"It's Indiana."

Tonight, Indiana hosts Florida Gulf Coast to open their 2010-11 basketball season. I'm going, but this week will be a win for IU no matter what happens (okay, that's not true. If they lose to FGC, that will really suck). Indiana basketball has already won the week because yesterday afternoon, Cody Zeller committed to come to Bloomington next year.

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When Tom Crean took over as coach a couple of years ago, he was asked why he, a successful coach who'd build a very nice program and life for himself up at Marquette, would want to take over the absolute quagmire that IU basketball was at the time. Honestly, even as an IU student and life-long fan, I couldn't figure it out. I suppose on the surface it made sense as a classic high-risk, high-reward move - if he succeeded, he'd be enshrined as the man who restored Indiana basketball to its former glory, a basketball savior in a state that lives and breathes basketball; if he failed, though, he'd be the person who couldn't save the Hoosiers, the one who left a safe, good program and was left out in the cold by the full collapse of the program.

His answer, though, made perfect sense. "It's Indiana." Not only did that answer fully encompass the "high-reward" part of my original equation, it added a new factor. Yes, at the time IU basketball was probably at its lowest point. Crean was coming into a program that had just narrowly escaped the NCAA's death penalty, but had crippled itself with its own sanctions (as well it should have done, by the way). For years the high standards set by Branch McCracken and Bob Knight had been slipping - not so much under Mike Davis, but drastically under Kelvin Sampson (by the way, they were slipping under Bob Knight at the end as well). Almost the entire team left when Crean was hired, which had been expected for the most part - only two players, Brett Finkelmeier and Kyle Taber, were left.

But it was still Indiana. There were still five national championship banners hanging in Assembly Hall. Players like Scott May, Steve Alford, and Jared Jeffries hadn't ceased to exist. When a school has a history in a sport, a down period doesn't erase the history of that program. It doesn't destroy a fanbase. It simply forces it into hibernation, awaiting something to revive it. And that process started when a coach came to Bloomington who understood, truly, that this was Indiana. And that coach immediately set out to raise the program and the recently jilted fanbase from the dead.

That process did not start with the commitment of Cody Zeller to IU - hell, even when the team wasn't great last year, attendance was high, as was optimism among most of the fans with whom I come into contact. That's part of the beauty of Indiana basketball, what makes it what it is - the fans knew that the team would not be great, but as soon as they knew that the team had a steward who understood the weight of his responsibility, and who was bringing in players who not only were highly skilled, but who also understood that responsibility, they re-invested in the program.

What Zeller represents is a reward for those fans, the ones who trusted Crean. Cody Zeller is a top prospect, but even if he doesn't end up being a top player, he is still a win for Indiana. He's an in-state prospect who's staying here, and at the expense of other top programs. Zeller chose IU over North Carolina and Butler: respectively, a program with five championships, just like Indiana, but with more recent success and Zeller's older brother Tyler; and a program also in Indiana coming off a national runner-up performance and likely still on the rise. Crean went up against those competitors (and surely more) and won.

Zeller's influential - in his comments yesterday, Zeller said that he'd call Yogi Ferrell (another IU target and friend of Zeller's) "in the next day or two," and Ferrell's father has said Yogi is "very excited" about Zeller's decision. Does that mean that Ferrell and others will commit to Crean tomorrow? No, of course not. But it shows that there is a domino effect of sorts here, that one recruit can make a program more attractive to others.

And that is what Zeller means to Indiana. He was the big catch, the crown jewel recruit, and we got him. Cody Zeller is a signal that Indiana University can recruit, attract, and lock in players of the highest caliber once again; a signal that Bloomington is once again a destination for the best young basketball players in the country.

When Tom Crean first took the job at IU, I'll admit that I had tempered hopes. I loved the hire, and I felt like if anyone could save this program, it would be him or someone like him. But I'm a pessimistic person a lot of the time, and I felt like there was a good chance that it wasn't possible to bring the program all the way back to where it had once been. After all, this was a team that hadn't won anything of import in the lifetimes of the players Crean would be trying to recruit. I figured that it would be hard to attract players who were worth attracting to a school that hadn't won a championship since 1987, and hadn't challenged for one since before I was in high school. At best, I assumed that it would be several years before top players wanted to come to Bloomington. I was wrong.

It's Indiana. And history doesn't die. The college basketball world should step lightly, as there's a sleeping giant in Bloomington, Indiana, and that giant may be truly stirring for the first time in twenty years.

I tire of the Zen Master

Seriously, that hat looks moronic. Especially since more than half of those titles were won with the Bulls.

Before every series the Lakers have had thus far in the playoffs, Phil Jackson has made some comment apparently designed to influence the referees in the coming series. He's come for Kevin Durant and Steve Nash, and now he's claiming that the whole Celtics team plays dirty or something.
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I think Jackson is a great coach, but this crap gets old really quickly. Considering how bad the referees are already, it could easily lead to bad calls in the finals. I know that this is what he's going for, but I don't really get why he can do it.

Let's take a look at Jackson's opposite number in the Finals, Doc Rivers. In March, he was fined $25 thousand after criticizing the referees in a game against the Bulls. Clearly his comments were made in an attempt to have an effect on the referees' future actions. So why was he fined when, as far as I can tell, Phil Jackson hasn't been fined for any of his ref-baiting?

I have a feeling it's mostly because he's Phil Jackson, but a big part of it also has to be the fact that he's technically not directly criticizing referees. But as I said earlier, Jackson is having an effect on referees - hell, he may be having more of an effect than Rivers' comments ever could. The NBA needs to make up their minds - either you can make comments directed at the referees, or you can't. Either fine everyone or nobody.

And while we're at it, let's fine all the referees too, just for being horrible at their jobs.

