Author Archives: Kent Sterling

NABC Announces All-America Teams – Johnson, McBuckets, Napier, Parker, Stauskas First Team

KANSAS CITY (March 26, 2014) — The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) announced today the 2014 NABC Coaches’ Division I All-America teams. Selected and voted on by member coaches of the NABC, these 15 student-athletes represent the finest basketball players across America.

2014 NABC COACHES’ DIVISION I ALL-AMERICA FIRST TEAM

Nick Johnson, Arizona, 6-3, 200, Junior, Guard, Gilbert, Ariz.
Doug McDermott, Creighton, 6-8, 225, Senior, Forward, Ames, Iowa
Shabazz Napier, Connecticut, 6-1, 180, Senior, Guard, Roxbury, Mass.
Jabari Parker, Duke, 6-8, 235, Freshman, Forward, Chicago, Ill.
Nik Stauskas, Michigan, 6-6, 205, Sophomore, Guard, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

2014 NABC COACHES’ DIVISION I ALL-AMERICA SECOND TEAM

Cleanthony Early, Wichita State, 6-8, 219, Senior, Forward, Middletown, N.Y.
C.J. Fair, Syracuse, 6-8, 215, Senior, Forward, Baltimore, Md.
Sean Kilpatrick, Cincinnati, 6-4, 210, Senior, Guard, Yonkers, N.Y.
Russ Smith, Louisville, 6-0, 165, Senior, Guard, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Andrew Wiggins, Kansas, 6-8, 200, Freshman, Guard, Vaughan, Ontario, Canada

2014 NABC COACHES’ DIVISION I ALL-AMERICA THIRD TEAM

Julius Randle, Kentucky, 6-9, 250, Freshman, Forward, Dallas, Texas
Marcus Smart, Oklahoma State, 6-4, 220, Sophomore, Guard, Flower Mound, Texas
Fred VanVleet, Wichita State, 5-11, 194, Sophomore, Guard, Rockford, Ill.
T.J. Warren, North Carolina State, 6-8, 215, Sophomore, Forward, Durham, N.C.
Scottie Wilbekin, Florida, 6-2, 176, Senior, Guard, Winter Haven, Fla.

Indiana Basketball – the Long Winter for Tom Crean Continues, but the Cold Doesn’t Seem to Bother Him on Windy City Radio

by Kent Sterling

If Tom Crean has a reason not to smile, he sounded as though he was completely unaware of it today on The Game’s Kap & Haugh show.

There are people who wear shorts in the dead of winter, and look like they are impervious to the cold. And there are people who are faced with incredible adversity who look happier than many who don’t have any worry in their lives.

I doubt Indiana Basketball coach Tom Crean left much exposed skin during this frigid winter that continues into late March, but the guy sure knows how to smile through what others would view as bleak times.

Five players left the program yesterday, and Crean spoke today of the opportunity that now exists to fill those roster spots on The Game in Chicago (click to listen). If Crean believes his status as coach is in any doubt because of the defections, he didn’t betray it in his optimistic series of messages, and why would he?

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Noah Vonleh is going to be drafted in the lottery portion of the NBA Draft, as he has planned since high school. Soon-to-be graduate Austin Etherington is likely off to Indiana State to play alongside his brother. Jeremy Hollowell is going somewhere else because he is not a good fit in Bloomington. Walk-ons (a term I use with great respect) Jonny Marlin and Joe Fagan are also leaving the program.

The aggregate of the statistical impact of the four players not destined to play in the NBA is not great. Ask yourself what would have been different this season without Etherington and Hollowell. Would Indiana have been worse than 7-11 in the Big Ten without them? Whatever the answer, it really doesn’t matter as IU failed to qualify for a legitimate postseason tournament with the group now being lamented as fractured.

Crean is pushing in his chips on Morgan Park Illinois, native Josh Cunningham, graduate transfer Anthony Lee, and Bloomfield Hills HS power forward Yante Maten. Lee is 6’9″, 230 lbs, and averaged 13.6 points and 8.6 points for a bad Temple team. Cunningham is the more sought after player with offers from plenty of teams in the SEC, ACC, and Big Ten. Crean’s interest in Cunningham is underscored by his appearance today on Chicago radio.

