Indiana held serve through its first seven Big Ten games against sub-par team this season – a season where coach Tom Crean is fighting to keep his job despite the gravity of fan dissatisfaction. Early season losses to Wake Forest, UNLV, and Duke showed the same variety of difficulties (defensive deficiencies in both scheme and […]
You see them every game at the end of the bench, cheering for their teammates. They enthusiastically greet the starters and key subs every timeout. Every once in awhile – a little bit more often recently as IU has won three of its last four by at least 25 points – they get a couple […]
Peyton Manning is claimed by a number of teams and cities, but Indianapolis is where he did the great majority of his NFL work, so people here will be paying close attention the next 13 days as he prepares for his ride into a glorious sunset – or so his fans hope. Manning’s body has failed him […]
Sunday afternoon, the two biggest NFL stars of the last 20 years will match up for the 17th and (likely) final time in the AFC Championship. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are two of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, and like all great rivals, matchups between the great leaders define their careers. It’s only fitting […]
Antwaan Randle El is the latest NFL player with memory loss? It can’t be. Such a great Hoosier, and only 36 years old. I saw the piece on Yahoo!, but needed to find out for myself. One of the very coolest things about working in the media is that when I get curious about something, […]
If Indiana beats Illinois tonight at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, the Hoosiers will have put together a 6-0 Big Ten start for the first time in the Tom Crean era. There was a bit of panic among Hoosiers fans after a two-loss trip to Maui and a less than competitive trip to Duke, but Indiana […]
I’m a white guy from one of the whitest areas on the planet. The village of 5,000 where I grew up north of Chicago boasted exactly zero blacks. None. To say I am not an expert in the area of the challenges blacks face in succeeding in this country is a grotesque understatement. But I try […]
The Marion County Basketball Tournament continues tonight with semifinals at historic Southport Fieldhouse, and among those in the crowd will be many college coaches getting a look at the future of college hoops. Through the next two months young men who have worked their entire lives to excel at basketball will put their skills and […]
Many NFL franchises have floated the threat of a move to Los Angeles to motivate their current cities to at least partially fund new digs. When St. Louis blinked at a Rams proposal to stay, owner Stan Kroenke decided Los Angeles would be his team’s new home. A similar scenario played out in Indianapolis 14 […]
We were tragically reminded yesterday of the bond that continues to exist between Brad Stevens and the players he coached at Butler University prior to his accepting the job as coach of the Boston Celtics. Brad visited Andrew Smith last week to say goodbye, and spoke of his passing with eloquence and raw emotion in a […]