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[PointGuard]

Ramon Montez

Fall practices went pretty well. We had a bit too much of guys getting on other guys…mostly verbal but a few minor physical instances. Overall our counselling following those was pretty successful, but sure as hell hoping we don’t see crappy attitudes out of these guys throughout the season.

We have 4 freshmen but decided not to redshirt any of them. We think game experience will be better at developing them than adding the extra year of practice. Our redshirt from last season, PF Jamar McKie, didn’t develop as rapidly as we’d hoped, but maybe we just gotta give him some game time and see how he does.

Here’s how our team shakes out to begin this season:

PG—The starter will be junior Brett Mosley. As a freshman he subbed at Texas A&M and did the same for us last season. He’s benefitted from the experience and should be able to step into the starting role, although we don’t expect him to be a star. His primary backup will be freshman Calvin Heard. Calvin has fantastic potential. He could challenge to start as the season progresses, but needs some maturing and college level experience. It’s likely a couple other guys will get a few minutes at the point, but we’re still evaluating who best can do it.

SG—Our only true SG on the roster is freshman Ray Richardson. He’s pretty polished but needs to familiarize himself more with our sets so we’ll begin the season by moving sophomore Chris Broussard, last year’s starting SF to SG and have him start…at least until Richardson seems ready to inherit the job. Broussard is a very good outside shooter who hit 52% of his FG’s and 38% of his 3’s for us last year and averaged 10.3 ppg.

SF—We’ve got some good SF’s on our roster which is why we’re able to shift Broussard to SG. So senior Johnny Lubeck is going to be our initial starting SF. Lubeck’s had an unusual progression. He started for us as a freshman, but due to other players winning the role, Johnny became a primary reserve for us the following two seasons. He’s not a real 3-point threat, but he’s a good shooter from a bit closer to the basket and knows how to attack the boards. Senior Julius Waterman who subbed as a freshman at Cornell but then started for us as a sophomore. His rebounding wasn’t as good as wanted, so he returned to coming in off the bench as a junior. In practice this year, his rebounding looked a lot better so it’s possible he will challenge to start. Freshman Martin Towers is going to be a good one. He’s a sweet outside shooter, but needs a lot of development so he’ll have to prove himself to get much playing time.

PF—Our initial plan was to have 7'0" senior George Zinn again start at C, but he has shown more affinity for getting off and hitting an outside shot, so he’ll start at PF but also put in time at C. He’s a proven scorer and rebounder but injury prone. Backing him up will be both sophomore Brian Valdez, who was a starter laesst season at Kennesaw State where he averaged 10.9 ppg and 5.7 rpg, and junior Jason Collier, who’s been a solid sub for us the past 2 seasons. Then there’s freshman (RS) Jamar McKie who we will toss in at both PF and SF to see how he does.

C—Junior Kirk Reeves won the battle to start at C. As a freshman he started for Portland (averaging 11 ppg and 7.4 rpg) and started half our games last season (averaging 9.2 ppg and 4.6 rpg). He’s a good inside scorer but doesn’t like to shoot from outside. Kirk will be backed up by Zinn primarily but also both Valdez and Collier.

I like our roster and our depth. We’ve been picked to finish atop the Conference F standings and I honestly believe we can do it.

[PointGuard]

Mike McMillan

We left the development of our schedule in the hands of our Athletic Director. While he did an pretty good job, we would have preferred it be a little tougher. But 7 of the teams are in higher quality conferences than ours. Here’s our pre-conference opponents:

• COACHES CLASSIC TOURNAMENT (We’re the #6 seed in this 16 team tourney and will open against #11 seed Western Kentucky, Conf K, 17-14 and 2nd round CIT tourney last year)
• @ Oral Roberts, Conf H, 14-14 last season
• Northwestern, Conf C, 17-13 and 1st round NIT Tourney last year
• Seton Hall, Conf B, 16-16 and quarterfinals of CBI Tourney last season
• @ Iowa, Conf E, 21-12, 1st round of NCAA Tourney last season
• Morehead State, Conf I, 21-11 and play-in game for NCAA Tourney last year
• @ Virginia, Conf D, 18-12 and 1st round of NCAA tourney last season
• @ Texas Tech, Conf B, 25-10 and finals of NCAA tourney last season
• Marquette, Conf E, 19-14 and 2nd round of NCAA tourney last year (we’ll go up against PF Greg Dye who transferred away from us this summer)
• Southern California, Conf I, 7-20 last season
• Buffalo, Conf B, 25-8, #19 ranked, and Sweet 16 in NCAA tourney last season

All 4 of us co-head coaches are hoping we can make some noise in the Coaches Classic Tournament which begins this coming Sunday.