Coaches have two statuses of importance – employed and unemployed – and the best way to migrate from the first status to the second is to listen to doomsday prophets or staunch supporters. Recruiting out of fear is almost certain to result in being fired, and the arrogance caused by satisfaction is another ticket out.

What Crean is focusing on is filling roles, not holes. When recruiting becomes a high stakes game of hope that the new blood can jump start a moribund program, the result is very similar to gamblers who throw all their remaining chips on the high odds novelty bets of the craps table. Sure, there is a chance of cashing in, but the overwhelming odds are that the questionable character kids with mad athletic skills and or the high-character kids with middling athletic gifts will ruin the team.

If the SS Hoosier is taking on water, the captain of the ship certainly appears calm and confident on the surface. Whether that confidence is well-placed or a facade will be seen soon enough. The proof is always on the floor, and if Indiana continues to appear disconnected next season – or worse – suffers another defection from the core group of talented youth, even a man as outwardly positive as Crean will be forced to privately confront his professional mortality.

It’s possible that Indiana will rebound next year with the core of Yogi Ferrell, Troy Williams, Stanford Robinson, Hanner Mosquera-Perea, James Blackmon Jr., Robert Johnson, Max Hoetzel, and the soon-to-be committed replacements. Those names on a roster would give reason for hope, but they will need to find a way to play basketball like they don’t detest each other – a trait sadly missing from this year’s team.

Or rumors of Tom Crean’s precarious perch in Assembly Hall will be much tougher to dismiss.

Catfisher Buries Me Under Torrent of Comments; Keeps Me Busy for Hours

by Kent Sterling

This is the only selfie I will ever post or send anyone. I’m dumb, but not that dumb.

A tsunami of comments flooded kentsterling.com early today, and because I try to reply to even the wackiest of thoughts, I was very busy this morning.

I was called names and referred to as a hypocrite enough times that I should have suspected something, but I was typing so furiously I never looked at the URLs of the comments, which were all identical.

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That these comments were all in response to my post three days ago on the supposed catfishing of Paul George is a sadly or hilariously ironic truth that makes my shame in being duped all the greater.

It’s odd that some random guy would block out an entire morning to engage in a fictitious debate with someone like me. Maybe I should take it as praise, but this morning’s lesson will remain with me for years and may save me a lot of time and trouble down the road.

The content of the comments was bizarre. Normally, because I respond to almost every reasonable comment made here, the commenter and I tend to find common ground, and even the most cantankerous dissenter learns that I’m not nearly the kook he or she believes me to be. Today, the people became more and more outraged – to the point where they began referring to me as a racist – without rationale.

I’ve never been called a racist, so I was mildly concerned despite having done nothing to warrant that characterization. That dozens of others suddenly echoed those beliefs gave me reason for pause because the sheer tonnage of the people who were offended had to be considered.

Never wavering, I continued to reply again and again to the accusation. I was truly baffled by this strident and odd collection of people as each comment I wrote was used against me in a way that defied logic. There was a supposed HR expert who pleaded me to stop replying, and 42 people who called me a hypocrite.

After working at a news/talk radio station for 15 years answering the somewhat delusional rantings of those who disagreed with a message from a host, I grew thick skin and saw the complainers as challenges. There were very few people who called my office that I couldn’t bring back to rationality, but this was a vat of 42 lunatics that could not be reasoned with.

I began to think that there was something institutionally wrong with NBA fans. Maybe they are collectively nuts and beyond reason, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to try, so I continued to tilt against this windmill of discontent with endless comments offering well-reasoned explanation.

Finally, out of compassion, pity, or both, the guy came clean and apologized. I suppose I should be angry, but I’m not. My day could have been spent more constructively than by sparring with the same guy for hours as he masqueraded as 42 different people, but overall it was a reasonably funny execution that I completely fell for. Hard to blame anyone but myself for not checking the URL.

Why someone would take the time to try to trick me in this way is a great question, but I learned something through this, and my level of frustration during a crisis was severely tested, and I never became a haywire flamethrower. At one point, I wrote that a commenter was insane, but I changed it before it was posted. Good for me, I suppose.