Beat L.A.

Okay, I was not expecting that at all.

After the Magic demolished the Hawks to get to the Eastern Conference finals, the sports world practically had a coronation for them. They were supposedly so good after winning eight of their first eight playoff games that they were going to roll through the Celtics unfettered, and the road to a championship was clear.

The Celtics, on the other hand, had gone through the Heat fairly easily, and looked surprisingly good against the Cavaliers. Of course, the Cavaliers lost "because LeBron choked," and the Celtics were too old to be able to compete with Orlando.
More stuffRemember when everyone thought that? Yeah, that was dumb. Evidently nobody noticed that the Hawks and Bobcats are not that good at basketball. So the Magic got punked by the suddenly-not-old Celtics, and now Boston's in the finals. I mainly find this funny, and it's a big reason why about 95% of sports analysis is total crap (not what you find here, though!) and why it's mostly useless.

Nobody knows what's going to happen. People make assumptions usually based on faulty information (like the idea that the Atlanta Hawks were ever a good basketball team), and they make these predictions that we the viewers are all supposed to take as gospel, because if you're on television, you're automatically an "expert."

But the concentration on what's going to happen next obscures the role that analysts should be performing, one that they can actually perform. I don't want these people to play Nostradamus. I have no interest in bad predictions. What I want is for people who understand a game to explain to me what happened or what's happening. I want to understand what is happening and why it works. I want breakdowns of plays and strategies. These are things that a proficient analyst can actually do reliably, as opposed to predicting the future.

So now we come to the Western Conference. Game 6 is tonight in Phoenix. I have no idea who is going to win this game; I have no idea who is going to win this series. If I had to, I would guess that the Suns will probably win tonight and lost Game 7. What I do know for sure is this: Amar'e Stoudemire is not very good at defense, and if the Suns are going to win, they need to figure out a way to make up for that. The zone is doing that to an extent, but at some point the Lakers are going to adjust. I fear that the Suns won't be able to adjust to the adjustment, based on the fact that I'm pretty sure that Alvin Gentry is an inferior coach to Phil "X" Jackson.

I also know this: I hate the Lakers. I hate pretty much every player on the team, and I do not like Phil Jackson. I like the Suns, and I'm a Celtics fan. So I want somebody - ANYBODY - to beat L.A. I just don't know who it's going to be.

Quick morning stuff

First things first, I just want to give fair warning that this weekend may be a little light from me. My brother's graduation open house is today, and tomorrow I'll be attending the Indianapolis 500. I'll be right back up to speed after that, though, and I may be able to write more than I expect.
More stuffOkay, now to some real things. This blog has a Twitter account. Well, technically I have a second Twitter account devoted to this blog, but you get what I mean. You can get updates on when things are posted and little tidbits and things like that. If you like Twitter, you might hit that up. Here is the link.

UConn's mens basketball program has been accused of eight major recruiting infractions. That's not very good. I've never been a huge UConn fan for reasons I can't explain, but though there's always been something that rubbed me the wrong way about the school and Jim Calhoun, I honestly can't say I saw this coming at all. Just from my cursory examination of the charges, they appear to be mostly similar to those leveled against Kelvin Sampson back when he was with my alma mater (that would be Indiana University), only worse, because "false and misleading information" was given to investigators. I don't know what the endgame is going to be, but from experience I can say that if it's anything like it was/is at IU, it's about to be really not fun to be a UConn fan.

Speaking of recruiting violations, it looks like Kentucky's Eric Bledsoe may be involved in some of them. This is all still in the preliminary stages, so who knows what will come of it -- there may very well be nothing. But considering John Calipari's track record of being involved in violations (even when not directly committing the violations), this could very well be something. At the very least, we should keep an eye on it.

More will be coming later, including (hopefully) something on the NBA playoffs (BEAT L.A.) and a moderately well-informed take on the Stanley Cup Finals (%@!# PHILLY). As you can tell, I have some opinions.

Perkins got jobbed (again)

So the other night in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals, Kendrick Perkins was called for two technical fouls and thus was ejected from the game by rule. Typically this would perturb me, as I'm a Celtics fan, but at the time my brother was graduating from high school, so I was less interested than usual.

Then I saw film of the fouls, and I reached the appropriate level of rage.
More stuffThe first one was ridiculous. Perkins was trying to help a teammate up from the floor, and his hand slipped. Marcin Gortat was standing behind Perkins, and when his hand slipped, he (I assume accidentally) elbowed Gortat because, if you'll remember, he was standing right freaking behind Perkins. So Gortat decided it would be a good idea to punch the ball out of Perkins' hands, and the referee decided it would be a good idea to give Perkins a technical. If any part of that sequence makes sense to you, let me know.

The second one was maybe even more spectacular. Perkins committed a foul or something (I was watching this on replay, remember) and didn't like the call, so he said something as he was walking away. He didn't show anyone up, unlike some people

Sorry, I don't know where that came from. Anyway, he basically got a technical for walking away from the referee. That's pretty absurd.

The second one got rescinded yesterday, so Perkins is back to having six technical fouls. This is important because a player with seven technical fouls in a single playoffs receives a one-game suspension by rule. In essence, the NBA was able to fix a screw-up by Wednesday night's officials that could have totally changed this series.

The problem: that fix may only be temporary. Perkins now has no room for error whatsoever. One tech and he's out for a game. Considering the fact that the first technical was bogus as well, the NBA should have rescinded both. Stuff like this can turn a series, especially considering the fact that Glen Davis is hurt now and Rasheed Wallace is no longer able to play basketball well. Perkins is the top man on the "guarding Dwight Howard" depth chart. He shouldn't be in danger of missing a game because NBA officials are ridiculous.