by Kent Sterling
Devin Davis and Hanner Mosquera-Perea are gone from the Indiana Basketball team. Maybe the inmates are no longer running that asylum.
It’s about time.
Screws have been loose in Bloomington for a long time on Indiana University’s men’s basketball team, and finally – at long last – efforts were made yesterday to tighten them. Junior Devin Davis and senior Hanner Mosquera-Perea were dismissed from the team for an embarrassing aggregation of offenses. The final straw was the citation for possession of less than 30 grams of week that was issued to Davis on Monday while Mosquera-Perea was in the room.
Coach Tom Crean either grew the stones needed to assess meaningful consequences, or was handed them by athletic director Fred Glass. Regardless of the source of the hammer, it’s good that one finally was swung toward entitled and enabled players who have treated the privilege of playing basketball at Indiana with indifference for too long.
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Over the past 15 months, two Indiana basketball players have been arrested for using fake IDs as they tried to gain entry to Kilroy’s Sports on Little 500 weekend, two more were suspended for multiple positive drug tests, another was arrested for driving while intoxicated, yet another suffered a fractured skull as the result of jumping on an SUV being driven by different player, who was then arrested for driving after doing while being underage.
In a vacuum, all but the DUIs would be seen as nothing more than college hijynx gone awry, but combine them and add the responsibility basketball players accept when they sign on to represent the university as its most important marketing arm, and you have a serious problem.
With each incident, Crean appeared less and less capable of building a culture of respect or even obedience. Whatever the disincentive, the players’ behavior revealed them as ineffective and weak.
As at least half the roster continued to act like idiots, they revealed apathy toward Crean’s ineffective assessment of punitive countermeasures.
Things devolved so completely last Fall that the team was addressed by Glass, a man whose job responsibilities do not and should not include hands on management of student-athletes.
And now, finally, a message has been sent that Indiana Basketball isn’t a country club where the inmates run the asylum. A line is crossed, and the privilege of playing basketball at Indiana is removed. The players who don’t listen now are beyond help.
It would have been a lot easier for Crean had he run off an important player earlier to show that he’s capable of lowering the boom regardless of talent, but these expulsions can begin a new era of authority returning to the guy paid handsomely to run the program.
Not only will the wayward players still on the Indiana roster benefit from knowing that Crean and/or Glass are more than willing to impose their will because of a weak moment leading to a bad choice, the players who toe the line will respond positively as well.
There are few things more annoying to a kid who does all the right things than a guy who is never penalized for doing all the wrong things. Enthusiasm wanes, play suffers.
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Crean and Glass stepped up yesterday. In business terms, they made the tough decision to fire two employees who had shown repeated disrespect for Indiana University through their irresponsible and immature actions. Easy call.
Another great business lesson – when an employee problem is repeated again and again, it’s a department head problem. When the department head problem isn’t corrected, it’s a manager problem. The discipline issues at Indiana had become a department head problem, and was about to lodge itself on the manager’s head. Glass is way too smart to allow that to happen.
This recalibration of discipline was long overdue, but in time to keep the entire ship from sinking.
Maybe now, Indiana Basketball will be played by adults because the coach finally acted like one himself.
SUCH A JOKE. These guys have been smoking grass all season long, they didn’t just finish finals and say “you know what it’s been a year since I got high so lets fire up a big one.” Obviously there have been no random drug tests given to the team. The ONLY reason these guys were dismissed is cause they got caught by the police not by some standard set by Harold Hill and his cast of misfit assistant coaches headed up by PT Barnum named Fred Glass. Give me a break. You telling me if Chuck Martin would have busted these guys getting high he would have told Crean and Crean would have kicked them off the team, that is beyond unbelievable. This coach is a complete joke, at least with Sampson WE WON GAMES and the team played their ass off on defense. Look at the really, really, really, good kids that have left program: Etherington, Luke Fisher, Remy Abell, Maurice Creek, Max Hoetzel, kids that have had no problems since moving on, Crean is a liar, fraud, and a joke.
BTW Kent if you haven’t seen this take a good long look. Crean is a used car salesman always has always will.
From November 2014;
n an interview with Chris Carlson of Syracuse.com, the mother of top 2015 target Thomas Bryant updated his recruitment with some very choice words about the IU program. While it has been no secret that Linda Bryant is openly lobbying her son to stay close to home at Syracuse for his college choice, she opened up about both of the Bryants’ reservations about Indiana, the only other school she says her son is seriously considering.
“Really it’s down to two,” Linda Bryant said. “Syracuse and Indiana. And it might be down to one soon. Thomas has always told me that Syracuse was the leader.”
As for Indiana, Bryant said she and her son have been turned off by the Hoosiers’ recent spate of bad news, issues that have included failed drug tests and underage drinking. Six of Indiana’s 13 scholarship players have been implicated in one or the other over the past year.
“They have a lot going on,” Linda said. “It seems like we went down there under false pretenses. They didn’t tell us anything about failed drug tests or that type of thing going on. My son doesn’t need to be around that stuff.”
Matterhorn – Negative as usual.
Glad the Bryants held their choices to such a high standard. Syracuse has receded into shame from its academic and drug related scandal, and Indiana, well, you know. If Thomas wanted to be around focused kids at a clean program, there are plenty of them.
I support the coach on this one. Kick them OUT! These guys had every chance and they blew it off. What a shame! These guys had a great opportunity next year. I guess getting high was more important. Let them go get high on someone else’s dime.
serious question here definitely no sarcasm: did devin davis suffer brain damage from the car incident? ultimately he made the decision to do what he did and im guessing at some point crean installed a zero tolerance policy but I have to wonder if davis…isn’t healed completely. any thoughts on this anyone? and pariah…wtf is wrong with that guy? im sure there are lots of teams like this but is the iu basketball team a bunch of stoners? maybe they are coming down at game time. maybe crean needs to roll a blunt in th locker room before a game and have everybody take bong hits at halftime.maybe we could get that simon skodjt broad to spring for a grow room. hell lets all just get high. lets sell weed at the concession stands. its Indiana crean. its the Indiana you created. this is YOUR Indiana: candystripes and skunkweed.
Davis is still recovering from the brain damage suffered from the Halloween episode.
How convenient that Indiana was over-signed by two and they happened to catch these guys smoking weed and dismissed them.
Indiana was even-steven when the players were dismissed. Enough transfers had already moved on to accommodate the freshmen.