The irony that being catfished as a result of writing a post about the evils of catfishing and how the media fails in reporting the results of catfishing is not lost on me.

All I have to be proud of is that through the entire ordeal I never posted a nude selfie.

NFL – Centralized Replay Approved, But Will It Help Quicken Process?

by Kent Sterling

Plans are for the NFL’s director of officiating and his deputy to sit in a command center in New York, preview the video prior to the referee getting to the booth so he will see only the relevant footage, and then consult briefly with the ref to make sure the call is correct. The referee will still control the game, but the extra pair of eyes will ensure more correct calls, and the time the ref uses to get to the booth being used to cue up the correct angle should speed the pace of the game – and more importantly the broadcast.

In theory, the scheme sounds great, but as anyone in business can tell you – the bigger the meeting, the longer the meeting. Involving additional people in the decision-making process may result in a few more correct interpretations of the rules, and the providing the ref only the relevant look rather than a parade of multiple vantage points theoretically will save time.

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My own peculiar aversion to replay aside (I don’t see the need for expending time in order to confirm the veracity of calls in an event where who wins or loses is of no real importance – after all, NFL games are not brain surgery), I am willing to reserve judgment until seeing whether the time for review is cut or expanded by involving another person.

Also approved was a communications process that will allow officials to confer without convening physically on the field. For example, the linesman will be able to press a button to tell the referee that J.J. Watt was offside, instead of running to the center of the field to communicate directly with the ref. That should shave a few seconds too.

Anything that increases efficiency, I enthusiastically support, so I especially like this upgrade. Given the technological advancements of the last year – like Google Glass – it was absurd for the NFL to continue to require officials to run all over the field to confer. I’m going to be on a live conference call this afternoon with two dozen people from all corners of the country. To not allow officials to confer without scampering all over seems absurd.

The NFL also banned roll-up blocks on the side of a defensive player, a necessary change to help improve the long term health of those in the trenches.

All in all, I like these changes. Now, let’s see what they do to tweak the useless extra point.

Kentucky vs. Louisville – the 1983 Game Was All-Time Great for Fun and Cash

by Kent Sterling

Whether this structure supplied water to Knowville or held a bar at the top provide hours of debate until we took the elevator to the top and ordered a round of beers.

When the seeds held in the sub-regional of the 1983 NCAA Tournament, a very cool opportunity availed itself for Indiana University students who were interested in making a small investment and taking a little drive south to Knoxville, Tennessee.

Big Ten champion Indiana was scheduled to play Kentucky, and Louisville would play Arkansas on the campus of the University of Tennessee, and as long as Louisville won, the drive would provide either a bounty of great hoops or some loot from scalping.

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The way tickets for the NCAA Tournament games involving the Hoosiers were doled out to IU students involved a lottery, and friends of mine and I begged those few students we knew who were disinterested to enter so we would improve our odds. A group of us won tickets, and we rolled to the site of the previous year’s World’s Fair for a weekend of fun

Indiana would be without forward Ted Kitchel because of a bad back, so while there was hope that IU could beat Kentucky, the Hoosiers weren’t favored. That allowed us to accept the 64-59 loss to Kentucky with greed fueled grace because it meant the first matchup between in-state rivals Kentucky and Louisville since 1959.

The Wildcats and Cardinals had not played each other in the regular season since 1922, and there was no love lost between the programs.

Kentucky flat out refused to play Louisville. Coach Joe B. Hall knew he had nothing to gain by scheduling Denny Crum’s upstarts. The Wildcats were the blue bloods in the state, and putting themselves in a position to have that status erode would have been silly. Lexington is where rolling hills of Blue Grass are filled with very expensive thoroughbreds, and Louisville was an urban center whose population was reflected on the court at Freedom Hall. Yes, there were some racial overtones that underscored the dislike between the two closest things to professional sports franchises in the state.

The NCAA stepped in to right the wrong by putting them in the same regional on a collision course in Knoxville.

