IU Basketball prepares for unforeseen changes for 2008-09

Nine months ago, I stood in the lobby of the Noblesville High School gym just after a stop on the IU basketball barnstorming tour, and I saw the future. \nThe tour, which runs every year, takes the newest class of IU basketball players around Indiana to play local teams of high school stars in up-and-down games featuring All-Star-Game-like defense. I saw one of those games, and I saw the future.\nGranted, Eric Gordon – not playing because of a test the next day – would likely be gone a season later. But there was still plenty of talent on that court to see IU through the next few years. \nI saw Jordan Crawford, raw and noticeably rough around the edges, but wielding a good shot while having the ability to create. I saw Brandon McGee and Eli Holman, long and athletic, pushing outside and inside down the court to give Crawford options. I saw DeAndre Thomas making passes I wouldn’t have imagined the big man could make.\nI imagined that group, along with the absent Jamarcus Ellis, next to the likes of D.J. White and Armon Bassett, and my mouth watered. As a citizen savant of basketball, I wanted to see what that team could do.\nNow they are all but gone, that future I saw. Only Crawford remains, and for how long is anyone’s guess. Graduation and the exodus that followed Tom Crean’s arrival in Bloomington have left IU basketball a shell of its former self.\nNever before have I seen such a thing in sports, such an absolute overhaul of an entire program in just one year. Not only did the team dissipate before our very eyes, but the entire coaching and support staff are gone with them, drifted away before us like corn silk in the Midwest wind. \nI’m not saying the system was better before. On the contrary, I think this renovation of IU basketball was absolutely necessary, and I applaud Tom Crean for having the gumption to realize what needed to be done and doing it in the face of pure program destruction.\nBut one fact remains: The team you sat inside Assembly Hall and watched dismantle Kentucky and thrash Michigan State is no more. Come next October, IU students will pack Assembly Hall and cheer on a new group of Hoosiers.\nIt is unlikely that more than a select few will mourn the passing of the team they cheered just one year prior.\nThose Hoosiers are gone now, a passing vision in the backs of our minds. Nick Williams will in time come to replace Eric Gordon, and Verdell Jones with him. Tijan Jobe will replace, well, no one – the Hoosiers haven’t had a body that big in years.\nBut there is a part of me that will miss the future that is now the past. Not because I’m an ardent fan of IU basketball, but because I wanted to see possibility become reality. I wanted to see what became of potential developed into success. At their core, every sportswriter has a passion for their job, and I wanted to see that show.\nBut the past is just that, and it’s never going to return. The bed has been made, however surreally, by sanctions, cell phones and report cards, and now it’s time for Hoosier fans, coaches and (mostly new) players alike to lie in it.\nSee you in October.