Stromboli

Tomorrow. I'm so freaking excited.

That's awesome. Feels like we don't hear much about Jerome. Wagers for next week? Can it be a repeat? Maybe Phinisee?

Yep, anytime I don't have WiFi, I just don't visit btownbanners. I can't open a single thread without getting redirected and my phone starts saying "Congratulations" to me.

Thank you! If you continue similar articles in the future, I hope you'll post them here.

Thanks, USPS. Seems like Trendon is keeping us involved with the recruitment more than the recruiting services. Definitely feels like he's waiting to see what happens with Keion and Trayce. How did I miss that Kira Lewis reclassed? Good, I guess. I'll be watching him this year.

https://www.indianahq.com/read/5bc2aac21184130013b1556c Another article from IndianaHQ about Evan Fitzner, and what we can expect from him.

https://www.indianahq.com/read/5bd03c236f0aed00132fb9d8 Article about Rob Phinisee, what we can expect. The look into his defense is very good.

Well.... It's more likely than not that this is what it appears to be. Occam's razor and all that. That said, there's some wiggle room. This Lasko character likely had some incentive to get the deal done with Kansas. This could have been his nudge to convince them to make the deal. Lasko seems to want the Kansas deal to happen. He's feeling froggy and trying to muscle the adidas rep into making the Kansas deal. This could have been a simple attempt by Ostrom to conjure up national interest in Indiana, without any plans to pay any money. It is well known that programs want to appear to be among the elite, even if they acknowledge they won't get the recruits (the Fran Plan). Getting headlines that "Silvio de Sousa is showing interest in Indiana" gives some credence to a program trying to recruit Garland and Langford at the time. This explanation is entirely feasible and does not implicate this coaching staff. We'd get interest in de Sousa just the same we got interest in Billy Preston. There's no dollar amount given. No specifics given. There's not much incriminating stuff here. If Indiana were in on all of this, then the text message would be going from Ostrom to the adidas rep, not from Ostrom to the AAU coach of the player to the adidas rep. There was nothing like "would you pay just as much for an Indiana commitment?" In this case, adidas is very clearly only interested in helping Kansas get recruits, and it appears that the adidas $$ for recruits hasn't been made available for Indiana to utilize. "No, I didn't." --- Tom Ostrom, when asked whether or not he tried to pay for Silvio de Sousa to come to Indiana. "No, they didn't." -- Silvio de Sousa, when asked whether or not Indiana offered him a scholarship, recruited him, hosted him for a visit, etc. "None." -- The number of 5* recruits (or even top 50) Indiana has secured commitments from aside from Romeo Langford.

I won't feel safe about any game until this team proves otherwise. I haven't so easily forgotten last year's ugly losses, like many have. That said, if this team has any grit to it at all, we shouldn't need to sweat USI. Put our upperclassmen in. Green, Fitz, JMo, and McHustle, plus anyone else (I know, it's Langford) need to be able to handle these guys without a coach on the bench. I'm looking to keep lesser teams under 50 pts. I'd like to see opposing coaches calling time out when we're up 18-4. Do our work in the first half so Race, Damezi, Rob, Jake, and Jerome can spend a half playing together.

This happens to me all the time, very frustrating. I'm on Android, Chrome browser. It only happens when I use data, never when I'm on WiFi.

Yeah. It's BS. If Coach K weren't such a sanctimonious, finger-pointing rat, I might cut him more slack. If fair play had any place in all of this, Zion would be benched already. Instead we'll have Zach McRoberts chasing him around, while the commentators breathlessly gape at Coach K's ability to land such a heralded class. After all of this, with adidas buying recruits for Louisville, and doing the same for Kansas then telling Self that they want them to be at the top of college basketball, I'd like to be there when IU (Archie, Crean, Glass?) calls our adidas rep like "WTH, man?" Did adidas give Indiana the same opportunities, and we refused it? Or did they buy prestige for these other programs, to our detriment? We've endured decades of snark. Arizona fans refusing to acknowledge us as a blue blood. Purdue fans snickering about dusty banners. Kentucky flagrantly disowning the rivalry. Duke, UNC running away from us in prestige. Losing guys like Tremont Waters to LSU, and everyone talking about what a great job Wade is doing down there. I think we've already resigned ourselves to the fact that legacies are safe. The cheating is so pervasive that K, Self, and Calipari are going to survive and retire as heroes. These fat cats know it. I wish the Duke game were being played in Bloomington. I'd love our fans to give K a little of what he deserves.