As the final seconds wound down in Indiana’s loss, we made our plans to dump the regional final tickets for the biggest game for either Kentucky or Louisville in a quarter century. Sadly, the laws of supply and demand were not in our favor because thousands of other Indiana and Arkansas fans made the same plans. Our seats were very good, but there were plenty of those too.

As we drank our Michelobs in the Fabulous Sunsphere – the iconic water tower-esque remnant of the World’s Fair – and plotted our course, it dawned on us that selling quickly would be better than waiting for the day of the game – because the beer flowed like wine, and with it our cash.

We trolled the Hyatt, where the Cardinals stayed, and were offered $80 as we laughed with fans and players. It was a party at the Hyatt. We met the wives of a couple of assistant coaches, and they shared some inside dope on the team, while one of our friends graduated to gin and tonics at the island bar one floor above the atrium. Joe was his name, and he was a master at not paying for drinks. He moved stealthily around the bar, starting tabs on all four sides while buying drinks for other guys and accepting return drinks from them.

When it was time to head over to Kentucky’s hotel to gauge the secondary market pricing structure there, Joe bolted on all four tabs having collected at least eight cocktails on someone other than him. The party that existed with the Louisville folks was nowhere to be found. If Louisville hosted a Mardi Gras, Kentucky ran their headquarters like the Kremlin. The players were nowhere to be found, and the fans were way too staid to engage in talk about tickets.

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Back to the Hyatt we went to find the guy who offered $80 each for our four tickets. The Louisville players wandered the atrium with the coaches. Everyone loose and laughing. Even if we could have gotten a little more cash from Big Blue Nation, we would have felt disloyal to our new friends from the ‘Ville. We accepted $60 each from our guy, and felt lucky to get it.

Louisville went on to beat Kentucky in overtime by 12, and we weren’t arrested because our friend sucked down all the gin in Knoxville without spending a dime. From that point on, I have believed that sequestering players away in their rooms is a mistake. Let them figure out a way to relax, and play the game that way. UK under Hall always seemed to play tight, and as a result he won only one NCAA Tournament despite being ranked #1 or #2 during eight of his 13 seasons at the helm.

Friday, the two teams will play again with a chance to advance to the regional final. The regular season series was reinstated the following season and it has continued since. Kentucky is still Kentucky, and Louisville is still the ‘Ville. The only thing that will change Friday night is a shift in bragging rights.

Indiana Basketball – Jeremy Hollowell Next Out the Door as Transfer

by Kent Sterling

Jeremy Hollowell is moving on from Indiana.

The problem with fishing for tuna by using a giant net is that while you are going to get some tuna, you will also pick up dolphin, sharks, license plates, wooden crates, and turtles. Indiana caught Yogi Ferrell in the class of 2012, but it also came up with Jeremy Hollowell, a player who never adapted to what was needed from him by teammates and coaches.

Today, the fish who is Hollowell removed himself from Tom Crean’s fifth recruiting class. He fit the jersey, but never appeared a part of a unit on the floor for the Hoosiers.

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Good for Hollowell for recognizing it and deciding to try to play for a program where the fit might be better. One thing that Hollowell and IU fans agree on is that his dreams of playing in the NBA were not going to be answered by staying in Bloomington.

That doesn’t mean that Hollowell is incapable of being an outstanding player somewhere, but it was clear from the outset that he was not going to be a great player at Indiana.

His two-game suspension this season for a “lack of focus” left fans to wonder just what selfish behavior he indulged in, but that discussion is now moot other than for the coaches of the schools who target him.

On the court, there were problems too – turnovers were too plentiful, and the made buckets too few. Hollowell’s field goal percentage was 5% lower than any of the other eight players on the team who averaged more than 1.5 shots per game. The turnovers were comparatively less problematic in reality than in my memory, as many of the Hoosiers averaged more than what Hollowell averaged per minute. Among those who played more than 100 minutes in 2013-2014, only Evan Gordon and Yogi Ferrell notched more assists than turnovers, so giveaways were a team issue, not specifically a Hollowell issue.

Hollowell joins Austin Etherington and Noah Vonleh as former Hoosiers who also announced their intention today to leave the program. Etherington will move on to another school, while Vonleh is going to enter the 2014 NBA Draft.

