6-foot-10 center Eli Holman -- a 2007 recruit who signed with the Hoosiers on Nov. 8 -- has been denied reinstatement to play his senior season at Richmond High School in California, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Just four games into his junior season, Holman was suspended for 18 months after pushing a referee.
POSTGAME - FINAL SCORE 74-57: IU looked like a different team in the second half. The offense ran much more smoothly, and the Hoosiers continued to control the boards.
To celebrate the arrival of another beautiful, duty-free Friday, we transcribed IU coach Kelvin Sampson's Thursday press conference and posted it below.
There's a solid discussion going on already, so I'm a bit hesitant to switch gears like this, but I think this is interesting enough to warrant its own post. We've been - as we usually do the few days after a big IU game - trolling the major media sites that covered IU to get their takes.
What a whirlwind of a trip, but we're back, and brimming with thoughts about the Hoosier effort in Durham last night. Speaking of a whirlwind, how about that blog last night?
Basset fouls Duke right away. There are now 30 seconds left and Duke is on the line. My heart, as I'm sure all yours are, is pumping rapidly. Freshman Gerald Henderson misses the first one.
We just got inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, which was empty except for a few Duke big men working on post moves and some miscellaneous press members and support staff milling about.
There's plenty of hoops-related material to chew on down below, so I wanted to take a quick break from that to provide you with some of the highlights from our early-morning excursion into North Carolina.
Eamonn here. Matt, myself, and Keith MacDonald, IDS crack staff photographer, are still getting settled into our hotel room here in downtown Durham - which, according to our quick driving tour, is nowhere near as nice as Chapel Hill - and it's still early in the day.
I wanted to post quickly to, first of all, welcome you back to the Basketblog after a long holiday-related hiatus, and second, get your blood flowing on the big game at Cameron Indoor Stadium tomorrow night.
POSTGAME: We didn't get an Adam Ahfeld 3-pointer, but Kyle Taber hit a layup with about 10 seconds to go.
POSTGAME: Enjoy the (presumably) relaxed second half. Remember when I said that? HA. Ha...ahem..ha. How presumptuous of me.
IU had already secured what many scouts considered a top-10 recruiting class for next season. And it just got bigger.
POSTGAME: Eeeeek. Not quite the outcome Coach Sampson and the Hoosiers were looking for out of tonight's game.
POSTGAME: Well, it stayed interesting for a bit, didn't it? The fouls continued and D.J. White remained out of the game, but, spurred on by Earl Calloway high screen after Earl Calloway high screen, the Hoosiers finished with their first win of the Kelvin Sampson era. Leading scorers were Rod Wilmont and Calloway, who finished with 24 and 22, respectively.
The IU-Indianapolis exhibition just finished. IU won 83-46. Matt is hard at work on a detailed wrap story as we speak, but until then, a funny (if not noteworthy) tidbit: the Adam Ahlfeld experience. I mentioned Ahlfeld's intensity and enthusiasm a week or so ago, but tonight, it was on full contagious display.
The suspense has been killing you, hasn't it? Well, rest easy. Eric Gordon is going to be a Hoosier.
Well, IU's first exhibition matchup is finished, a 95-50 victory for the Hoosiers. We'll have our full coverage on IDSNews.com and in the print edition tomorrow, but since the game wasn't televised locally (at least that we know of) I figured it was as good an idea as any to start a little post-game discussion here. (NOTE: When the "real" games get started, we'll do a lot more reader discussions, which will rely heavily on your comments.
As many of you know, Thursday was Kelvin Sampson's first open practice at IU. Open practices are the exception under Sampson, thanks to someone who published some of his, um, choice practice comments at Oklahoma on the internet.
We know we've beaten you over the head today with Eric Gordon-ness in the print edition (see here and here). So, instead of playing the "who's right, who's wrong" game so often applied to the situation, here's a video of Gordon completing a rather tremendous dunk (minus the charge). At the end of the day, it probably won't matter to Hoosier fans how and why he got here.
