The Hlog

And We Thought Lickliter Was Starting Short-handed ...

I really, really think Iowa can handle Indiana in men's basketball next season.

The Hoosiers were already losing their two best players, and two of the Big Ten's best in senior big man D.J. White and freshman guard extraordinaire Eric Gordon.

Friday, new Indiana coach Tom Crean was down to three returning scholarship players and eight in all after the announced departures of four Hoosiers.

Sophomore Armon Bassett and junior Jamarcus Ellis, who had appealed their suspensions by former interim coach Dan Dakich, were dismissed from the program. Junior forward DeAndre Thomas is leaving, and so is freshman Eli Holman.

Indiana was 25-7 this season, but stumbled in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals and in the first-round of the NCAA tourney, making it feel like an unsatisfying season. Kelvin Sampson added to that when he got fired for his bizarre over-use of his cell phone in recruiting, which had the NCAA hot on the program's trail.

Iowa was short-handed last season in Todd Lickliter's first year as coach, thanks to Tyler Smith's transfer to Tennessee and other reasons not of Lickliter's making. But this makes the 2007-08 Hawkeyes look like the 2007-08 Kansas Jayhawks compared to what Crean is inheriting at Indiana for 20008-09.

Sampson, meanwhile, appears set to become an assistant coach for the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks. These guys always seem to land on their feet, don't they?

Sophomore Armon Bassett and junior Jamarcus Ellis, who had appealed their suspensions by former interim coach Dan Dakich, were dismissed from the program. Junior forward DeAndre Thomas will also not return and neither will freshman Eli Holman, who has elected to transfer after a meeting Thursday that required a call to campus police when Holman became agitated.   |    Login or Join to Post Comments