Whether this signals the end of a small exodus from Bloomington is yet to be seen or is the start of dominos falling is yet to be seen, but while these three defections were entirely expected, others would not be. Not sure anyone would be amazed by Peter Jurkin leaving, but given his 18 minutes of play in two seasons, I’m not sure it would be noticed.

Crean is busy recruiting replacements as I write, focusing on maturity and toughness. I hope they are tall too, as minus Hanner Mosquira-Perea and Jurkin, the 2014-2015 Hoosiers as they are currently constituted would be small – really small.

Many complained that Hollowell appeared laconic, and questioned his love of basketball. Below is an interview from almost four years ago where Hollowell explains his love of the game. His tone reflected the perception that he was indifferent, but I never thought he was as indifferent on the court as he was uncomfortable.

Indiana Basketball – Fans Should Not Sweat Transfers of Austin Etherington and Others to Come

by Kent Sterling

Former IU players Remy Abell (left) and Austin Etherington (right) have left Indiana over the past two off seasons.

Players leave programs all the time. It happens almost everywhere, and for the most part, it’s a win/win/win as the kid wins, the program he goes to wins, and the program he leaves wins.

That will likely be the case for Austin Etherington, a redshirt sophomore who has asked for and has been granted his release. Etherington will leave Indiana with his degree in management from SPEA, and have two years of eligibility left, Indiana will have room to add a late signee from the class of 2014 or a transfer, and a school (likely Indiana State, where Austin’s brother Alex plays) will get a smart, tough-minded player with great leadership qualities.

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News of Etherington’s transfer comes hours after Noah Vonleh told CBS that he will enter the NBA Draft. If Etherington’s transfer was less than a shock, Vonleh’s announcement confirmed what was suspected before he ever arrived in Bloomington. He didn’t re-class a year ahead because he wanted to get his degree before turning 21. The plan was one-and-done from the beginning.

Whether a successful program can be sustained with uber-talented kids whose interest in college is not likely to extend beyond eight months is debatable. If Wichita State hits a last second three-pointer yesterday, Kentucky fans would have started to murmur about John Calipari’s predilection toward single-year players.

For Indiana, the blood letting is likely not over. There is going to be at least one more player who will decide to leave Bloomington for what he believes will be greener pastures.

That’s not necessarily an indictment on the leadership of Tom Crean. There are very few players who don’t give at least passing thought to transferring after their sophomore year. That’s the year when the player has his greatest value to another school, and many realize that whatever their dreams were as freshmen are not likely to be fulfilled at their current address.

There is a current player on Indiana’s roster that was destined for the NBA, a prominent and well-informed booster told me before the player’s freshman year. I had seen him play several times, and thought he would find it difficult to enjoy a prominent role during Big Ten play, much less ever play a minute in the NBA. That is the wide swath of opinions surrounding these young players. I’m sure that kid thought he would head to Bloomington, dominate, and bounce the millions awaiting NBA stars. That did not happen. In fact, his minutes diminished throughout the season, and whether his playing next year would be a net gain for Indiana is in grave doubt.

His optimistic assessment and subsequent disappointment certainly can’t be his fault. It’s the coach, circumstances, teammates reluctance to pass him the ball, bad luck, quality of water, inability to find a steady girl, lack of support from teammates, distance to family, etc… Well, over at the school he spurned to accept at IU, people are doing well, and if he could turn back time, he would have committed elsewhere. He can’t turn back time, so he bolts rather than invite more regret.

The coach tries to help with an accurate appraisal, but it only confirms in the player’s mind that the coach has it out for him.

Fans like to blame the coach, which is ludicrous most of the time. The kids are self-immersed, and eager to chase an unattainable vision buffeted by friends and family who can’t see the forest for the trees.

Long story short is that the churn that may continue throughout the spring in Bloomington has a lot more to do with the flakiness of youth than a void in the leadership department. To this point, it looks like Etherington wants to play with his brother, and Vonleh wants to get paid. Neither has anything to do with Crean.

Now if Yogi Ferrell, Stanford Robinson, and Troy Williams all announce their intent to vamoose, the narrative changes.

