Just how desperate is Tom Crean?? JW needs to be watching this...

There's a joke that goes like this....
I got a phone call today from Indiana coach Tom Crean....
yeah...he was asking if I had any kids who were over 6-6! I said no, and then he asked if I knew anyone else who did. When I said no to that, he then asked if I had any college eligibility remaining...........you get the rest...

Wow, is all I can say...Indiana basketball is now at the level of Lipscomb or Winston-Salem State! They are going after every reject, transfer, and obscure player over 6-6, and getting shot down by all of them...
If John Wilkins is being asked to wait until Crean finishes his garbage-picking, then what an insult!!

The fact that the Indiana coach is hotly pursuing and offering just about every obscure kid and leftover and asking Wilkins to wait has to be insulting....what gives?? Does JW want to be a Hoosier this bad to be shelved until Crean finishes offering every available leftover all the way down to 1-Star's??


Now only have all the other big man prospect chosen to turn down Indiana's offers, but now even obscure kids that have little chance of even playing have become Tom Crean's hottest new recruiting targets.

Case in point...
Little used Walter Offutt spent two years at Ohio State and did nothing...
He played a handful of games, a total of 124 minutes, and demonstrated that he really just cannot play at this level...so after two disappointing years, he is leaving Ohio State. But he's welcome at Indiana....although there's a lot of catches here. Recall, if you go from one Big Ten school to another, you cannot be on scholarship - this is the rule that kept Cody Larson or Ben Brust from considering Indiana, not that Tom Crean didn't try hard to get them.
So Offutt would have to pay his own way and walk on, but if there's a single position that Indiana is actually pretty well set at, it's shooting guard.
They have Maurice Creek, their best player, and Verdell Jones, their 2nd best player...plus they have Matt Roth and others...so just where and how much is Offutt going to play if he does go to Indiana??


But the real stumper here is Tennessee player Emmanuel Negedu, who nearly died when his heart stopped, then he got an implanable defibrillator (heart shocker) and is NOT being allowed to play at Tennessee....
..but Crean is going hard after the kid.
He plays a wing position (where IU is alrady deep), is not an outside shooter (has only made on 3-pointer ever), and is definitely NOT the big man IU really needs.
Then, since he's transferring, he would have to sit out, unless they can pull off the waiver from NCAA. Even then, many experts say a kid whose life almost ended because of this condition should NOT risk playing sports again....
Also, it is a severe liability....just recall Gene Gathers, Lenny Bias, and Reggie Lewis - all of whom died playing ball.......and two of them were under doctors' orders not to play without proper medical treatment and both Lewis & Gathers went ahead and played anyway....and there were lawsuits that followed!!!

Negedu might be a decent player but would he be a game breaker...
He played AAU with the Indiana Elite with Matt Roth and wasn't even the 3rd or 4th best player on that team...
He had committed to Arizona, then reopened when the Lute Olson stuff happened...
then he was about to commit to Indiana then backed off and went to Tennessee...
I think he would appeal to NCAA in the same manner of when a school terminates a particular sport and those players are allowed to transfer without penalty - like when UNI discontinued baseball....

-- in effect, by him getting banned at UT, it's the same thing, and he's not being allowed to play there...it is unfortunately BEYOND the kid's control - and that's the factor NCAA looks at...
so I expect NCAA may allow him immediate eligibility......as they are always quite favorable to the big schools -- they were in the Tyler Smith transfer to Tennessee so he could have a little fun there with guns and dope...


But some of the comments I have read are also quite funny...
Walter Offutt himself thinks because he is walking on that he won't have to sit out a year - as if that transfer rule applies only to scholarship players.
NOPE - even walk ons at D-I have to sit out a year...
http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=75443


But the real amusing comments come from a few Indiana fans who think if they can land Negedu or Offutt, two players who couldn't even crack the lineup where they were....that somehow that'll make IU a Final Four team...

One says.....
"If we land Offutt and Ngedu as walkons, the sky is the limit"

..then more on getting both players eligible right away because they are desperate...
"If Offutt walks on then I believe he can play"..
...claiming the key thing is that walk ons don't have to sit out, only scholarship players!!