It is crazy how quiet we are on the TJD thing. My guess is that his family has shut down interviews, etc. With Romeo, Darius, even DJ, all of our media sources would be pumping out articles for us to consume, and it keeps the fires burning. The Jacksons haven't done any of that. All the experts seem to have shared what they know, and there's not much else to provide. General consensus is that sometime in the next 8 days, he'll commit to IU. And that would be awesome. What are the rules for getting our committed recruits to games this year? Last year we had Rob at a ton of them. TJD came to quite a few, also. Will we see Armaan, Trayce, and Keion (getting ahead of myself here) at Assembly all year?

I think there's some Romeo-fatigue on this team. At the dunk contest, when the crowd voted (by cheering) for Romeo (even though Justin's dunks were better), you could see Justin and a couple others very clearly roll their eyes. The other night Jake went "live" on instagram, someone asked where was Romeo. He just did a little mocking fangirl "Romeo!!" thing and ignored the question. JMo went live on the IUBB page yesterday at media day, and Zach (who was next to him) added in the comments "Where's Romeo?" as a joke. This would be another example. You'll notice in the clip, they get asked about Romeo, and Juwan pops his eyes like he's saying "you've got to be kidding me with the Romeo questions," while Zach looks at Juwan like its an inside joke. That's my take. Do I think the guys are holding it against Romeo? No, I haven't seen that. Remember this time last year, when we were all convinced that Clifton Moore was going to be the big thing? Some were wondering if he was going to stay for 1 year or 2 before he went to the NBA. Now we've got guys like Jerome who aren't even getting mentioned at media day. Last two things. My favorite clips from media day: https://twitter.com/TheHoosierNet/status/1050461548475506688 https://twitter.com/TheHoosierNet/status/1050457143479029762

Neat article. I'm disappointed I didn't know of George until now. I did know of his wife, Judge Taliaferro. She was a major force in Monroe County and statewide for kids' rights and well-being.

Forrester is doing his part! Also good to see this attitude, since it's basically Jake getting recruited over. I've heard many times that Jake brings some real personality to the team.

A new video.

Andre 3000. He sounds like Andre 3000. Yikes.

A freshly shorn TJD giving side-eye to likely Purdue commit Malik Hall.

Here's the source video for that interview. A little bit better than what made it to Zagsblog posted by our flatulent geriatric friend. Keion is pretty smooth in these interviews. It's no surprise he can rattle off nice things to say about each coach. My new nickname for him is Keion 3000. https://basketballrecruiting.rivals.com/news/usab-five-star-forward-keion-brooks-breaks-down-his-final-6

Just a reminder that we landed Romeo in the aftermath of all this. Like the earth was still smoldering, and Romeo took steps to distance himself from Pitino and UL. IN THIS CASE, I think we can safely assume the recruitment to Indiana was clean, almost as result of the current case hitting so close to home. Since Romeo, we've got Armaan Franklin, and a growing list of rejections. I would not take Romeo's commitment as some prima facie evidence that IU is now entering the game as you see it. Otherwise, I agree that this stuff is layered and not as easy as a coach paying a player.

‘I handed (Brian Bowen Sr.) $19,400 in cash...to ensure that Brian Bowen would attend University of Louisville’ - financial planner Munish Sood Pitino's comments immediately after the commitment: "We got lucky on this one," Pitino told Terry Meiners of News Radio 840. "I had an AAU director call me and ask me if I'd be interested in a player (Bowen). I saw him against another great player from Indiana. I said 'Yeah, I'd be really interested.' They had to come in unofficially, pay for their hotel, pay for their meals. We spent zero dollars recruiting a five-star athlete who I loved when I say him play. In my 40 years of coaching this is the luckiest I've been." https://www.thescore.com/ncaab/news/1314238

That leaves out Forrester, De'Ron, Clifton, and Damezi. I'm not really disagreeing with you, more wondering how you justify leaving all those guys on the bench. I guess because there's 10 guys better? Man.

Huge matchup! Has Kentucky played anyone good? SOS near as tough as ours?

Back in my day, our Ns were complete. No cutting corners like Ns today. Edit: But seriously, I'm sure it was $125,000 well spent.