Even in College Basketball Crazed Indiana, Louisville vs. Kentucky Takes March Madness to Another Level

by Kent Sterling

This sweatshirt sums up the arrogance of the Kentucky fan base toward its neighbors.

March Madness doesn’t exist in Kentucky; it’s just Madness because it runs through all 12 months.

There are crosstown rivalries like the Cubs and White Sox, Jets vs. Giants, and college football’s Michigan vs. Ohio State, but there is nothing quite like college basketball’s Louisville vs. Kentucky locking horns in March.

When I moved to deep southern Indiana from Chicago as a kid, I was stunned at the level of passion for college basketball, and overjoyed by the acrimony between the fan bases of Louisville and Kentucky. Kentucky fans dismissed Louisville as rabble not worth their time, and Louisville fans saw that early incarnation of Big Blue Nation as elitist mopes arrogant without logical rationale.

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The level of bitterness between the two fan bases is far different from any rivalry in America. Chicago baseball fans are resigned to the fact that the Cubs and White Sox have virtually no chance to ever face one another in the World Series. Since 1917, there has been exactly one World Championship won by a Chicago team, and both teams have seemingly been in a race to see who can be worse for years.

The madness over college basketball’s best rivalry isn’t reserved for March – or during the season. Walk into a bar in Louisville, New Albany, or Jefferesonville in June, and the conversations will be about recruiting classes two and three years down the road. College and high school hoops are a 12-month a year obsession along the Ohio River.

Kentucky and Louisville fans are used to contending for a National Championship, so when these two teams play, it’s not just for local bragging rights, but for the chance to go to the Final Four and win.

The Cardinals and Wildcats have played in the NCAA Tournament five times (1951, 1959, 1983, 1984, 2012) with Kentucky holding a 3-2 edge.

From 1922-1983, Louisville and Kentucky refused to play one another during the regular season. That was more Kentucky refusing to schedule what they felt was an inferior program against whom they had nothing to gain a little over an hour west on I-64 than Louisville deciding not to play UK.

Then, Kentucky and Louisville played each other in the 1983 Elite Eight in Knoxville, TN, for a trip to the Final Four. Louisville won in overtime, and that set the stage for a resumption of the regular season series which has continued uninterrupted since.

Familiarity has not prompted the two fan bases to come together as one to sing “Kumbayah” in a mosh pit of love and tolerance. If anything, the friction between Big Blue Nation and Cardinal Nation has increased because former Kentucky coach Rick Pitino has brought the Cardinals back from the malaise of the latter years of the Denny Crum age to annual championship contention.

Kentucky fans loathe Pitino as much as Louisvillians love him, and Cardinals fans have serious contempt for UK coach John Calipari and everything the Wildcats program stands for and against.

This year’s NCAA Tourney match-up, the second in three years, will for a short period of time settle the matter of who is the king of Blue Glass Basketball. In 2012, Kentucky and Louisville met in the Final Four, and Kentucky won 69-61 on their road to the lone National Championship of the John Calipari one-and-done era.

Last year’s championship team from Louisville did not enjoy the privilege of going through Kentucky on their way to triumph as Kentucky failed to qualify for the Big Dance and lost to Robert Morris in the opening round of the NIT.

Louisville was by far the cooler of the two teams when I was a kid. The Cardinals were a loose group who overwhelmed opponents with the athleticism of players like Darrell Griffith, Bobby Turner, Poncho Wright, Derek Smith, Rodney and Scooter McCray, and the thumbless Wiley Brown. They were the Doctors of Dunk, made Metro Seven basketball at Freedom Hall the hottest ticket in town, and won the 1980 NCAA Championship in Indianapolis.

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Kentucky was a corporate outfit led by Joe B. Hall, with a lot of (mostly) white guys who played with precision. Rick Robey, Mike Phillips, Kyle Macy, James Lee, Jay Shidler, Jack Givens, and Sam Bowie filled their roles well. Kentucky was the cream of the crop in the SEC during that time and won the 1978 National Championship.