But it's even worse than most people think...because Offutt actually played a couple games this past season with Ohio State...but only two..he could try to get 2009-2010 as a redshirt year...but then transferring would be a 2nd year sitting out...and any way you look at it, he will have only 2 years remaining, and yet over the past 2.5 years he has only played a TOTAL of 124 minutes (102 in 2008-2009 and 22 this past year)..so he is nowhere near developed to the Big Ten level..
Hard to get too excited over a player that no matter how highly rated he was, he couldn't even score as a deep sub at OSU.

Then there's this...
"Eman may be able to appeal since I don't think he played many games last season"
...what??? So how does the number of games played have a thing to do with whether you sit out for transferring??
Anyway...it's a stumper what the heck the guy's talking about at all...
since in his only season that he played, his freshman year, Negedu played in over 30 games!! That's way, way too many for the number of games played to even be an issue in anything...
But this past year, he did NOT PLAY AT ALL!!
He collapsed on Sept. 28 last fall in the preseason...and had the defibrillator on Oct. 6...and never played a minute of any game in 2009-2010.
http://www.utsports.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/100609aab.html


Then here's a guy who says...
"Offutt would have to sit out a year while residing at IU. He can try to appeal and be eligible to play 2nd semester next season but that would burn one of his 2 years of eligibility."
...again...what??? Sure he played early in 2009-2010, but he didn't transfer until now....so how does he have any possibility of getting eligible for 2nd semester next year.....either he gets a waiver and can play right away like the Tyler Smith rule - to be closer to his family, or he has to sit out a year...and would NOT be eligible in 2nd semester...
http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=170&f=2353&t=5873499&p=4



Tom Crean is also pursuing Kevin Noreen..but lots of desperate coaches are after just about anyone over 6-6!!
http://rivalshoops.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1077447

Even a totally obscure kid at Brehm Prep gets a Big Ten offer...Oto Osenieks!!
http://minnesota.scout.com/2/964682.html

If Wilkins wants to play at Indiana, then I wish Crean would just offer and sign the kid. In the end it is beginning to look like when he strikes out enough, Crean will end up coming back to Wilkins since that's all he will have left.



The Kansas scandal....finally getting a little press....as I predicted it would be kept pretty quiet, since Kansas athletics is just about everything out there...
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/22/1896851/ku-ticket-scandal-involves-big.html

but now this scandal is coming to light as going way back many years and involving a lot of biggies, including the current AD who still holds his job and maybe even Bill Self knew something more than he's willing to admit...!

"the ticket scandal involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in undeclared cash transactions going back many years, and that it benefited numerous people. The tickets included NCAA tournament tickets and regular season games at Allen Fieldhouse"

"Potential crimes (INCLUDE)..tax evasion, money laundering, theft and fraud"

BTW-- READ THE ARTICLE AND SEE THE CONNECTIONS THIS GANGSTER AND CROOK HAS WITH THE KANSAS PLAYERS AND COACH!
"he was a partner in the construction business with former KU basketball standout Roger Morningstar, whose son, Brady, currently plays for the team"
"Freeman built a seven-bedroom house that he eventually sold to KU basketball coach Bill Self"
"Freeman and Morningstar sold two lots in a Basehor, Kan., housing development to (the Kansas asst. athletic director and Kansas fund raiser) Jones, who purchased them under the name of his business, Par 4 LLC.
In April 2007, Jones, through Par 4, deeded one of the properties — on which a house had been built — directly back to Freeman, who sold it nine days later to a Basehor couple."
"..athletic fundraising arms such as the (Kansas University) Williams Fund — which require large contributions from boosters in return for tickets — make tickets so valuable that it’s hard to resist the temptation to sell them under the table.
“There is an incredible amount of money on the table here, so if someone has their finger in the till, it doesn’t surprise me a lot,”"


But it's Kansas...surely they didn't do anything wrong...and if they did, it was minor and doesn't deserve anything!



Wichita gets deeper into the juco mix & signs yet another juco guard....
http://www.kansas.com/2010/04/20/1278529/wsu-basketball-signs-juco-shooter.html



Lastly.....just for laughs...the stoopidest post of the day....
that somehow the Canary Islands are named for canaries...
they are actually named for dogs...but such matters don't mean a thing when you make up your own truth...
http://twitter.com/xb7/status/12712805896
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Islands