up to full speed. “'Rusty' would be a key definitive statement for him right now,” Crean said. “He's missed so much time. Again, when I tell you that he hasn't been up and down until this week, and it was every other day, that's not easy. I mean, that's not easy at all.” McSwain and Davis are both a little behind due to missing summer workouts while wrapping up academic requirements. McSwain was finishing up at Neosho Community College in Kansas, where he stood out as a rebounder and scorer. He might not be asked to score too much at Indiana with OG Anunoby, James Blackmon, Thomas Bryant and others very capable of scoring in bunches on any given night. Crean has compared the 6-foot-6, 215-pound McSwain to an NFL tight end, and McSwain is expected to make his largest impacts on defense and on the boards. Bryant said he’s happy to have McSwain alongside him in the frontcourt. “Freddie brings a lot to the team,” Bryant said, “being able to switch, even how quick, fast and strong he is, he can be on key guys that can help us out a lot, and it really helps with all of us out there.” Much like Bryant, McSwain has worn a smile during many of his appearances with media members. McSwain seems to immediately be comfortable in Bloomington, demonstrating it as he sat courtside at the IU women’s basketball team’s exhibition game Sunday. Fans came up to him occasionally, asking to take selfies and shake his large hand. Members of the pep band even took notice of him being there, coming over to serenade him with a version of “Hey! Baby.” Following his debut Saturday night, McSwain was also smiling as he was asked about his first game. “Playing tonight was just a great opportunity,” McSwain said. “I'm just glad to be here. It was just a fantastic game. I just wanted to just get my feet wet basically, just get used to the game and the tempo and just playing with the group of guys in the locker room. It was just a great opportunity to just be on the court again.” McSwain also said that he was grateful for the patience and support of his teammates as he has made his way back from knee surgery. The athleticism and the raw strength are there, as McSwain apparently set the program squat record when he arrived on campus, Crean said earlier this fall. McSwain hasn’t been here for long, but has already shown bits of promise as to a possible impact for Indiana, and Crean is confident that plays such as that missed dunk will have better endings in the future. “He's made a lot of improvement in a short period of time,” Crean said “and you're probably not going to see it for a while until he some of the other things there because once I think he gets confident in the pace of the game, the movements, the offenses, playing really, really hard and fast without using his hands, getting some of the techniques down, then all of a sudden I think you'll see his shot go in.”

11.06.16 Season W/L 11.06.16 Game W/L Min. Pts. FG's 3's FT's Reb Asst Stls Blks TO's PF + / - Houston Gordon No Game Oklahoma Oladipo No Game Portland 4-3 VonLeh W 3 0 0-0 0-0 0-0 1 0 0 0 0 0 -5 Memphis 3-4 Williams L DNP Charlotte Zeller No Game

IUWBB: ’17 guard Yeaney commits to IU Indiana received its fifth 2017 commitment Sunday in Bendu Yeaney, a 5-foot-9 guard from Oregon. Yeaney, who is considered a three-star prospect by ESPN.com, visited IU’s campus in September with Linsey Marchese (Dacula, Ga.) and Alexis Johnson (Houston, Tex.), who had already committed to IU, as well as Keyanna Warthen (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.), who would commit to the Hoosiers on Sept. 20. Yeaney, from Medford, Oregon, may have taken longer to make a decision because of the other programs involved. She had visits to Washington and Arizona. She also considered Oregon State and Colorado. At the end of the day, she chose not to stay on the West Coast but come to IU and join what appears to be a strong class. Along with Marchese, Johnson, Warthen and Yeaney, the Hoosiers also received a verbal from five-star prospect Jaelynn Penn from Louisville, Ky. What Yeaney adds to the class is another athletic combo guard, displaying both an ability to hit from beyond the arc and attack the rim. As a junior, she was named to USA Today’s All-Oregon second team. According to an article from The Oregonian in December 2014, Yeaney was averaging 17.2 points per game as a sophomore. This will probably be IU’s last commit, even though the Hoosiers do have six scholarships available. Signing day is this week, and the Hoosiers would most likely want to keep one scholarship available to be able to accommodate a transfer player, if one becomes available.

3 summaries of today's exhibition game. http://indiana.247sports.com/Article/Indiana-womens-basketball-runs-to-87-58-exhibition-win-over-UInd-48799963 http://iuhoosiers.com/news/2016/11/6/womens-basketball-hoosiers-down-uindy-in-exhibition-play-87-58.aspx http://www.hoosiersportsreport.com/2016/11/iuwbb-iu-defeats-uindy-87-58-in-exhibition-play/