The all-time series lead comfortably belongs to Kentucky at 31-15, and one piece of bad news for the Cardinals is that Kentucky has never failed to win a second after winning one game through the 46-games. The Wildcats have won four in a row three times, three in a row three times, five in a row once, and two in a row just once. Kentucky won December 28, 2013, while Louisville won December 29, 2012. That either means that Louisville is due not to allow UK to win a second consecutive game, or that Kentucky is due.

Indianapolis is great at hosting enormous sporting events and making fans fee at home, but it should brace for a different level of fan this weekend. This isn’t the Super Bowl or Indianapolis 500. For Indiana’s neighbors to the south, it’s much bigger than that.

As Expected, Marvin Clark Chooses Michigan State and Tom Izzo

by Kent Sterling

Marvin Clark talks about his fascinating and challenging youth in the documentary “I Am Marvin Clark”.

It’s hard to turn down Tom Izzo. He’s a coach that obviously builds strong bonds with players, and succeeds on the court as few others have.

If Michigan State can win two more games in this year’s NCAA basketball tournament, every single four-year player for Izzo will have played in at least one Final Four, and the Spartans graduation rate is quite good compared to its Big Ten brethren.

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So Marvin Clark’s commitment to Izzo over his other finalists – Indiana, Kansas State, and Seton Hall – is no great surprise. Add the earlier commitment of high school teammate Lourawls Nairn from the Sunrise Christian Academy, and the deal was all but assured once Michigan State offered the 6’7″, 225 lbs. thick shouldered forward.

Clark is a three-star recruit on Rivals and unrated by ESPN, who would be mostly under the radar if not for a very cool 20-minute documentary about the adversity he has faced in his life. Marvin’s dad died of a heart attack when he was very young, and his mom became involved with an abusive drug dealer. The family became homeless, and Marvin bounced from school to school until he landed at Sunrise.

The documentary shows a great kid who fans would be proud to see land at their school for many reasons beyond basketball. Whether he will be a great player in the Big Ten remains to be seen.

The loss for the finalists is more about humanity than basketball, and that isn’t meant to make fans feel better. It should be the first and foremost concern for any entity.

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Indiana, Kansas State, and Seton Hall will find other players to build their programs, but the documentary shows the kind of person college athletics should be all about.

Indiana Basketball – Marvin Clark Decides Tomorrow, and Whatever His Choice, You Should Know Him

by Kent Sterling

Late signees usually don’t capture my interest, but Marvin Clark is different.

When Jeff Rabjohns of peegs.com tweeted that high school basketball player Marvin Clark will announce his decision tomorrow at 10:30a to attend either Indiana, Kansas State, Michigan State, or Seton Hall, my first question was, “Who is Marvin Clark?”

I found the measurements, standard bio, and a couple of highlight videos that showed a well-developed 6’7″, 225 lbs. forward from near Kansas City with a very smooth left-handed shot. Then, I dug a little deeper and found out what kind of a kid he is.

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A 20-minute documentary was produced that showed Marvin as an open and honest kid dealt a series of challenges that finally led to opportunity. After I watched it, I began to hope that Marvin would pick Indiana as the place to continue his education and basketball career.

I want Marvin to choose Indiana not because he can help the Hoosiers win, but because Marvin Clark should be the precise type of kid Indiana works to find and help live a fulfilling life.

Whether Marvin can play at the Big Ten level is something he’s going to have to prove over time, but that he knows how to overcome adversity while maintaining his decency and humanity is beyond question.

During this era when the the discussion of big time athletics centers around whether the opportunity to receive an education is enough to compensate an athlete for the time and effort invested in entertaining fans and making bundles of cash for schools, coaches, and media, Marvin can become exactly the kind of kid that makes a school and its alums proud.

College basketball should be about much more than wins and losses. It should allow a good kid who has known homelessness and despair find a needed boost in exchange for the hard work to make the most of his on-court talent.

Through its Excellence Academy, Indiana has shown a yearning to use its facilities and staff to take immature freshmen to help them become functional adults regardless of their sport in the four years they spend in Bloomington. Marvin Clark appears to be the kind of kid that those employed at Indiana – from athletic director Fred Glass to the academic advisors can point to with pride for the rest of their lives as someone they were able to help.

So watch the documentary, and tell me you won’t be rooting for this kid regardless of his choice.