[PointGuard]

Nov. 13: #11 seed Western Kentucky Hilltoppers (0-0) vs #4 seed Indiana Hoosiers (0-0), 1st round, Coaches Classic Tournament

Ramon Montez: After 4 minutes of play we got out on top and led 38-28 at halftime. We expanded our lead to as much as 24 points, but let the Hilltoppers eat away at our big lead in the final 5 minutes. But our 72-65 final winning margin was the closest they got. Not impressive, but a win’s a win. George Zinn-21 pts, 3 reb, 2 ast, 2 blk; Kirk Reeves-18 pts, 4 reb, 3 stl; Chris Broussard-14 pts. [1-0]

[PointGuard]

Nov. 15: #6 seed Indiana Hoosiers (1-0) vs #3 seed Oregon Ducks (1-0), quarterfinals, Coaches Classic Tournament

Terry Morillo: Oregon of Conference C thumped Texas Southern 79-60 in their opening tournament game with freshman PF Jimmy Trico scoring 21 points. Junior PG Derek Williams is the Ducks’ steadying force. We got off to a good start going up 03-19 with 7 minutes left in the half. The fouls were going against us, but our D was phenomenal. Oregon cut into the lead but we still led 31-24 at halftime. Throughout the entire 2nd half, Oregon kept getting close but every time our guys would open and 8-10 point lead. We held on to edge the Ducks 67-61. George Zinn-16 pts, 7 reb, 5 blk; Chris Broussard-11 pts, 5 reb, 3 ast; Kirk Reeves-10 pts, 6 reb. [2-0]

[PointGuard]

Nov. 17: #6 seed Indiana Hoosiers (2-0) vs #2 seed, #12 ranked UCLA Bruins (2-0). Semifinals, Coaches Classic Tournament

Mike McMillan: Led by PG Luke Hill’s 21 ppg and C Sam Grimes 16.5 ppg, Conference B UCLA has rolled over Charlotte 89-60 and Weber State 73-59 thus far. We grabbed a very early lead but the Bruins wrested it away from us just 2 minutes into the game and held onto a very small lead the rest of the half. We trailed 32-31 at the break. Scoring was difficult for both teams in the first 5 minutes of the 2nd half but it seemed like every basket resulted in a lead change. But over the next 10 minutes we clamped down defensively to go on an 18-4 lead from which UCLA was unable to recover. We pulled off a huge upset victory by a final score of 65-55. We held the mighty Bruins to just 30% shooting. Chris Broussard—12 pts; Julius Waterman—11 pts, 5 reb, 3 ast; Kirk Reeves—9 pts, 7 reb; George Zinn—7 pts, 9 reb. [3-0]

[PointGuard]

Nov. 19: #6 seed Indiana Hoosiers (3-0) vs #1 seed, #1 ranked Arizona Wildcats (3-0), Championship, Coaches Classic Tournament

Ramon Montez: This is the case of going from the frying pan (playing #12 ranked UCLA) to the fire (taking on #1 ranked Arizona). Arizona has crushed their 3 opponents in this tourney: 85-45 over Tennessee-Martin; 68-48 over Georgia State; and 73-47 to beat Alabama. In this game there were five lead changes in the first 7 minutes, but then we edged ahead and held on to achieve a 34-30 halftime advantage as our D again shone. The game remained close for the first 5 minutes of the 2nd half, but then we totally shut down the Wildcats for 3-1/2 minutes to go ahead by 11 points. Arizona began scoring again, but our guys refused to yield and kept apace to pull off a stunning 79-66 victory. We were crowned the tourney champs! Brett Mosley—17 pts, 3 reb, 6 ast; Kirk Reeves—14 pts, 3 reb; George Zinn—10 pts; Calvin Heard—8 pts, 3 ast; Johnny Lubeck—7 pts, 7 reb, 2 ast; Brian Valdez—6 pts, 6 reb, 3 blk. [4-0]

[PointGuard]

Terry Morillo

The Coaches Classic championship, with wins over UCLA and Arizona, catapulted us from outside the Top 25 to #8 in the Media Poll and #4 in the Coaches Poll. Thus far we’re averaging 70.8 ppg while holding our opponents to 61.8 ppg. Our team has hit 52% of our FG’s and 46% of our 3’s. Our D held each of our 4 opponents to between 55 and 66 points.

Our two top scorers in the tournament were George Zinn and Kirk Reeves with 13.5 ppg and 12.8 ppg, respectively, with Zinn connecting on 66% of his shots and Reeves knocking down an amazing 79% of his FG attempts. They were also our top rebounders with 5.3 rpg for Zinn and 5.0 rpg for Reeves. Reeves is complaining about a sore hip. Our athletic trainer evaluated it and he feels it’ll take about a week to fully recover but that Reeves will be able to practice and play in games during that time. One of the important things that came about in the tournament run was that we were able to get all 13 of our scholarship players on the court in all 4 games. Our entire team was part of the championship run and helped us to win the 4 games. Each of the 13 have scored and have pulled down rebounds. So not only do we feel we have a strong starting lineup but reserves who come in and produce.

[PointGuard]

Nov. 22: #8 Indiana Hoosiers (4-0) @ Oral Roberts Golden Eagles (0-1)

Ken Yamoto: Oral Roberts’ C Jason Cunningham hit 17 of 21 shots and scored 43 points to nearly lead the Golden Eagles to an upset of #6 Oklahoma State. He’s deadly down low…but our goals was to keep his scoring in the teens. After the two teams stayed close for the first 14 minutes, Oral Roberts exploded and we folded in the final 6 minutes of the half and the Golden Eagles ran away to a 51-33 halftime advantage. We got back on track in the 2nd half and steadily ate into their lead. We pulled ahead with 4 minutes to go. We went up by 5 only to let the Golden Eagles comeback and slip by us in the final 15 seconds to nip us 73-71. Disappointing…a game we could have and should have won. Chris Broussard—15 pts, 2 blk; Johnny Lubeck—13 pts, 6 reb, 2 ast; George Zinn—13 pts, 6 reb; Julius Waterman—11 pts, 3 reb; Calvin Heard—9 pts. We held Cunningham to 17 points, but let 3 of their other starters also score in double figures. [4-1]

[PointGuard]

Nov. 25: Northwestern Wildcats (2-1) @ #8 Indiana Hoosiers (4-1)

Ramon Montez: We let the Wildcats get by us at the 8 minute mark of the first half and they went on to build a 36-24 halftime lead. We shot horribly. We fell further behind in the 2nd half and trailed by 18 with 12 minutes to go. We fought to overcome the Wildcat’s lead and got within 4 points a few times in the final 6 minutes but couldn’t overtake Northwestern, losing 69-59. We hit just 30% of our FG’s. Our guys have definitely suffered a letdown after winning the Coaches Classic Tourney. We’re going to have to kick them in their collective butts. George Zinn—13 pts, 7 reb, 2 ast, 2 stl; Chris Broussard—13 pts, 5 reb, 2 stl; Kirk Reeves—9 pts, 4 reb; Brian Valdez—8 pts, 3 reb. [4-2]

[PointGuard]

Nov. 29: Seton Hall Pirates (3-1) @ #17 Indiana Hoosiers (4-2)

Mike McMillan: I think our rocketing all the way up to #8 and #4 in the two polls went to our guys' heads. Maybe they thought they could win by just stepping onto the court. Well, if that was the case, I believe our last 2 games should have disabused of that thought. We played lousy against two teams we shouldn’t have lost to. We deserved to drop to #17 in the polls. Tonight it felt like Seton Hall was scoring at will in the first half, and I was concerned we still hadn't recovered our equilibrium. We gave up 49 first half points while we scored just 41. It took us 7 minutes in the 2nd half to catch up to the Pirates. The lead then shifted back and forth over the next 11 minutes. But we edged ahead for good with 2 minutes left and scored an 83-76 victory. We hit 51% of our FG’s but our 3-point shooting is still substandard. Kirk Reeves—21 pts, 7 reb; Brett Mosley—18 pts, 2 ast; George Zinn—10 pts, 6 reb, 3 blk; Jason Collier—7 pts, 6 reb, 2 ast. [5-2]